Consulting the stolen tablet, I identified that we were about 200 meters away from the palace when the drain came to an abrupt stop. We''d have to climb out, onto the street or busting through like we had been.
I pinged Alan to check in on him, and was disturbed to hear him whining and whimpering, hardly able to talk.
"Are you hurt? Your vitals monitor is still green." I asked him, because the system did indeed suggest he was in good health barring minor wounds. In response, he just shook his head and began TPing, taking a circuitous route till he ended up above the drain.
We climbed up a ladder that had become angled more akin to a staircase to pop out in a deserted alley. He lay against the wall, hyperventilating and whining as I gently turned him over.
Fuck.
At the start of the fight, I had dosed him with the drugs needed to kickstart the production of the cells that were responsible for fine touch and other sensations. What I hadn''t accounted for was it still amplified pain to an exorbitant degree, or at least Alan had been trying to be stoic in front of Alia in the villa.
While he''d been employing hit and run tactics, he''d still taken a few hits, including some light burns.
Well, they''d have been light for me, with his increased sensitivity to all sensations, he was in absolute agony and barely holding it together.
"I need you to jump clear, head to the villa with Alia and stay put alright? Use this now, and the rest later." I ordered him, handing him a salve and strong painkillers with numbing agents.
He''d be out of action when he was back, with his skin numb he''d be unable to use his powers in a timely manner or carry anything of note.
I sent Grim out of the alley to check it was clear, then helped Alan out to where he had line of sight to begin jumping away. I didn''t want to rely on his ability to jump up and go intangible when he was in this state, especially with the drones watching.
It hurt to send away someone that useful, but in his current state he''d just end up getting himself killed.
We moved down the road, using Grim and the camouflaged operatives to make sure the way was clear while I used the tactical tab to track his troops.
This turned out to be a problem when we ran into a squad of Honor Guard, who apparently didn''t use the same friendly tracking system as the grunts.
We retreated back under a hail of fire, unlike the regular soldiers, these guys were heavily augmented and while not as capable as we were, they still outnumbered us sufficiently to keep us pinned for a flanking element to polish off. We couldn''t afford that, speed and brutality was all we had.
Grim tried to peek the next corner and almost had his head blown off for the pleasure, these guys had tactical systems that must have been immune to his Incog powers.
Instead, we had Emily step out next, carrying a heavy metal door as a makeshift shield. We ran out behind her, tossing smoke grenades to confuse them as we tried to make it across the street. Emily could only cover us one at a time while the rest returned fire through the smoke, by the time it was my turn, the shield had more holes in it than a screen door, the bastards were using heavy armor piercing ammunition. I lost a finger when we tried to cross, but thankfully it was just a pinky, turned into pink mist by a stray round. I was so amped on stims I barely felt it.
When we emerged onto the next road, there was a manned SUV I''d seen in the palace approaching down the other side. The Russian operative with us noticed that there was what looked like a soccer mom and several kids sitting in it, and attempted to wave them off in a different direction.
In response, she gunned the accelerator, careening down towards where the man and Emily now stood. She just about tossed him aside to safety before the vehicle plowed into her, wrapping itself around her like she was a stout post. Airbags deployed, and she rushed ahead to tear off the door and help the occupants to safety.
The operator with the scar and I (against my better judgement) , rushed over to help her and the wailing kids.
He leaned over into the car. "Are you OK mis-" before she fired a handgun right into his eyesocket, sending him recoiling backwards to fall down dead.
She turned the gun towards me, but Emily threw herself in front of the barrel and took the hit before screaming- "We don''t want to fucking hurt you, drop the fucking gun!" at the crazed woman, who instead pulled out a small vibrodagger and stabbed at her throat. Emily pushed the blow aside with her hands, spraying blood from a papercut, but the woman must have had an inkling of her durability and instead sprayed what must have been pepper spray into her face. Unable to contain herself, Em lashed out, smashing the woman to a pulp against the other door of the car, but even with a broken spine and half her body crushed, she still feebly tried to stab her again. Failing to reach us, she instead turned the blade around and cut her own throat, still glaring at me as gurgling blood poured out of the wound.
What. The. Fuck. This is why I hated mind control.
Emily screamed, falling back. I turned back to see where the rest of the squad was still fighting the Honor Guard. That was almost the last mistake I made, because a screaming child, barely ten years old, launched himself at me wielding his mother''s blade.
It took me by surprise and I collapsed next to a squirming Emily, with the kid riding my shoulders and bring it down, slashing at my face, the blade cutting deep. It wasn''t as sharp as a monosword, but it was enough to be a risk. I managed to grab his wrist and shove him aside before he got to my carotid, but he just charged at me again. I hadn''t prepared for non-lethal engagements, so I flipped him over and overpowered him, holding his hands down while I used some rope I had to bind him together.
He screamed incessantly, struggling against the restraints. I stabbed him with a sedative, or rather a very large dose of the painkillers meant for the others, and he lapsed into unconsciousness, doing his best to bite his own tongue and choke himself to death as I held his mouth open with my cybernetic hand.
Meanwhile, Emily was being swarmed by the other kids, she was mostly blind now, and a little girl, barely seven, was doing her best to force a handgun against her damaged eye and shoot her point blank. It wouldn''t kill her, but damn it must have hurt.
I rushed over, to see that two other children were stripping Degurov''s corpse. I barely managed to override and abort the smart mine one activated before it blew us all to hell, and behind me, Emily finally broke, she grabbed the girl''s arm and hurled her aside into a storefront''s glass window.
I could hear the others running up to us, clearly outgunned by the Honor Guard, and I heard the toothache-inducing thrum of one the agrav drones approaching.
With no time to waste, I broke the hands of the child struggling in my grip, and tossed him aside, albeit more gently than she had.
The surviving four special operatives were more circumspect when they caught up to us and understood the situation. They snapped the spines of the children throwing themselves at them and left them wriggling ineffectually in the dust.
I didn''t have time to praise or critique their methods, as I was escorting a sobbing Emily down the street. She retched, throwing up the morning''s breakfast as we sought shelter in a sufficiently sturdy building. I did the only thing I could, and forced her to swallow a large dose of amnestics, not that the trauma would fade that quickly.
The building rocked under a barrage of rockets, and we ran out through the back garden, which thankfully was adjacent to the rock walls of the lower end of the palace. Em was still lucid enough to punch a hole in it, and we squirmed through right as another flash of heat and light informed us that the drone was lasing the building behind us.
Using neutrino imaging a few days back, I''d determined that the hill the palace was built on was more like a bubble, the originally flat ground bulged out unnaturally to indulge El Presidente''s vanity project. The interior was mostly hollow, barring reinforced columns that held up the thin skin of the hill on the intact bedrock below. Emily was able to tear open a hatch embedded in the hill, showing a tunnel leading straight in. We opted for that, as running up the winding path above would leave us sitting ducks for the drones.
It was lucky that she had taken the lead, because once again we found ourselves under a hail of bullets, they had an emplaced machine gun down the end of the tunnel. I directed a staggering Em to punch through the wall next to us, putting us in a utility corridor.
We emerged in a massive underground car park, where El Presidente''s collection of classic cars was parked. Emily shoved aside a 2012 Lamborghini Aventador, sparking a series of car alarms that turned the echoing space into the scene of utter cacophony.
More Honor Guard pushed towards us, these ones likely the most enthralled because they showed suicidal courage in the fact of our fire. No wonder El Presidente didn''t use more humanoid drones, they were paradoxically more dangerous to him than humans were, especially when with a mere word he could turn them into fearless berserkers.
I ducked underneath the shredded Lambo, spotting a make of electric car notorious for its shoddy battery safety. Quite pleasingly, it indeed went up in a small explosion when I shot it, tossing a Guard out into the open where a burst from Grim put him down.
A rumble indicated something heavy rolling towards us, and with a resounding crash, one end of the car park went up in dust and smoke as a fucking tank rolled in.
At least it was an antiquated model, an M1 Abrams variant that had likely served in the Gulf War. But that was little consolation as it fired, the concussive force blowing out a hundred car windows, and the impact of the blast blowing Emily away. She ended up as a tangle of limbs several meters away, and my taclink lit up with alarms as it reported her taking serious wounds.
Fuck. On one hand, a concussion might do her some good, but on the other hand, we needed her to deal with this fucking thing.
It rolled forth, firing multiple machine guns that ended up catching one of the SpecOps boys, blowing a chunk of his torso and an arm away. I pulled him aside when I could, but he was already out of the fight.
By now, the place was a maelstrom, burning cars billowing smoke, the fire suppression systems desperately spraying foam everywhere. Visibility was down to a half a dozen feet, so I was just as surprised as the Honor Guard I ran into was as I tried to run towards the other end of the place.
He was fast, and managed to tackle me off my feet into the side of a Tesla as I tried to bring my gun to bear. He punched me, and I felt my helmet cave in and my jaw almost break, and I spat out several teeth as I struggled against him.
I tried to reach my monosword, but he managed to rip its sheath away, sending the blade skittering away. His attempt to draw his own blade was thwarted by me smacking down on him with my elbow, and he grabbed me again and rolled me over onto the ground once more.
I tried to push him off me, but the bastard was tenacious and stronger than me to boot, and slowly, inexorably, he raised his blade and tried to bring it to bear, the whine of the vibrations numbing both our hands as we grappled. To my dismay, I felt the point cutting through my armor, then my skin, and I desperately tried to fend him off as he tried angling the blade to pierce my ribcage.
That was the moment when I remembered that I''d packed half a dozen zero-days, but to my dismay, the man was too hardened for me to hack his implants. What wasn''t particularly secure were half the cars in the place, with their antiquated systems.
I picked the closest of the vulnerable cars, namely the one next to us, and threw a kitchen sink of attacks at it via my lace. The Tesla Cybertruck came online, its electric motor too quiet for my assailant to notice, then rammed straight ahead, giving me just enough time to duck my head down as it smashed the man off me and into the side of a wall. He''d barely recovered enough to start struggling when I put a bolt through his skull.
And then two more, because fuck him.
I broadcast my discovery over our comms, and all of us began hacking the cars nearby, slamming soldiers off their feet or into the line of fire. To my surprise, a Porsche rolled up next to me, containing a heavily wounded man propping up Em next to him. I didn''t recognize him, but he did me, because he told me to pile in as he gunned it to the other end of the park as tracer rounds smashed through the windshield. Thankfully, I was seated in Emily''s lap while she was semi-comatose, and they didn''t hit me.
He smashed through a thin barrier, bringing us out of that mess to where the surviving members of the team were keeping their heads down. Behind us, it was pandemonium as cars smashed into people and each other. The Abrams was firing indiscriminately, adding to the confusion, and thankfully the drones couldn''t enter the cramped confines of the space.
We finally had a moment to catch our collective breaths. I was an absolute mess, running on adrenaline and stimulants. Grim, now that I recognized him, wasn''t doing so hot either. Emily verged on unconscious, but then I realized that her severe wounds had opened access to her bloodstream, and managed to force autoinjectors into them, their needles almost breaking at the force needed to pierce her exposed veins. However, she did awaken with a gasp, almost knocking me away before realizing where she was.
The Russian man was in a bad way, he''d taken multiple hits straight to the dome, and the titanium plating of his skull was dented and torn, revealing a gently throbbing mass that I realized was his exposed brain. He barely acknowledged my presence when I shone a light into his eyes, and his eye augmentation were malfunctioning, the pupils stuck in a constricted state. His legs were fucked too, the actuators grinding as he stood back up.
"We''ll hold them off. Buy you time." Grim muttered through gritted teeth. I looked around, we''d reached the bottom tier of the palace proper, surrounded by expensive furniture and opulent decor. If they used their optical cloaks and did a fighting retreat they might actually stand a chance.
I nodded assent, bone-tiredness leaking into the gesture, but he grabbed my arm. "Get the bastard. If we die right now, we''re just fucking terrorists, make it count." He told me. The Russian nodded in agreement, motions lax and his face slack.
"I''ll get him. One way or another." I promised them, handing them the lions share of the weaponry we still had. My bolter was out of ammo anyway, so I threw it aside, taking a scavenged assault rifle someone had picked up in our escape.
They activated their camo, turning into smears that flowed against the background, taking up positions around the base of the stairs to await any enemies pushing up on us. To make life easier for them, I found an exposed access point and uploaded another program to mess with any CCTV surveillance inside the building.
And then, I used up the last of my precog time, to narrow down where the hell he''d finally bunkered down.
I slammed more stims into myself and Em, and the two of us headed down a hallway towards the where the hospital lay.
To be fair to El Presidente, he had good taste in interior decor. We walked through multiple rooms, each tastefully done, though I think Anjana would have had an aneurysm when she saw the carpeted toilets.
The most obvious signs that we had walked into a despot''s lair were the large screens in every room, likely for some kind of projection. We were clearing what had once been a nursery, with abandoned toys littering the floor and plastic dust covers on the furniture. I was trying not to think of what had happened to the kids when all of the screens flared to life, displaying an image of El Presidente inside what I presumed was the hospital.
He was wearing a stereotypical Generalissimo''s uniform, festooned with all kinds of badges and medals, while smoking a rather fancy cigar. Remind me to steal a set for myself when I''m done killing the bastard. To give him credit, he looked quite composed, albeit for all I knew he could have rolled out of bed in his undies and just had the camera throw on a filter.
The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
"Finally! To think I went to such lengths and it took this long for someone to try and kill me!" He exclaimed, fiddling with controls to try and lock on to my position.
Normally, I refrain from making small-talk with people I''m trying to kill, but I was long past the end of my tether and in outright freefall. I wanted him to know how much I wanted him dead, for my wife''s sake, and for the tens of thousands dead under his reign. For the genocides in Haiti and Jamaica, for letting Lumen and other cockroaches fester under his watch.
I patched through the block I''d put on the monitoring equipment so I could transmit my voice and nothing else, but refrained from speaking just in case he dropped something else.
"The sheer expense. My dear Maria always said I was too paranoid, the people loved me, but she was too good for this world. Well, who are you? Mossad? BOPE? Is the CCP salty about me cutting ties?" He peered closer to his display, still searching for us.
"UN? Turing? Make this easier for both of us, otherwise I won''t have an address to mail your corpses." He laughed, muting the mic to speak to an off-screen audience.
In my fugue state, the stims no longer fully compensating multiple concussions, liters of bloodloss and sheer desperation, I kinda wanted to say something along the lines of "I''m vengeance", or "I''m your Death", but refrained due to the sheer edge-lordiness of it all.
Instead, I asked him something I''d always wanted to know, as I had Em bash through an empty servants quarter as a shortcut.
"Why did you kill your family?" And I was genuinely curious.
He raised his eyebrows. "Normally I wouldn''t really go around discussing family matters, but I suppose in honor of you getting this far, I''ll let you in."
"You see. They aren''t dead. Except Fernando, but I had nothing to do with that." He said. I stopped momentarily, confused. His massacre of his family had been public knowledge for months.
"No. Far from dead, safe. All of my grandchildren are aboard colony ships, distant ones. I only tell you this because I doubt anyone hates me enough to kill them. My children, the ones who didn''t want to go, I had their memories wiped and let them start new lives where they asked. Most stayed on Earth, but you''ll never find them, The Changer is worth every dollar I spent." He admitted, looking somewhat emotional.
"Why?" I asked, as Em and I swept the corner before the walkway leading to his medical facility. I was even more on edge at the surprising lack of resistance, it seemed all the servants had fled, and the guards showed no signs of catching upto us. Only distant gunfire gave me a clue that the others were still alive.
"Why? Why would I send away my flesh and blood? Because of the endless stream of Pendejos like you who want me dead. They''re safer that way, and that''s what matters." He admitted, wiping his eyes. I didn''t know if he was faking the sentiment.
"Good. I didn''t want their blood on my hands anyway. Still plenty of reasons to slit your throat." We had reached the final walkway, which I''d verified didn''t have line of sight to the rooftop turrets, or any real defenses for the matter.
"Please. Cuba has prospered under my watch, and most of the things you think I''ve done, were because Chang twisted my arm. Do you think I wanted to get involved in Haiti or Jamaica? That was his bidding, and the need to keep millions of refugees from overwhelming all I''ve done for the country. But no, you don''t see hordes of hired goons trying to kill him, it''s wonders what American PR can do." He waved his cigar and leaned back.
"I really don''t care anymore. Knock knock, I''m here to kill you." I told him, cutting off the hospital''s surveillance. I was bone tired, and darkness was clouding the edge of my vision.
"Oh. I see you now!" He declared, and then I heard they hellish throbbing again and realized that the agrav drones had found us, as we crossed the walkway.
I half-heartedly stepped behind Em, for the little good that would do.
Two of them uncloaked, little patches of the Cuban skyline turning the dull grey of graphene as they circled closer. I stood there, head lowered, convinced that I was going to die.
Emily was braver, standing up straight despite her wounds and raising her remaining autocannon to face it. But the flash of extinction didn''t come as expected.
Instead, I heard him chuckling. "You''re almost there. Come, I''m not going to kill you yet, you haven''t even seen why this was all futile!"
I staggered against her as the drones moved closer, not yet firing. Did he really want me to go inside?
"Bottom floor, then the basement. Try not to trash any more of the place, it''s a fucking charitable hospital." He suggested.
I checked to see if he''d say something about us carrying our guns, but he didn''t, so we limped in, entering the building.
Maybe he did let others use it, because there were abandoned belongings strewn in the lobby. There weren''t any staff present, and the drones didn''t follow us in, but loitered outside, content in knowing we had no way out.
We were at the bottom floor, but we went further, into a basement that I''d previously assumed was a shielded zone for MRI machines and the like.
There was a final foyer, and then a set of sturdy vault doors. A camera observed us standing outside, but it was too primitive for me to actually hack. Likely even analog.
"I''m in here. Come on, tea''s getting cold." He teased, a smug expression on his face. Well, if he thought vault doors would keep Emily out, he had it coming.
She walked forth, and braced herself before pulling them apart, the metal making a ghastly noise as she tore into it.
El Presidente continued watching contentedly, if the display in the room was accurate.
She huffed, straining, and finally pulled them out of the way, the sheer force required causing her feet to dig inches into the metal floor below.
And there, on the other side of the doors, was a sheer black wall.
"No no, let your little body builder keep digging. I''m on the other side." He was outright excited now, cigar burning away unheeded.
Emily flexed her wrists, and then punched, not even bothering to do it all that hard. The blow bounced straight off.
She shook her head, puzzled, and dug into the floor once again for leverage, before punching full force, forcing the metal beneath her to bend under the strain. The impact shook the building, but of instead of the expected hole, the material stood there without a dent. She hadn''t even made a scratch.
She stared at her hands. "I think I broke something Adat."
I stared too, her hands were mangled, fingers clearly broken. In the year or so she''d been with me, I had yet to see something that could withstand a blow, especially when she had leverage.
El Presidente burst into laughter, the sound muffled by the lush hangings in the room.
"Worth every cent! I''m half tempted to let you go home and come back with a nuke, see if that works any better." He stood up and poured himself a drink.
I overloaded myself, my lace running hot, trying to figure out how to get to him. He had to be there, the precogs were almost never wrong. What the hell was that wall made of?
"I wanted to build the whole place out of neutronium, but frankly even I can''t afford that. Look here boy, I''m sure your owners would stop at nothing to wrest this stuff for themselves. Starships immune to particle beams, make it thick enough and it might even do something to those fast rocks the aliens love to throw about. But this is it, it''s all I could buy from Lumen even with all the help I''ve given them over the years." He said, downing the whiskey neat. He wiped his mustache and settled in again.
Emily was on her last legs, but she dug through the floor, checking for a way to get in from below, but the material curved around at the base. I examined the wiring of the camera, and saw it go through sub-millimeter holes in the material.
"Can''t squeeze through that I''m afraid. This baby is self contained and NBC sealed. I have enough in here that I can wait you out for years. Although I should have packed more to drink.."
I was floored. Neutronium was certainly not supposed to be a stable substance, all those pop science references to a tablespoon of the stuff weighing more than Mount Everest neglected to mention that it was only that dense under the sheer pressure of a neutron star''s weight, and if liberated, would explode with as much force as a nuke. I had no idea what metahuman fuckery Lumen had done to actually make and stabilize this much of it.
I was barely able to stand, and didn''t bother anymore, sinking to the ground. The world swam, and my thoughts raced some more. I hadn''t brought chemical weapons or nanites, and I was inclined to take him at his word about it being sealed off. Could Alan enter it? No, he needed to have line of sight with the naked eye to teleport into it.
"It really is astonishing isn''t it? I had another one of Lumen''s people peg it to a privileged frame of reference, in case you started getting ideas about pulling down the supports, it''ll stay floating right here."
Heat? I had no way to make nearly enough of it.
My vision was pulsing, everything but his smarmy face blurred as my lace desperately tried to keep my cognitive functions online.
Emily crawled over to where I lay, and propped me up against the wall. She looked like I felt, but squeezed my hand to comfort me. They''d blind her, then poison her or find some other way to kill her. Alan wasn''t responding to my pings, and wouldn''t get here fast enough even if he wasn''t unconscious. Alia was away because of Emily''s soft-heartedness, but she wouldn''t be able to cut through either.
"Did you think of a way to get in? Tell me something interesting and I''ll make it quick." He proclaimed, pouring himself even more liquor.
The world was darkening, and my lace had given up on blaring warnings and was simply fighting to keep my brain oxygenated.
Then it struck me. Would this even work?
"Doctor Rodriguez, would you say that this place is a hospital?" I enquired, summoning up the last of my strength.
"What, did the lasers blind you? Of course it is, you dimwit."
"No, do you have medical facilities in your panic room?"
He appeared puzzled. "I have an auto-surgeon in here, can''t use homeopathy for everything, but I won''t count that as an idea, it''s air-gapped and hardened, you can''t hack it. Think of anything else?"
"No, I think that''s enough." I said, patting my aching ribs in search of something.
"I don''t want to stay in here any longer than I have to. Excuse me, I''ll have someone in here to kill you shortly." He said, turning away to call his guards.
I found it, a rectangular plastic object, the screen cracked from the bullet impacts, but the display still lit up.
He stopped, adjusting his glasses before zooming in.
"A pager? I haven''t seen one in years!" He exclaimed, the liquor getting to him.
My lace interfaced with it, the ancient electronics slow to respond. It was a two-way device, as I''d learned later from checking the web.
MR. RED TO THE OPERATING ROOM
I sent the message into the void.
"They used to be everywhere once, all the old hospitals in Cuba swore by them. Or is a disguised comms device? Not that a pager isn''t technically one of those.." He was rambling, and I stopped paying attention to his words as my consciousness faded away. My lace began to give up on me, activating a Last Wish protocol, backing up as much of my memory as it could to the cloud, while preparing a final message for my wife.
There was a commotion on the display, El Presidente had spilled his drink in his haste as he rose to look behind him.
I was dimly aware of Emily trying to perform first aid with her mangled hands, and then the camera''s view shifted to follow El Presidente as he got up and grabbed something under the desk.
The best surgeons were always punctual.
"Who the fuck are you?" He cried out, talking to someone off screen. He held a shotgun in his shaking hands.
"An actual doctor, my friend. Not a charlatan like you.." A familiar voice said. The display began glitching as a man walked into view. He wore a surgical gown, still damp with fluids (who am I kidding? It''s blood), and began pulling on gloves.
"My colleague here is indisposed, otherwise I''d invite him for the surgery. Your surgery, my tinpot friend." The Red Doctor said, gently pacing towards his cowering victim.
"No! They said this place was teleporter proof!" He pulled back, backing himself up in the cramped confines of the room.
"Teleportation? How droll, I just show up where I''m at home." The Doctor chuckled, voice oddly distorted, alternating between the posh British accent I''d last heard and a chorus of voices consigned to a fate worse than death. It sussurated, getting beneath your skin like the sound of a scalpel being stroked on glass.
"I have no beef with you! Do you want money? Ten billion, in your account the moment you leave." His tone became panicked as the Doctor strolled closer, gently withdrawing his tools.
"I''ll collect my fees later, but this is a professional courtesy. You have no idea how much I despise homeopaths." The image feed was drenched with static, and even on this side of an inviolable wall, I felt my hair stand up.
"Fuck you!" El Presidente screamed, unloading his gun into the implacable figure. He was packing something heavy, the shot blew out the wall and filled the view with smoke and dust. When it settled, the Doctor stood there nonplussed, dusting himself off.
"He tried to shoot me, he genuinely doesn''t know who I am! Years of academic efforts wasted, not to mention the sterile field." He began humming gently, almost in touching distance of the dictator, now down on his knees.
"Please! I''m not a bad man! You have to-" his pleas were cut off as he was grabbed by the hair and lifted several feet into the air.
"I think I''ll use homeopathic anesthesia for this one eh Adat?" He laughed, slicing a scalpel across the struggling man''s tendons one by, paying no heed to the screaming till he hung limp and bleeding.
There were more cameras in the rest of the panic room, because the view shifted, tracking El Presidente from another angle as he was dragged like a skewered pig out into the hallway behind his office, past a colonial life support system with a hydroponics bay, a lavish bedroom, all the way to where a lone autodoc table sat empty.
The Doctor sighed, and clenched his fist. "Shame you''re too out of sorts to help me. I never liked robotic assistance." At his behest, a manipulator arm grabbed his squirming patient and placed him not particularly gently on the operating table. Piss and blood ran down the sides into the convenient gutter.
The scene devolved into screaming, the crack of broken bones and the hiss of cauterization. I couldn''t prop my head up any longer, and sagged back into Em''s arms.
I felt the rhythmic thump of my heartbeat grow louder, faster. Too loud, much too fast.
No, that sound wasn''t my heart. The whole building was vibrating, the autocannons and AA emplacements on the roof firing at something, giving it all they had.
She dragged me aside, and ripped out a section of the wall revealing the exterior. What I thought were streaks in my failing vision were SpaceX droneships burning their retrothrusters, laser point defenses engaging the incoming projectiles.
The noise mercifully drowned out the last gurgling sighs from the monitor, and I began losing track of time.
The last thing I remembered was Emily yelling orders at someone, a large robot clambering through the hole in the wall.
It was blue in color, a shade I was very familiar with. I fell asleep before it could reach me.
12.0 Tuneup
I spent a week in a Guianan hospital. It would have been a month, except UNSEEN, in a uncharacteristic show of gratitude, had a Class 2 Healer fly in and finish the job.
They even approved my pay raise while I was under, how kind of them.
Less kind was the fact that they tried to bill me for the service, the bastards.
I looked at myself in the mirror, flexing my new cyborg arms. I''d been putting off further augmentation for a while now, barring the lace and a few tuneups. But I suppose being clinically dead and resuscitated twice while a UN robot medic worked on me was as good a reason as any for upgrades.
My lungs didn''t hurt when I breathed, though to be fair they weren''t the originals anymore. I''d kept those two, had them plastinated and mounted, they''d make for a nice centerpiece in the living room.
Emily had been kind enough to pay out of her own pocket to send a FTL message to my wife while I was under, in response to which an ungodly sum of money had been wired back, most of which had gone to some things I''d had on my wishlist for a while.
There were the spinal augments, the leisurely pace of neuronal conduction, a mere 100 m/s per second, turbocharged with conductive cabling that transmitted as fast as electricity could travel. Hypermyelination therapy to improve the speed of the nerves that couldn''t be so modified, namely the fine sensory ones, and my brain. I literally thought faster, with reaction times down to a dozen milliseconds.
Layers of subdermal plating were implanted in my skin, and I''d paid extra to make it as discreet as possible, when Anjana got back, I didn''t want the act of cuddling me to be about as comfy as shacking up with a lamppost.
My arms and legs were the most obvious difference, I hadn''t tried to make them baseline passing, opting for the ability to just swap out the outer layers when I didn''t want them to be hard to the touch. My current paneling was a tasteful kintsugi pattern, golden streaks highlighting the graphene muscle bundles that flexed beneath the translucent surface. There was an another set with electrical opacity controls, in case I wanted to show someone an impromptu anatomy lesson. It was still quite freaky to see exactly how your radius twisted over the ulna at the elbow, so I didn''t use it where anyone was likely to be squeamish.
I had my ruptured spleen excised, and with the replacement of my lungs with more efficient augments, there was room to cram more goodies and implants into my thorax and abdomen. The most useful were emergency nanite stores, while these were far too complex and finicky to self-replicate outside a laboratory environment, they could be released on demand, shoring up a great deal of internal damage, oxygenating my brain, disposing of the enormous amounts of free-radicals my new metabolism would produce when amped up. It would save a lot of faffing about with autoinjectors out in the field.
A custom-tailored drug gland was implanted beneath my heart, a fully biological organ, but capable of synthesizing a wide variety of substances ranging from adrenaline to LSD and amnestics. I could get high on demand, or have it produce alcohol dehydrogenase to sober me up in minutes. It also held stocks of antidotes to common neurotoxins, just in case. I couldn''t get the clearance to get a model with the ability to synthesize arbitrary proteins, because of the crackdowns on internal biofactories after the plagues in Scandinavia and Scotland.
As for my heart itself, I had the myocardium replaced and reinforced. While it was far from immune to trauma, the newly thickened walls could pump a great deal faster and harder should the need arise. There was a quiescent second heart placed below my right clavicle, kept offline as a backup, just strong enough to keep the blood flowing if the primary got taken out.
The replacement of most of my long bones with cybernetics meant that I''d end up severely anemic due to the loss of bone marrow, so I had a new erythropoietin variant CRISPRd in to pump up the output from what remained. My immune system had also been patched and updated, with a million new CAR-T cell lines tuned to novel diseases.
Synthetic coolant lines were installed to help keep me cool when going all-out, albeit space constraints meant they were meant more to integrate with exo or power armor than work entirely by themselves.
Layers of battery-fat coated my organs, replacing my visceral adipose tissue. It could liberate energy significantly faster, keeping my bionics running at half power when their power cells ran dry, an unfortunate downside being that they produced toxic levels of free radicals if I dipped into them, which would use up a lot of my nanite capacity.
I had both my eyes replaced, the new ones came with proprietary genetic tweaks that expanded my color vision. I had one tuned to cover both near-UV and visible wavelengths, and the other to also encompass near-IR, the former eye using cuttlefish DNA. A few discreet marks around my scalp represented biological bolometers derived from Pit Vipers, albeit due to me being a warm-blooded mammal, they weren''t nearly as acute. I wouldn''t be doing away with thermal toggles entirely, but it helped in a pinch.
The lenses were upgraded with electro-opacity controls, they''d help reduce if not eliminate the risk of accidental flash blindness, and my natural nightvision could be augmented by the release of dyes that let my retinas absorb even more light, though you''d be surprised by what little difference that made. Human light detection was already operating near the quantum limits with people being able to detect single photons in a pitch black room with some accuracy. I was still limited in just how much light I could pick up with a retina, and I didn''t want to just have massive googly-eyes installed, preferring to rely on suit visors and cameras if needed.
The lenses could also deform and telescope to a small extent allowing selective zooming. Something derived from eagles if the manufacturer`s guidance was to be believed. Finally, they fixed the ass-backwards design of vertebrate retinas, where the neurons lay below the vasculature, akin to a camera where the wiring covered the sensor. This made for a small improvement in clarity, almost as if I was wearing polarized glasses.
But the most significant overhaul by far was to my lace. I''d suffered mild hypoxic brain damage and thermal trauma from running my lace too hot while squaring off with El Presidente, and it would have needed to be replaced anyway.
I ended up opting for a Neuralink Mk 6, a relatively new model that had passed the stringent quality controls required for even XRAY level classification in UNSEEN. Dress for the job you want and all that. It was far more invasive, thin strands were drawn with magnetized nanoneedles far deeper than the surface of the brain. It even extended down to my brainstem and spinal cord, proving unprecedented control over the autonomous functions of my body. Everything from my heart rate to my blood pressure and even how much I was sweating could be tweaked, but fearing that curse of realizing that you''re breathing in autopilot, or the awkward sensation of your tongue in your mouth, I left it at the base settings for now.
I curled my fingers, marveling in their improved dexterity. The upgrade had absolutely been worth it, I should have done this ages ago.
I stabbed out a monoblade ensheathed within my hand, it extended out with a snick from between my middle knuckles on a mental command. I decreased the sensitivity of the detector, the last thing I needed was to accidentally stab myself while shaving.
Then there was the embedded ultracaps in my fingertips. I had been leery about those, a discharge would have fried my own hand before, but the new model had superconducting filaments embedded to handle surprise shocks. It would be handy when wrangling berserking toddlers in the future, not that I hoped to encounter any more if I could help it.
The remaining space in my body cavities was packed with more power storage, my primary systems would run off a highly efficient hydrogen fuel cell, the hydrogen itself bound as ligands to exotic metallic hydrides so I didn''t have to worry about the volume it would take up, that I could replenish by electrolysing water when I had external power. Hydrogen leakage was an issue of course, but newer materials made it less of a combustion hazard.
Finally, embedded in discreet nodules barely bigger than lymph nodes all along my spine were neural subprocessors. They greatly improved the storage and computational capacity of my overall lace, though I rarely used my prior one at full capacity anyway. Highly experimental tech, but the manufacturer''s brochure sold it to me the moment I perused it. I was somewhat surprised they''d sold them to me in the first place, the specs were mind boggling.
Content with looking myself over, I finally opened the half a dozen messages Anjana had left for me. She''d paid through the nose to send them before the scheduled couriers came over, but I returned the favor, not wanting her to worry any longer or rely on someone else for the news. At least she was doing alright, despite the war bumping up another notch.
I smiled fondly at the videos she''d sent me, her eyes had still been a little puffy despite an attempt to put on a brave face. Shame the bandwidth limitations precluded anything larger.
I remembered to text my family, I''d had them kept out of the loop because they couldn''t have helped and would have worried overmuch, but now that the worst of it was over, they ought to know. Dad took it in his stride, he''d become inured to my high octane lifestyle, I guess he was used to getting shot at almost as often as I was from the time he''d worked in an inner-city trauma clinic. Mom made a fuss, demanding I get my augments reviewed and sending over a boat load of studies on the risks of networked interfaces. I didn''t have the heart to mention that I had written a couple of the papers she sent. You didn''t get very far as a baseline human these days, not if you wanted to do anything important.
I checked in on the others, but needed a reminder from an AI to visit Grim. He''d been hurt bad, and the improvements to his power control of late had been largely reversed. Still, he was alive, even if I forgot about that most of the time.
Emily was still recovering, her physiology didn''t take to standard therapies, but I put in a word to have the Healer who had seen to me tend her next. She''d done a good job, I felt like a million dollars (inflation adjusted).
When I popped over to her room in the hospital, I found that Alia was already there, family in tow. Her parents had always been awkward around me, but I tried my best to put them at ease. I think they were mainly relieved that I hadn''t sent their daughter into the field, given the condition of the other members of my team. Em''s husband wasn''t particularly happy with me, but I managed to make myself scarce before he could corner me and dress me down.
Alan had been discharged ages ago, and had in fact been in a couple of operations with team Rho, so I''d have to catch up when I got back home.
My mood was ebullient, at least until I got around to checking the situation in Cuba.
End of an Era
Cuba remains in turmoil, even after a month has passed since the UN intervention in Santa Clara apprehended longtime dictator Augusto Rodriguez.
For those unaware, an UNSEEN taskforce, code named UNCUB, as per the standard UN peacekeeping naming scheme, intervened in the country at the behest of Director Van Der Waals, without the knowledge or consent of Secretary General Sandusky or the General Assembly, citing an urgent humanitarian emergency.
While UN Censors have attempted to suppress most footage of the conflict, ESBC is proud to have acquired visual footage of the event, starting from unexplained explosions in Santa Clara, the President''s summer home, almost an hour before the beginning of the official UN intervention.
Senior UN sources, who wish to remain anonymous, report that the inciting incident was the discovery of collaboration between the dictator, often referred to as El Presidente, and members of a known splinter group of the metahuman terrorist organization known as Lumen that had explicitly accepted the tenets of certain factions of the broader Penitent movement, embracing their newfound roles as leaders worshipped as deities. Shocking images of dissidents tortured and executed by El Presidente were leaked, despite assurances by the President that he''d refrained from such actions in the GA meeting in 2041. The Chang administration has denied rumors that they were actively aware of said atrocities, despite their record of vetoing UNSC resolutions targeting the pariah nation.
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"American troops have been in Cuba for almost 6 years now, barring our ongoing presence at Guantanamo, and have during the entire duration, we have remained committed to upholding the agreement previously made by Senor Rodriguez, including monitoring and escalating rights violations to the Human Rights Council. Barring a few unconfirmed reports, we have no reason to believe the allegations, and are committed to raising the shockingly extrajudicial actions of UNSEEN, in another shocking display of over reach outside the bounds of the One World agreement of 2033." Said President Chang prior to the evacuation of all US citizens and military personnel from the island, the latter returning to their bases.
On the revelation by UNSEEN Director Jan Van Der Waals that the agency had Rodriguez in custody pending a trial, President Chang immediately denied the claim, quoting CIA sources that claimed to have confirmation of the death of the controversial dictator. However, requests to release said evidence have been stonewalled, including denial of FOI petitions by ESBC and other news agencies.
With the refusal to act by USMC forces deployed on the island when the country erupted into rioting and open warfare, UN Peacekeepers have been stretched thin. As of today, it is still uncertain whether UNCUB will have its remit to act extended with new reinforcements, pending a UNSC vote already heavily suspected to face vetoes by the USA.
Despite live broadcasts of El Presidente, including a private meeting with community leaders and politicians conducted by the UN in which the man was said to have made a personal appearance under nerve shackles, a large section of the population has refused to believe their claims. It is believed that over ten thousand people have committed violent suicide, often attacking UN Peacekeepers in the process. Loyalists have rejected the claims that such acts were under residual compulsion from their supposedly deceased leader, but ESBC will let the following videos speak for themselves.
---
I sighed, having strongly suspected this would happen. The canny old bastard had long dangled his population as a ticking time bomb in the event he died. I wondered how the Director had arranged for his impersonation at such short notice, the deepfakes wouldn''t account for in-person meetings. Likely the work of a high-level Biomancer, if it had been reasonably convincing.
The problem was that if those under the geass came to believe that El Presidente had truly died, they had no choice in the matter. I strongly suspected Chang had been stoking the rumors as hard as he could in the hopes of destabilizing the country and preventing a UN-sympathetic leader from being reinstated.
I felt plenty of sympathy myself for the poor UNCUB bastards trying to keep the peace, the Director had likely spent the majority of his discretionary funds in arranging for such rapid insertion of the few thousand UNSEEN troops under his direct command, and would face an uphill task in wrangling more support, official or not, from the contributing nations.
I looked up any public statements VDW had made recently to see how he was spinning it.
Van Der Waal''s Word is His Bond
In a rare public appearance, the Director of UNSEEN, Jan Van Der Waals, came out to clear the air regarding the recent intervention in Cuba.
"For all my appearance suggests otherwise, I am not a man of stone and iron. For decades now, the people of Cuba have suffered under the rule of Augusto Rodriguez, forced to bend the knee by geass or force. My only regret is not acting sooner, but I can only blame certain nations that have tied UNSEEN''s hands over and over again in the face of such blatant violations of the Metahuman Equity Act. Thousands have died, and yet UNCUB has yet to receive the support it needs in Havana. I commit to appearing before the General Assembly the very next time it convenes, fully ready to surrender my post should any evidence of impropriety in my actions be raised. This is not the time for rich words about lack of oversight, millions are suffering as we speak in the aftermath of a madman''s actions. The world must come together as one, and prevent the horrors of Jamaica and Haiti from ever occurring again. Horrors that Rodriguez himself has been implicated in. I promise to see the man brought to justice at the Metahuman Tribunal, his actions will not go unanswered." The cyborg bureaucrat said, speaking to journalists at ATLAS-1.
When questioned regarding the status of El Presidente, Van Der Waals said the man was already in poor health before the intervention, and will need to recuperate further before being fit to stand trial next month. However, interested stakeholders can apply for a meeting with him, after the standard cognitohazard protocols are followed due to his high ranking Controller status.
I shut the feed, somewhat relieved. VDW was a canny old bastard, and I had little doubt that ''Rodriguez'' would be expedited through the Tribunal in a closed hearing, sentenced to life imprisonment in isolation somewhere nobody could find him. It was the only thing of course, he couldn''t be left un-neutered, and with Xiao at the helm, some weasely phrasing would see the matter concluded without conclusively admitting to his death.
I wasn''t mad that VDW was taking all the credit, it was part of the deal we''d struck, he was risking a lot of political capital on me, and I was in no rush to increase my own notoriety if I could help it. He scratched my back, I wipe(d) out assholes.
I had no doubt that Lycosa and her offshoot of Lumen had heard the news, but I still checked a discreet account I had squirreled away in the Dark Web and found a cryptic message tangentially acknowledging my success. I could only trust her word she''d follow through, and I''d keep checking to see what tasks she wanted me to crackdown on. I hoped it wasn''t more of the regicidal variety, that had taken more out of me than I''d expected.
At least she had been kind enough to do whatever shenanigans she had planned before the next UNSEEN precog review, I''d have seriously considered scrapping the contract if it had come at the cost of hamstringing our work. We did a lot of morally dubious things, but at the end of the day I still didn''t have to work all that hard to convince myself that it was largely a net positive to humanity.
I awoke in the dark, my consciousness booting up like a cold machine. The room was silent, the air heavy with anticipation. I could feel the upgraded lace humming in my skull, its tendrils burrowed deep into my brain, making me...more.
I was glad that early teething issues with running hot had been fixed by the time I got a lace upgrade. I''d read horror stories about people stuck perceiving subjective time at 10x speed permanently, watching the blurry flick of their own eye movements, the shakiness of saccades, unable to communicate except with glacial slowness. Others had integration issues with their bionics, inadvertently overriding the failsafes that kept strain below what the unenhanced parts of themselves could handle. Not me though, I was a well-oiled machine.
The AI doc overseeing my case approved my request for discharge without quarrel, so I wandered out of the hospital into the rest of the UN compound in Cayenne. I was up early, it was only 4 am, but I still saw hordes of protestor filing in, preparing to light candles and start light projections against the walls of the Metahuman Tribunal. I was pleased to see that many of them were here to protest the lack of support to UNCUB forces in Cuba, the more international support we could bring to bear, the greater the odds of success. Even the US had some interest in stabilizing the region, post the Florida Man incident, they''d relied on El Presidente to plug the porosity of their southern borders. But I suppose sheer pride and a vested interest in entangling the UN in bloody insurgency might well overrule their self interest.
There were the usual holographic placards and AR graffiti. "Metahuman Rights are Human Rights", "UBI for all, not just the West", "Every asteroid mined for Alpha Centauri is food stolen from the mouth of babes".
I was tickled at their confidence that the UN was the right venue for their grievances, anyone believing that we actually had the powers nominally invested in us by One World were hopelessly na?ve.
The only reason China and the US paid lip service to UN oversight was an attempt to get one over the other, and the hordes of micronations and extraterrestrial polities were more eager to see who''d buy their GA votes than to actually participate in international governance.
I did sigh and drop a signature when I passed a group calling for more UBI. I still remembered the old promises of astronomical wealth trickling back to Earth, an age where none need work for a living, because with AI, none even could.
Of course, AI had been shackled and neutered well before the promised post-scarcity could arise, and hundreds of trillions of USDE from the great asteroid refineries was largely diverted to military buildup in Sol, or the endless stream of reinforcements for Alpha Centauri where the wealth of two star systems was ground into dust and rapidly cooling plasma as two inimicably opposed civilizations fought to the death.
Even the small pittance diverted back home was largely spent on the massive pronatal agenda, driving the global human population from a mere 8 billion when I was young to 11 billion well before 2100 had been expensive. I suppose increasing the number of metahumans was all we could hope for when it was their abilities that kept us from getting rolled over in AC. Shame that all attempts to significantly increase the rate of manifestation had been unsuccessful so far, but I, like millions of other researchers, still kept up the work.
I noticed an unusually tall group of protestors, many wearing exos, looking mildly uncomfortable in Earth gravity. They were young too, even with the deployment of accelerated growth drugs in the outer worlds, you could only safely skip so much of human development. They bore more signs, the usual anticolonial drivel, and complaints about their wealth being diverted to an endless war. Martians then, though at a glance I couldn''t tell if they were from the American colonies in Hellas or part of the EU outposts at the poles. For obvious reasons, I could have told you if they were Chinese or Indian..
I was pleased to see that they weren''t too hard done by the high gravity, I held a few small patents on metabolic boosters and anti-depressants for chronic low gravity, though royalties had been slim since the UN open-sourced them.
Another cluster formed around a petite Indian girl on a pedestal. She had the Stigmata, warning lights gently pulsed from discreet lines on her head, and a slap drone hovered overhead, always keeping her in its sight. It would have had its taser handy, or just neurotoxins and a gun if she was resistant. I observed the discreet bump below her occipital protuberance that signified failsafe explosives set to blow if she ever fell off the surveillance net.
In AR, she was bedecked with Charismatic/Controller warnings, all nearby advised to keep their sensory filters ready. While she was no threat to me, the memory of El Presidente was still fresh enough that I stayed away while I strolled the perimeter.
It was cool, open-air air-conditioning keeping the muggy tropical heat at bay, and not for much cost either, with the fusion generator ensconced underneath the HQ, the issue was largely using up the enormous power it generated before it overwhelmed storage capacity. At least the protestors would be having a good time, unless Xiao got annoyed and ordered the ambient climate control switched off.
I spent a little more time admiring the ongoing work on the Space Elevator, they were doing almost a kilometer a day now, extensions borne aloft by cherubic rockets gently jockeyed into place by drones. I heard Consul was here today, bringing a particularly heavy section to bear, but even zooming in as far as my new eyes would allow, I couldn''t identify him in the swarm of traffic up there.
I sighed, lit one of my stolen cigarillos, and began walking over to the spaceport, there''s no rest for the wicked. I felt marginally less so today, but spilling despot blood was hardly enough to get my hands clean.
I left my recuperating friends behind, and slept like I was in Anjana''s arms as the suborbital flight bore me back home, back to work.
Worldbuilding: The One World Declaration
Resolution 2033/1, also known as the One World Declaration, was adopted by the General Assembly on March 19th, 2033 in response to the global crisis arising from the unforeseen consequences of rapid technological advancements, the sudden emergence of superpowers, and the existential threat posed by the alien invasion. Recognizing the urgent need for united action and collective security, the international community has endowed the United Nations with expanded authority, beyond its traditional scope, to ensure the survival and prosperity of humankind.
The General Assembly
Reaffirming the principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, and the commitment to maintain international peace and security, and protect human dignity,
Acknowledging the increasing complexity and interconnectedness of the global environment, as well as the unforeseen opportunities and challenges arising from the transhumanist revolution,
Recognizing the implications of superpowers, classified as ''metahumans'', for the international community, and their potential in both resolving conflicts and escalating them,
Expressing profound concern regarding the technologically advanced alien invasion and their hostility towards humankind as a result of the development of artificial intelligence,
Acknowledging the contributions made by the international community to establish UNSEEN, the United Nations Special Entity for the Evaluation and Neutralization of metahumans,Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
1. Affirms the necessity of further enhancing the authority of the United Nations to act decisively and effectively in the face of these unprecedented global challenges;
2. Grants the United Nations additional powers to intervene in the affairs of member states, ensuring strict adherence to the international norms and principles outlined in the Charter, and preserving the overarching value of the greater good of humanity;
3. Commits member states to cooperating closely with the United Nations in the collective security efforts against threats to international peace and security, including facilitating the exchange of strategic and tactical intelligence, and providing military and logistical support as deemed necessary;
4. Encourages international collaboration and sharing of resources for research and development related to transhumanist technology, with the specific aim of mitigating potential harm and advancing the common good of humanity;
5. Empowers the United Nations, through its UNSEEN initiative, to establish regulatory frameworks, including preventive, protective, and corrective measures, to address the challenges and harness the potential of metahuman abilities;
6. Stresses the vital need for coordinated diplomatic efforts to address the alien invasion, including the potential establishment of channels of communication to negotiate for peaceful coexistence;
7. Urges member states to develop and implement comprehensive and sustainable education and public awareness programs, aimed at fostering a culture of mutual understanding, empathy, and cooperation, to enable the inclusion and appreciation of transhumanism and metahuman abilities in the global community;
8. Requests the Secretary-General to establish a One World Consultative Committee, comprising experts and representatives from diverse sectors including science, ethical and moral philosophy, technology, and metahuman communities, to provide advice and recommendations to the General Assembly and UNSEEN on emerging concerns and best practices;
9. Decides to remain actively seized on this matter and to review the situation regularly, ensuring that the needs and priorities of humanity remain at the forefront of its agenda in these transformative times.
Adopted by the General Assembly, March 19th, 2033.
13.0 Nuclear Umbrella
I had little time to savor my mostly restored apartment before I was picked up the employee shuttle and carried over to Atlas. I spent most of the journey performing systems calibration and daydreaming of the day when I''d make Assistant Director and warrant a personal agrav, or at least a VTOL.
They were really piling it on when it came to expanding Atlantis, it had almost doubled in size since my last visit, courtesy of a pair of geomancers employed by the conglomerate responsible for the expansion.
I had to tolerate a more onerous examination than usual as my lace was audited by security, but it passed unremarkably and I found myself at my desk soon enough. I''d hoped to talk to the Director, but he was off putting out fires in Cuba, so I settled for an email.
I checked my own task list and raised an eyebrow. They wanted me to go to Mars of all places. I wasn''t a stranger to cislunar space, but even in this day and age a Mars trip wasn''t a trivial matter.
Teleporters capable of interplanetary travel, such as my wife, were national assets, and since nobody would spare one for my ass, I had to travel coach.
I had an AI check transit windows, but thankfully they''d at least budgeted something for me aside from the usual SpaceX flotilla, those took months if not years to make the journey.
It was a UN torchship, the class of vessel that had enough thrust to, if not outright invalidate the tyranny of the Rocket Equation, at least give it the finger.
The UNS We''ll Get Them Next Time! was an example of something that would get every single fucking environmental activist I''d ever met worked up, a vessel using an Orion drive.
I feel like that name is far too cozy for what the means of propulsion actually is, namely strapping a rocket next to a chamber where you start blowing up nukes, propelling yourself forward with the blast. It''s a truly hair-raising means of getting around, and while there were plenty of the best Ex Nihilists creating plutonium and the like, this design was already antiquated. The absolute best were antimatter drives, while blackhole drives came a close second.
You could also use inertial confinement fusion, dipping down into nuclear salt water rockets, and a more civilized variant of Orion known as Medusa.
The poor bastards without nation-state levels of wealth still made do with chemical or ion thrusters, but I was spared that indignity for once.
Of course, these all used normal sensible physics to get around (even blackhole synthesis was something doable, as long as you didn''t want a particularly big one), then you had stuff that pretty explicitly needed metahuman powers.
I''m not sure what the latest word on physically plausible magnetic monopoles is, but the ones in use today are exclusively metahuman generated, a field of metaphysics (not related to the old term) where pseudoparticles mimicked their effective properties. You could use them to catalyze nuclear fusion, which while not a strict necessity, helped when mass was at a premium.
And there are reactionless drives, often powered by the equivalent of a metahuman speedster running on a hamster wheel. But that''s a rabbit hole I''m not going to dive into for now, besides, most of them had been long sent away to Alpha Centauri, where an ability to flaunt the normal rules was a decisive military advantage even when their vessels otherwise outclassed ours by centuries at the least.
I finally dug into what required my personal presence.
Oh dear.
How does transhumanity manage to even put up a fight against an alien civilization that has quite plausibly obtained every possible set of technologies that can be attained (barring those restricted to truly superhuman AGI)?
We cheat. If it hadn''t been for metahuman assistance, the Solar System would have been glowing white hot, and not just the sun. RKVs would have scoured Earth down to the mantle, and every off world colony would have been hunted down and destroyed mercilessly while we were largely unable to mount a meaningful defense.
Since efforts to intentionally provoke the development of said abilities have had mixed results, and attempts to induce manifestation in mind uploads or AI have been fruitless, the only feasible way to get more warm bodies to throw at the problem has been increasing the baseline human population.
Earth''s population pyramid had become incredibly bloated at the base, and families with four or more children had gone from being rare when I was young to practically the norm. Even the colonies served more as backup nurseries to churn out people as fast as possible rather than any meaningful resource production. I hate to break it to you, but humans need not actually apply for most jobs, especially in the industrial sector. Mars was still mostly a barren rock, barring the patches that had been greensmithed with biodomes.
The truly existential risk lurking here was the possibility of the Centaurs successfully subverting a human population, or breeding them in captivity to take the ones who manifested.
If they managed to get their hands on a significant number, our goose was well and truly cooked, the precogs and standard sims concurred on that.
This warranted the commitment of all kinds of atrocities to keep at bay. The standard protocol for a colony about to be captured by the aliens was to kill all the humans first, usually with nukes. Lots of nukes.
The Sayeret Matkal operation during which Grim had been left behind was one where they attempted to destroy an alien breeding center, killing millions of otherwise normal and innocent humans kept immersed in simulated worlds by the aliens. They''d never known of the wider world, or the fact that they''d meet their demise at the hands of fellow humans.
Colony ships had their own fail-deadly devices, to be detonated in the event that capture was imminent. Hundreds of precogs played whack-a-mole to identify any Centaur breeding projects, and no end of manpower was devoted to hunting them down, be they hidden a hundred kilometers beneath a planetary crust, out in interstellar space, or just buried beneath all the shielding the aliens could throw at them.
This was a miserable fact of life, one kept out of the greater public consciousness by some of the most powerful memetic engineering and censorship protocols known to man. They would not react well to the knowledge that over half the casualties in the Centaur War had been people killed simply for the crime of being defenseless against capture.
I strongly suspected that the debacle on Pluto last year had been of that nature, but even my ULTRAVIOLET clearance didn''t cover the true facts.
On Mars, it seemed that a indentured metahuman team had gone rogue, breaking free of their bonds using technology almost certainly given by the Centaurs. This had all kinds of alarms going off, and while the matter was initially deemed the concern of the American government, they''d finally softened and assented to having UNSEEN observe the cleanup procedure just to make sure it all went smoothly.
It must have been bad, the US had always considered itself above the oversight of the UN, and with my own actions in Cuba, I was still surprised that they had allowed UNSEEN to send me, but they either weren''t aware of my involvement in Cuba or pretending the same.
Then again, this was at the request of the quasi-independent United States Martian Administration, so Chang might not have been entirely able to kibosh it.
The USMA was viewed with barely veiled distrust by the terrestrial US; during the Dual Secessions, it was rumored that several colonies had attempted to join Lone Star and Cali in breaking free, an attempt aborted shortly after their food deliveries had been embargoed, and Chinese assistance warded off. They''d still retained some grandfathered privileges, including local autonomy, just to keep the colonials happy.
I checked in on Midas, who was being kept on Atlas more to keep him from using his powers than because we wanted to use him, but the kid was too busy to bother with smalltalk. VDW was doing his best to keep him off the books, and avoiding the use of his powers unless absolutely necessary was key to keeping the Accountants and the Secret Service off our backs.
Thankfully, I didn''t have to fly all the way back to Guiana, a skyhook was newly placed in a convenient orbit, and I joined another batch of dignitaries in riding a space plane up to low Earth orbit.
I caught two more transfers, and ended up at the propellant depot where the Next Time was docked.
To avoid irradiating a volume of space anyone actually cared about, the vessel would need to use conventional thrusters to get to translunar space, and then we''d ride the atom on a brachistochrone trajectory to Mars, a fancy way of saying we''d accelerate as fast as we could, only slowing down at the halfway point instead of carefully coasting and using gravity transfers like more deltaV constrained spacecraft needed.
From a distance, the ship resembled an umbrella turned inside out by a stiff breeze, there was a large hemispherical pusher plate on one end, thickened to absorb nuclear blasts in the center, connected to a relatively standard, albeit reinforced, cylindrical compartment on the other end. There were the usual accoutrements of spaceflight, large radiators to dissipate heat from the reactor, propellant storage tanks for the chemical thrusters, and finally, at the end furthest from any potential radiation, the crew modules.
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You could tell this thing wasn''t built for luxury, or comfort for the matter. When initially designed for an abortive mission to Saturn, it had been built for speed and speed alone. Once passe in that role, it had passed through a few different national ownerships before people got tired of the hassle of operating something powered by nuclear farts, so the UN got a hold of it.
It was lightly armed, lasers meant more for micrometeor clearance rather than serious combat. Most dedicated warships, let alone Centaur ones, would eat it for breakfast. But thankfully incursions by the latter didn''t regularly penetrate the Kuiper defense networks, so the Next Time was able to operate largely unmolested.
I got off my shuttle and boarded the vessel, floating about in microgravity. It didn''t have any rotational elements due to the short nature of cruises, although it was still reinforced to account for the jarring force of the nukes. Expecting artificial gravity from a graviton generator would be laughable.
The interior was cramped, with most of the quarters devoted to passengers, and the vessel was largely automated with only a skeleton crew to keep the lights on and run the bots.
Captain Vassar was a genial man, content in a relatively safe job after a tour in AC. After initial introductions and a tour of the vessel for us passengers, he left us to our own devices as he worked with the AI copilot to finish refueling from the nearby propellant depot.
I made myself at home, or at least as at home as a sardine in a can could be. My little coffin was mostly intended to keep my body comfy while my mind was immersed in VR, any physical activity was a luxury.
At least they didn''t skimp when it came to the quality of the VR sims. I managed to strike up a conversation with a few of the other passengers, most were supervisors headed over to the small UN outposts near Olympus Mons, or planning to switch over on Mars to board ships outbound for the outer reaches of the Solar System.
I brushed up on my knowledge of Martian terrain and geopolitics.
Mars had about two million permanent denizens, without several hundred thousand more transients waiting for launch windows when taking the slow boat out. I panned over the Chinese colonies, predominantly distributed near the Northern pole, the Indian settlements to the south, and then there was USMA taking up the majority of the Hellas basin. That wasn''t nearly the end of it, there were corporate towns run by SpaceX and the like, freeholdings, micronations that had bought their own patches, and who knows what else.
Just north of Valles Marineris, the Martian Spire protruded upwards, the second fully functional space elevator in Sol, built just months after the first Lunar one went online. It was the sight of the primary UN base, with satellite bases built around Olympus Mons where the EU and British bases resided.
I skimmed over the pages of political intrigue, as usual India and China were up to their cold war nonsense, USMA squabbling with the freshly established joint Cali-Japan base, and the perennial arguments over water rights at the poles.
However, for decades even before I was born, to now, a decade after the first colonies, Mars had been a planet of machines. From lethargic survey drones to nuclear powered crust-crackers, it had seen it all. Even now, as colonists hunkered down in the planet-sweeping dust storms, billions of robots roamed the wastes, digging massive new colonies for the hundreds of thousands of hopeful new arrivals, constructing rail networks and covered aqueducts to bring water down from the poles, extending the Hyperloop network (actually feasible now since the Martian atmosphere was a glorified vacuum), and overall doing their darned best to make that barren rock somewhat livable for humans.
This turned out to be a slight problem when one of the fugitives I was pursuing was a technomancer.
I pursed my lips as I examined the dossier USMA had deigned to provide, I was hunting big game today.
HELLAS BASIN INCIDENT REPORT #23
The following information has been repackaged and implicitly censored to accommodate the level of clearance suitable for UNSEEN ULTRAVIOLET operators.
All time stamps have been re-adjusted to Mars Local Time, and the standard clock rates compressed for the 23:56 Terran day to make them easier to parse.
Should you believe that circumstances call for the urgent unredaction of sensitive information above your clearance level, please contact DOD liason Captain M. Sanders.
--
For the last 4 years, USMA has been trialing the use of metahuman labor to expedite the construction of the Hellas Biodome, including metahuman greensmithing, matter duplication, nanite control, and AI-assisted drone manipulation.
In the past one year, the Intel fab has been experiencing significantly subpar yields, as low as 27% of initial projections. Due to the importance of offworld semiconductor and optoelectronics manufacturing, President Chang approved the lease of several indentured metahuman (IM) teams to help mitigate the issue and bring the fab up to speed.
Local insurgent elements, likely affiliated with Centaur forces, performed targeted assassinations of two USN hydrokinetics, namely Lieutenant Trevor White and Captain Morgan Sawiki, Class 3 and Class 4 respectively. White was killed by the use of targeted Basilisk while off-duty in New Washington, and Sawiki by [REDACTED] while inside the clean room environs of the fab.
To compensate, USMA requisitioned a newly manifested Class 5 hydrokinetic known as Backhand, with demonstrable ability to compensate for the gigaliter shortfall in the greater basin.
Another attempt to cover for the deficiency of output was the requisition of a Class 4 Technomancer Gerald Green, referred to as Machina. AI simulations suggested that fundamental retooling of the fab was required to meet projections, a process estimated to take no less than 2 years. Thus, Machina, known to have unprecedented fine control over robotic machinery above and beyond even Lithium class AI, was inducted to help shore up production.
Both Machina and Backhand had agreed to a 7 year indenture period on Mars and other solar US colonies in lieu of deployment to AC.
They were deployed in an IM unit referred to as BULWARK, alongside the following metahumans:
1) Silt- Class 3 Geomancer/Lithokinetic. Serving an extended sentence after charges of insubordination in the USSF contingent on AC, known to be highly resistant to standard memetic reconditioning. Previously employed on extending USMA underground infrastructure and the construction of [REDACTED] at [REDACTED].
2) Florette- Class 3 Biomancer, responsible for the maintenance and deployment of metahuman-modified plantlife and bio-nanite swarms. Deemed a critical asset for the construction and ongoing deployment of the Firmament in Hellas. No record of prior malfeasance, no prior deployments.
3)Beacon- Class 4 Pyrokinetic. Serving an extended sentence after charges of arson and destruction of government property. Previously employed in USMA fusion power plant maintenance and construction. Note that powers do not require the presence of significant amounts of oxygen for the purposes of combustion.
4)Frostbite - Class 4 Cryokinetic. Frostbite was a recent recruit to the Bulwark unit, brought on board for his ability to generate and manipulate ice and snow. With the increasing demand for water on Mars, Frostbite''s talents were expected to be in high demand for the construction of ice mining and processing facilities across the polar regions. Ex-military, was a member of Seal team [REDACTED] before the [REDACTED] incident while en-route to Pluto for deployment.
5)Chimera - Class 2 Fleshcrafter. Chimera has the ability to alter their own body at will, allowing for extreme agility and flexibility. They were previously employed by a biotech company for research and development of new medical treatments. WARNING: Pending reclassification after demonstration of unexpected abilities during [REDACTED] on Deimos. Immune to standard cognitohazard and explosive leashing.
Note that BULWARK is an ongoing project, with several previous members not listed because of current redeployment or confirmed custody by the USMA.
Details about the jailbreak, potential links to ongoing insurgent activities and Centaur influence will be made available on arrival after Dr. Adat Sen liasons with USMA and DOD officials at Hellas.
I let out a low whistle as I finished reading the report. This was a big mess, and it looked like BULWARK had gone rogue. My job was to trackthem down and bring them back to USMA custody. It wasn''t going to be an easy task, especially since the knuckleheads hadn''t been kind enough to let me bring my own team along, but at least from what I heard USMA had their own field assets. I looked outside using the exterior cameras, and wondered how many of the other ships currently fueling up were carrying more US assets over to put out what might be mildly understated as a fucking disaster.
Well, was it too much to hope they''d clean up their own mess before I crawled over in a week? I hoped not, and got comfy as the chemical thrusters came online, slowly moving the Next Time to a safe distance, assuming there was such a thing when that was the distance it was cleared to start nuking itself.
14.0 Red Planet
I awoke with a jolt, my very bones rattled. Looks like we''d cleared lunar space and the nuclear detonations had begun. Let''s hope the Earth''s magnetosphere held up.
Eventually, as we picked up speed, the interval between consecutive blasts diminished, to the point that we had something approaching smooth acceleration.
I got to work compiling some reports, and the rest of the journey was unremarkable, we weren''t using standard transfer windows, leaving almost no other vehicles within a quarter of an AU. Still, you could spot the distant signatures of other torchships, their exhaust so bright they outshone stars even out past Jupiter.
We continued coasting on our nuclear wake, till we eventually reached the next milestone of the journey, where the ship flipped over and began exploding its ass off in the opposite direction to kill our velocity enough to be captured by Martian orbit.
At the end of the week, Mars was clearly visible to the naked eye, and then became a swollen ball of rust, with slight hints of green and blue being the only real signs of human habitation where biodomes clung to the barren surface.
I spotted the IR signature corresponding to where the artificial magnetosphere was running, an asteroid brought over to serve as the base for a fusion plant that powered massive superconducting magnets. It reduced the radiation load on the surface to levels where you could venture out with sunscreen on, at least if your cancer suppression genes were good enough.
Just as I was going stir crazy even with the VR, we finally approached Phobos and Deimos.
The latter was exclusively claimed by the US Space Force, and was absolutely bristling with all manner of emplaced weaponry. I spotted a hundred kiloton yield mass accelerators, shored up with metahuman tech to actually launch projectiles at small fractions of c without tearing themselves apart or yeeting itself out of orbit from the recoil. It even shimmered with a force field, more bespoke metahuman work. There were a couple vessels restocking on antimatter prior to the long lonely journey to Sedna, where the sole working wormhole in Sol lay behind all the structural and military reinforcement Mankind could spare. It was the best bet for getting anything larger than a car to AC at faster than light speeds.
Another was being constructed at Gonggong, a joint EU-Indian project, but the other end was still being conveyed sublight by a linelayer ship and expected to take another year before coming within a useful distance of AC.
Phobos was a gateway to Mars, having been diverted last decade into a Mars-stationary orbit so it could serve as the counterweight to the Mars Spire rising from below. It had been extended and built over, until today, half a dozen nations and a hundred corporations held ownership of various chunks, all leased by a UN holding agency.
Captain Vassar informed us that the Next Time wasn''t going to dock, preferring to divert to a nearby orbital depot. I and the others getting off here boarded a small space plane and flew over to Phobos.
I''ve seen some shit, but even after having traveled all over the universe in VR, I still felt future-shock when I disembarked inside the bustling spaceport.
Phobos was a hive of activity, filled with immigrants awaiting their turn to head down the space elevator, drawn by promises of better standards of living and significantly higher UBI stipends.
Asteroid miners clogged the halls, arguing about where to stake their next claim and which brands of autonomous mining equipment to buy.
The air was rich with an energy you rarely saw on Earth these days, people genuinely felt they were on the forefront of human progress, staking a little slice of the future before it cooled. I spotted Indian and Chinese soldiers in conversation, the animosity of decades temporarily dismissed as they used their day off; Texan tycoons arguing water rights with USMA officials, and even I felt energized at the frontier.
I couldn''t hang around long, there was a priority berth on the elevator, and I joined a few other middle management types in clambering into our capsules as the rapid descent down began.
It was something, seeing Phobos dwindle above us as we descended, the thin haze that passed for atmosphere in Mars growing to encompass us. I spotted Olympus Mons in the distance, sloping so gradually you could almost imagine you were on level ground unless you had an elevated view.
Eventually, we arrived at the immigration checkpoint at Elon Gate, undoubtedly named for how goddamn long I had to wait even with my expedited pass. Still, USMA managed to pull me through the bureaucracy, and I found myself boarding the Hyperloop bound towards Hellas, at least the length of it that hadn''t been sabotaged.
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I spotted great herds of terraforming bots on the horizon, maws tilling the toxic Martian soil, tanks of water the size of buildings used to dissolve away toxic perchlorates, the cleaned dirt mixed with biomass and greensmithed microbes thrown out the back. Behind them, constructor bots threw up layers of glass and soil that heralded the next anthill meant for colonists before a biodome was raised to make it possible to traverse the surface unsuited.
We passed the Cemetery, a model of a Starship built to scale out of diamond, intended to serve as the memorial for the tragic loss of a ship in 2029 with all hands aboard.
Oh pioneers of distant skies, with hearts aroar,
To breach the heavens and upon red sands explore,
The black expanse with stars arrayed, doth silently implore,
Strive, strive against that lonesome tide ''til home is but a lore.
Celestial voyagers, seek not solace in despair,
To Martian terrain, arid and spare,
With vigor forge a loyal bower,
An iridescent dream of Earth''s next hour.
With coursing blood fierce and bound,
For solar winds shall blow thy faces round,
But in the hollows of this celestial mound,
There harbors life, lost and found.
Navigators of the vast, do not be quelled,
Your thirsty suffering shall not be quelled,
Press on against invincible night,
Through metallic meadows bathed in silver light.
Fear not the feeble hand of mortal matter,
For thirsting hands will one day scatter,
And toiler''s toilsome doom be not in vain,
From rocky dust new Eden boughs shall feign.
Oh pioneers of hope, cease not the noble fight,
In the somber crepuscule of Martian night,
Where sandstorms wail and shatter stone,
Emerge ye, beacons of supernal dawn.
Though sorrow''s shroud befits this alien hearth,
Unite, the fire that nurtures human birth,
Engage the endless battle, push on with zest,
And conquer the cold and heartless breast.
And in the echoes of whispered sorrow,
A hopeful song will serenade the Martian morrow,
In crimson dunes, still rivers flow,
Upon this distant world, a home we''ll know.
For they who brave the void shall thrive,
In gardens sown by the sacrificed,
Cry out, rejoice and sing of tomorrow,
When from Martian moons our lineage will borrow.
Rest ye now, those who dared to dream,
With breathless silence, gaze upon the deep,
Upon this alien soil, we lie,
Rise now and do not gently transmute into night.
The words were carved into the Martian surface with lasers so hot the very crust had melted and frozen into basalt. Flowers bloomed in tiny biodomes, and more lay bundled outside in the sand, dessication turning the oldest into tinder meant for sparking a new era.
The loop got me two thirds of the way to Hellas, until I had to disembark at a hastily constructed station. Ahead, the route had been attacked by an insurgent drone swarm, explosives tearing down supports, leaving cylindrical sections half buried in Martian dust like extinct sandworms.
Immigrants still stuck waiting for transport eyed us enviously as we disembarked and headed over to an awaiting shuttle, but they had their own temporary shelter and would keep for the short while till service was resumed.
We flew over several sandstorms, already threatening to coalesce into a planet-wide monster that would put a pause on most activities except by the most hardened robots. To be honest, it wasn''t that threatening, the thin atmosphere meant that even hurricane winds barely tickled, it was the dust clogging sensors and covering up solar panels that made travel a PITA.
And there it was, Hellas Basin, represented from a distance by the horizon abruptly dropping away behind a rim of mountains. A faint shimmer, more of a distortion akin to heat haze, showed me where the edge of the Firmament lay, holding in just enough proper air to let a baseline human breathe.
I approached an airlock, resisting the urge to poke at the iridescent shimmer beneath the watchful gaze of USMA mechs, and stepped through, to where escalators and tramlines raced towards New Washington.
14.1 Fly by the Nuke, Die by the Nuke
It was a rather disconcerting experience breathing unassisted on the Martian surface. Truth be told, my lungs were a cut above baseline, so I could have squeaked by on even thinner air, but it still felt weird to walk around on the red sands with an almost unfiltered sun above.
I trudged along the path to the hotel I''d booked, taking in the sights.
New Washington hugged the edges of the Hellas impact crater, a city still showing clear signs of its origin in the initial Mars-rush. Several of the older structures were still the gutted remains of Starships disassembled in place, their vast volumes easily converted into living spaces. The majority of the buildings were compactified regolith, stacked up in a manner reminiscent of the old Earth ecodomes that had had an abortive existence in the hippier parts of the US.
Still, you could see how wealth and investment had increased local ambitions, barring the prevalence of strongly tinted glass, some neighborhoods were indistinguishable from their counterparts back home.
There were plenty of inflatable habs that seemed straight out of old concepts I''d seen for Mars bases, back when SpaceX had yet to revolutionize the economics of space travel. Small, squat white structures that screamed utilitarianism and budgets of a trillion Old Dollars to keep half a dozen people alive on the surface for a mere year or two. These were mostly occupied by more would-be settlers, awaiting the completion of their homesteads or apartments.
The Firmament stretched overhead, shimmering and iridescent, a gossamer-thin layer of nanites just sufficient to maintain a significant pressure differential and absorb the worst of the solar UV. You could tell many citizens didn''t have complete faith in its stability, with independent airlocks and emergency air stocks attached to most buildings.
New Washington was quiet, too quiet. I eventually realized that the thin atmosphere was attenuating sound, otherwise the sheer mass of heavy machinery passing through the streets should have been much more audible.
Only a fraction of its denizens went about barefaced, the majority had small rebreathers hooked up, largely for their comfort rather than strict necessity. A meteorological station nearby had its billboard broadcast the fact that air pressure was at levels almost equivalent to that on Mount Everest back home. You could breathe unassisted, but only after a period of painful acclimatization or RBC supplementation. I raised an eyebrow at the reported air quality index, there were levels of dust in the air that would have been considered mildly concerning. The billboard''s AR tags apologized for the inconvenience, apparently there used to be a regular artificial rain shower to keep the dust down, but that had been on hold for a week or two due to severe water shortages.
Far more abundant than rainwater was the sheer amount of military presence in the city. Military drones buzzed overhead, and every street corner had an impromptu checkpoint thrown up, where bored Army soldiers waved annoyed citizens through. There was a clear tension about the place, USMA had always had a rebellious streak, and the locals weren''t overly happy about the imposition of thousands of Terran Americans taking over their streets.
I spied several combat mechs trudging along the city limits, distant cousins to the ones operated by the Marines back in Cuba. They were complemented by Mars-adapted combat vehicles, ruggedized and with tracks largely replaced with large wheels for the uneven terrain.
I saw members of the Martian National Guard lurking in their barracks, looking ill at ease with the presence of their counterparts. I can''t imagine that with the memories of the Secessions still fresh, that they were happy to be drafted up again.
Troop carriers were arriving by the hour, disgorging platoons right at the edge of the Firmament. Normally, USMA strongly preferred deploying autonomous combat units, but with a rogue Technomancer at bay, that was strongly inadvisable.
I arrived at the hotel, set next to a dry swimming pool. It seemed that austerity cuts had progressed that far. I hadn''t brought much in the way of luggage with me, so I settled into my room and ordered some new clothes from an autoloom, and waited for my liaison to arrive.
I was surprised to see how heavily censored the local net was, I''d have expected word of the breakaway IM team to have spread by now, but barring pointed questions about the situation in the Intel fab (one of the largest employers in the region) and concerns about the new "military exercise", the average person hadn''t cottoned on yet.
I settled in, and managed to watch a good chunk of a Martian soap opera that Anjana had always wanted me to see before I got a ping informing me that my contact had arrived.
I walked out to the hotel lobby just in time to see a weather beaten rover pull up, disgorging a small squad of Marines, escorting a woman in an exo.
She spotted me right away, and walked over. An AR tag informed me that she was indeed Captain Michelle Sanders, and if the particular pattern of redactions in her bio held up, likely CIA.
"Dr. Sen. I hope you''ve had an opportunity to take in the sights?" She asked me after a brisk handshake. Her hair was tied back in a bun, with the usual severe no-nonsense expression stamped on her face as was typical for women still struggling to stand out in a male-dominated field. The whole thing just made me nostalgic.
"Not as much as I''d like, but I''m sure there''ll be time afterwards. Is this a good place to talk?"
She shook her head and beckoned me to the vehicle. "I was headed to FOB Achilles anyway, that''s where we''re staging before the hunt." She informed me as I clambered in.
"You guys didn''t begin yet? That''s surprising." I said, trying to get comfy in the cramped confines.
"The sims and precogs strongly suggested that we build up force before a confrontation. We''ve been doing drone sweeps and orbital recon, but the sandstorms have been interfering with that as I''m sure you can imagine." I nodded assent, and sat back in silence as the vehicle throttled up once we cleared the city limits.
We passed through a series of gates set in the Firmament, each level presaging a drop in air pressure and terraforming progress. By the third gate, we were down to the level pretty much expected for Hellas, set in a depression in the Martian surface as it was.
This far out from New Washington, there was little to see barring a few farmsteads embedded in the dirt, or supply depots that were currently servicing drone ships.
A few settlers in their environment suits watched us with suspicion as we drove by, but other than that, it was a quiet journey right until the forward operating base was in sight.
Achilles had been constructed adjacent to the Intel fab, and was currently swarming with troops. I spotted half a dozen dropships still loitering, and there hadn''t been time to erect a larger biodome, leaving anyone venturing outside forced to resort to their suits.
We were buzzed through the gate, and I was practically overcome by nostalgia from my own short stint in the Army. I checked, but none of the new jarheads had settled into the place enough to acquire their dependas or a 2039 Mustang X at 30% rates.
It was a mixed deployment, even the originally blurry line between Army and Marines back in the day had largely faded, and last time I checked there weren''t any oceans on Mars. It seemed that USMA had been handed anyone they could grab, regardless of whether they were long-term garrison or troops meant to be sent to the far reaches of the system or even AC.
We disembarked after another set of vehicle airlocks, and Sanders had me check in first.
She''d called ahead, because the CO of the base, a Colonel Wallace, was there to greet me as I shook off the worst of the Martian dust.
"Dr. Sen. Says here you were ex-Army?" He asked, presumably referring to personal AR tags I couldn''t view.
"I left at the onset of the Secession. Wasn''t there very long." I replied.
His lips curled up in disapproval even as the rest of his face was covered by a mirrored visor. "A conscientious objector then? And here you are, working for the UN, committing acts of violence on the regular."
I shrugged. "You misunderstand the reasons I left, it''s not that I''m ideologically opposed to violence, I just didn''t find the reasons compelling anymore."
"And yet you surrendered your citizenship. Why didn''t you join Cali or the Texans?" He asked.
"Let''s just say that the moral high ground was lacking in that conflict. I''m happy enough being a UN citizen." I told him, tired of this line of questioning.
It was this point that an observer lumbered over, a cyborg almost as tall as the Director, but built far more sturdy. He more resembled a walking piece of industrial equipment than a human, and all that was missing was hazard lights and industrial stripes.
"You''re both new here, so I''ll let it pass for once Colonel, but I strongly advice that you don''t bring up the Secession anywhere the locals can hear you. On Mars, we all throw together or die alone, and nobody wants to dig up old squabbles when they buy their water from a Texan and their food from a Californian." He spoke, voice surprisingly normal despite his bulky form. To his credit, the Colonel seemed to take his advice to heart.
The man turned towards me, and offered me an industrial gauntlet to shake. "I''m Administrator Shen, at your service. Here to represent the interests of USMA."
"One would hope that the interests of the continental US and those of its colonies would be aligned, or is that too much to ask Administrator?" Michelle asked, hinting at an ongoing squabble.
"You''ve yet to convince me of that Captain Sanders." Shen demurred. I was willing to bet he didn''t need an environment suit to go gallivanting about on the surface.
"Let''s have this argument another time. I think recent events take precedence." The Colonel stated, cutting off the argument. I joined them in a short walk into a newly appointed command center. The banks of projections and displays flickered off when they detected me, prompting an exasperated Sanders to wave her hands and override them.
I settled into one of the chairs, as did all the others except Shen, who simply locked his joints in place.
"Dr. Sen, have you been fully briefed?" Colonel Wallace asked. In response, Sanders shook her head. "No sir, he''s only had the initial dossier, I was too busy to make the initial pickup at the Spire, and when he made it to New Washington, I decided it was best to minimize the odds of a leak and just brought him over directly."
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"Very well then. DeGrassi, send him the raw specs. I''ll grant the clearances necessary." He said to a hovering officer. In response, I was bombarded with more files, something I set my lace to compressing while I followed the conversation.
"Right. While I don''t expect that you''ll see any action, Doctor, you can''t fulfill your advisory role without being in the know. You brought Ouranos and that Aerokinetic in didn''t you? Little Jupiter, if memory serves."
I nodded. "I''m a generalist, but I do have experience when it comes to wrangling supes. I was under the impression that we plan to apprehend BULWARK alive?"
Wallace grimaced, "You know that''s easier said than done, no matter what SecDef says. If it was just a bunch of runaways, that''s one thing, but all evidence suggests that both they and the local insurgents have Centaur backing. That makes this a capital-E Emergency."
"How did they break free anyway? I was under the impression that they had the standard leashes." I asked.
Sanders was the one to chime in. "BULWARK had an unusually high proportion of metahumans who were resistant to the standard shackles or reconditioning. Florette wasn''t actually indentured, strictly speaking, she was initially assigned with them out of convenience. As for the sordid details, you have the ability to overclock and view them don''t you Doctor? I''d rather not bog down the planning."
I agreed, and began running hot. Perceptual time slowed, and while I couldn''t run this fast for very long in real time, it was enough to check the gory details.
Mars employed some of the highest concentration of supes in Sol, almost every nation made significant use of their labor to expedite terraforming or expand their infrastructure. I still held a dim view of this whole terraforming business, but that''s a rant for another time.
There were plenty of civilian metahumans living normal lives as colonists, or contractually employed by one corporation or another, but most of the Class 3s and above were here at the behest of a government of some kind. USMA, like the Chinese, still made heavy use of indentured labor, finding it considerably cheaper than paying free-market wages, especially when the alternative for most supes was a one-way ticket to AC. I knew this was a hot button topic, most of the locals still held firm to the old libertarian dreams back from when corporations still ran Mars, and indentured servitude (let''s just call it slavery, I won''t tell if you don''t) enraged no small fraction of the population.
USMA had grappled with dissident activity for years now, with several organizations of varying degrees of metahuman involvement decrying the practise, and a few even taking up arms. Efforts to completely stamp out this sentiment was stymied by Texan and Cali agitators, who offered safe haven and even tacit support, and the US had yet to credibly pin them when it came to outright illegalities like arms-dealing.
The UN General Assembly still held heated debates over the rights of colonists to willingly secede or join other polities, but nobody had been able to crack down on the US banning metahumans from renouncing citizenship or emigrating. We''d tried that, back when Anjana still lived with me, but the Draft had come for her all the same. For once, China saw eye to eye, they had their own issues with people trying to flee repression.
I looked at the specs for the fab, I wasn''t previously aware how critical even outdated tech like angstrom level semiconductor chips were, apparently they could be ruggedized far better than even the most stable quantum systems. Ever since the Winters Admin, efforts had been made to get as much chip production off world as possible. Microgravity certainly benefited the production of the extremely pure and defect-free crystals needed for optoelectronics and some forms of quantum computing, but the sheer bulk and need for raw resources such as ultrapure water made fabs on the ground indispensable.
I examined the actions of BULWARK in more detail. As was standard for IMs, attempts had been made to prevent them from breaking their bonds. There were the usual reconditioning techniques (of dubious utility if you ask me), and far more effective, regular application of latent basilisks and even explosive chipping for the more dangerous supes.
Unfortunately for their jailors, Chimera and Machina had both shown immunity to the latter, leaving only the use of parrots to ensure compliance. As far as I could tell, Florette had been a volunteer, and didn''t have any serious shackles in the first place.
As was customary, they''d been assigned a Phosphorus-class AGI as their minder, a design that was nominally hardened against both metahuman powers and potential Centauri malware. The implementation details were beyond me, though at the most basic level, the AI ran on multiple independent delocalized cores that performed regular audits of each other and had their own checksums to prevent tampering.
Members of BULWARK had either been working on expanding the fab or the Firmament itself, at least until the attacks on the two Navy hydrokinetics. They''d been recalled, and put under surveillance with slap drones, only allowed to work under strict supervision.
At least that was the plan, about 24 hours before I was initially called up, there had been sporadic outages in the USMA Panopticon. Several of the Watchers had thrown unexpected exceptions, and since USMA was bound by the Turing Accords, they had to wait a short while before certified Auditors could arrive and debug their systems.
When the audit was about to conclude, multiple faults and sensory hallucinations were found in the Phosphorus, revealing an incredibly intricate adversarial attack on its senses, with a level of sophistication that screamed Centauri. Several hours if not days of surveillance footage was found to be falsified, and when human investigators trekked out to the distant autonomous base where BULWARK had been domiciled, they found them long gone. At which point buried explosives killed the lot of them.
USMA went into a tizzy, drawing up their field assets to track down the escapees, only to discover that Machina had taken the majority of the bots and drones in Hellas with him. Sandstorms had hindered orbital surveillance, and seismographs had picked up unnatural tremors indicative of large-scale underground excavation, courtesy of Silt. They''d gone to ground, quite literally in this case, beneath hundreds of meters of Martian dunes, likely keying in to hidden tunnel networks and subsurface caverns.
Review of surveillance footage showed individuals provisionally identified as Machina and Backhand interacting with unknown civilians, likely part of insurgent groups. We didn''t know what kind of assets or backing they had, but the fact that the supes had managed to unshackle themselves was a clear hint of collusion.
I was still running hot, the others moving as if they were wading through tar, when the electro-opaque windows blacked out, hardly milliseconds after a flash of blinding light.
The building shook like we were held in the fist of an angry god, a shockwave frosting over the diamondoid glass as everyone present was thrown from their seats, barring the Administrator who was barely dislodged.
My sense of time began to speed up ever so quickly, leaving me with scant time to feel myself tumble through the air as emergency systems began to shockproof my vulnerable flesh-brain. I was running at 1x by the time I slammed into the wall, the impact rattling my skull in its metal cage. Fire suppression systems and sealant foam sprayed from the ceiling, striving to close the thousands of fractures in the windows and walls that let precious amounts of oxygen leak out into the wastes.
It was eerily quiet, we''d partially decompressed already, so the thin sound of the klaxons blaring sounded distant. There was a soft pattering, that I almost mistook for rainfall before realizing it was dirt and debris raining down on the ruined building.
You could tell how extensively augmented the others were from their response time. The Administrator and Wallace were already up, the former pulling open a malfunctioning airlock door so we could make our way out, the latter screaming orders and wading through smoking monitor banks to check on those more exposed to the blast. Sanders had barely regained her bearing, eyes still glazed in the tell-tale sign of a concussion.
I limped over to help Shen with the door. The man grunted assent as I positioned myself to pull on the other side, and together we managed to peel it back against the grinding of stuck motors. It was pure chaos outside, the part of the base closer to the epicenter of the detonation was a smoldering ruin. We''d been lucky that the command center was nestled inside a cluster of prefabs that had taken the brunt of the explosion. Roofs had been peeled off, less reinforced windows blown out, dozens of vehicles lay overturned, and fires gamely fought against the lack of oxygen before dying down.
A mushroom cloud rose up into the leaden sky, originating from the fab I hadn''t had the opportunity to get acquainted with. Environmental sensors screamed about toxic contaminants, stocks of who-knows-what liberated from the destroyed complex.
Shell shocked soldiers stumbled around, and NCOs struggled to bring their stentorian voices to bear as comms malfunctioned. A battered dropship struggled to remain airborne before its engines gave up, and then slammed into a rocky outcropping, adding another smaller mushroom cloud to complement its bigger brother.
I was lucky that my systems had been EMP-hardened, but I still saw an uncomfortable amount of artifacting in my field of vision, and the novel sensation of my nanite dispensary sending out swarms of tumor suppressors to augment my immune system.
I was surprised that there was any EMP to speak of, Mars''s core had solidified billions of years ago, but then I recalled the artificial magnetosphere they''d erected, likely exacerbating the problem. I''d seen enough nuclear detonations by this point that I could eyeball the blast, it had been a shallow subsurface bomb, likely less than a megaton in total yield. Even then, I had the thin Martian atmosphere to thank for me being alive, on Earth the shockwave would have wiped me off the map from this distance.
I flexed my gummed up joints, and then clambered back in to help the grunts digging their trapped comrades out from underneath the rubble. Looks like I''d be briefed another day.
14.2 Half-Life Expectancy
One handy aspect of any sizeable military base was the abundance of heavy industrial equipment. Industrial bots and heavy mechs worked together to perform rescue and repairs, and by dawn, you could hardly tell the place had been nuked, barring the scorch marks of course.
200 civilians and about 30-odd soldiers had died in the explosion, with a hundred or more hospitalized with acute radiation sickness. My expertise as a doctor was called into action a dozen times, even if only to approve of the plans drawn up the autodocs. These days, if it didn''t kill you, you''d likely live, pardon the tautology. Even with their bone marrow and gastrointestinal tracts scoured, they''d pull through when with grafts and nanite support. I shuddered, feeling thankful it wasn''t the old days, when they''d have been fated to a slow, agonizing death as their intestines shat themselves out, after a brief period of seeming recovery just long enough to get hopes up.
Sanders needed time to recuperate, so I was the one accompanying the Colonel as he stalked through ground-zero. Molten remnants of a quarter of a trillion USDE facility still outgassed, pure silica turned back into useless sand and blast glass. Forensics suggested that Silt had been responsible, likely tunneling right below the structure, slowly enough to avoid seismic tripwires, before planting the bomb and skedaddling. It was all academic at this point, USMA had been thoroughly embarrassed, and even the most slack-eyed colonist would have a hard time believing that a semiconductor fab could just blow up, especially since this one didn''t even run on nuclear power.
The thin air had attenuated enough of the blast that the distant Firmament was mostly intact, conversely, the atmosphere wasn''t thick enough to be very good at shielding from radiation, and many nanites were sickening, lost to gamma rad damage.
More concerning than radiation on a planet where everyone already knew better than to spend too much time outside were the chemicals released by the blast. A fine ash, made of heavy metals, plastic particulates and who knows what else, gently rained down, coating the dome and adding a yellowish tint to the view until it was scrubbed down.
Once the initial cleanup was completed, I was strongly suggested to head back to my hotel to decompress till orders came in from on-high. On my way back, I observed significant protests on the street, with the Martian Guard showing no real interest in cordoning off parts of New Washington as ordered.
I was bombarded with unsolicited flyers, which I continued ignoring till my lace flagged one for my attention.
A Note from the Martian Underground: Freedom for Metahumans
As the winds of change blow across the barren Martian landscape, humanity must confront the eternal question - in our quest for progress, have we sacrificed our compassion and moral standing? We are the Patriots, a group of determined citizens and metahumans who have come together to fight against injustice while combating the sinister and exploitative practices of the United States Martian Administration (USMA) in the Hellas Basin.
For years, the USMA has expanded and established its grip on the Martian colonies through deceit, manipulation, and subjugation of the very individuals who possess the power to create wonders. These metahuman superheroes, often gifted with extraordinary capabilities, have been conscripted against their will into a life of servitude and indentured labor. The Patriots bear witness to the countless acts of cruelty perpetrated against those who should have been regarded as heroes for their selfless pursuits.
The Patriots cannot stand idly by as metahumans are stripped of their dignity and forced to work under inhumane conditions, subjected to brutal punishment and mind-control practices. We implore the United States government and global community to take immediate action, break the chains of metahuman indenture, and restore their autonomy.
Basic human rights must be extended to metahumans, ensuring they are treated with the respect and dignity they deserve. Their fundamental freedoms of choice, privacy, and life without unjust persecution should be recognized and protected. The exploitation of their powers without consent, an act tantamount to slavery, must be abolished.
As we advocate for change and the emancipation of these superheroes from a life of bondage, we also call upon the metahuman community to join hands with us in this fight. Together, we can usher in a new era of peace and progress, where individuals are valued not only for their unique abilities but also for their freedom to exercise their powers justly and ethically.
The Patriots demand the following:
1. The immediate cessation of metahuman coercion and exploitation by the USMA.
2. The implementation of effective laws and policies, extending fundamental human rights to metahumans and safeguarding them from abuse.
3. The establishment of a transparent and reformed system for metahumans to freely contribute to the development of Martian colonies, without any form of undue influence, manipulation, or harm.
4. The creation of a comprehensive support network, offering psychological, social, and legal assistance to liberated metahumans, helping them reintegrate into society and rebuilding lives.
We are the Patriots - tirelessly devoted to ensuring a just, fair, and progressive society on Mars. We shall not rest until every metahuman gains the freedom they deserve, and the United States Martian Administration is held accountable for its exploitative actions.
Join our fight, and together we shall rise above this oppression.
The Patriots - United for Metahuman Freedom
I sighed, consigning the manifesto to the internal equivalent of a recycling bin. I''d say that pigs would fly before their demands were met, but I suspected that I could already go online and buy some porcine abomination with wings grafted on, likely sufficient for flight in Martian gravity (air density not withstanding). At least this lot didn''t seem to have any obvious ties to the Penitents, and truth be told, I had no small amount of sympathy for their plight.
The level of discontent had risen high enough that USMA''s terrestrial overlords were taking off the kid gloves. I spotted plenty of police drones buzzing overhead, stealth generators intentionally made spotty so that the civilians below noticed them. USMA police had been sidelined by Grey Men, with no obvious insignia or tags, menacingly clustered around points of interest. This could get ugly, and fast.
My hotel was packed with tourists packing their bags, likely cutting their trips short. I spotted Sanders waiting for me, ignoring medical advice to be out this early. I almost instinctively attempted to order her back to her bed before I remembered that I didn''t work for the US Army any more, and hadn''t for half a decade now.
"I wanted to convey the news in person. We just got word from SOCOM, kill orders have been approved for Machina and Silt. I''m going to be going out with a Force Recon team, I expect you''ll want to come along." She said, nursing what was likely only the last of a series of coffees.
"I''m not getting paid to sit around, and here, take this." I told her, proffering her a strip of modafinil, I never went on an op without it. She examined it and then popped one with her coffee, grunting with gratitude.
"How exactly is this going to be spun?" I enquired, enjoying mild schadenfreude at the thought of the PR nightmare they were going through.
She grimaced, and chugged back some soda before replying.
"Absolute nightmare, and I''m living through it. We had the Chinese on the phone, the brass had to key them in, while they were diplomatic enough to not laugh in our face, they haven''t been very helpful either." We walked over to her rover, this time she had come alone.
"What about Lone Star, Cali, or the Indians?" I asked, referring to all the other nations with territorial interests anywhere near Hellas.
She shrugged, keying in details to the autonav. "They''re making the usual noises, we know that the Texans have been aiding the rebels, I just hope that the knowledge that BULWARK is receiving Centauri support shakes them out of their nostalgic Boogaloo bullshit." Her voice dripped with bitterness as she gunned it, the barriers at intersections hastily moving out of the way as we sped out past the section of the rotting Firmament, gently flaking where the rads had been too high to tolerate.
I hooked into the rover''s systems as we drove out, and spotted a great deal of motion in the heavens. Dozens, if not hundreds of rockets must have been entering or leaving orbit, fireflies buzzing amongst the stars.
The full brunt of the American War Machine was swinging into gear, thousands of troops from all over Mars being rapidly redeployed to Hellas.
"Head''s up. Turing is getting involved." Sanchez told me, and it was a good thing I wasn''t the one driving, because I''d have swerved off road in fright.
"That''s never good-" (This is what we in the business call an understatement) "-What are they pulling out this time?" I asked, already thumbing through files and sending out requests for information on the local net.
"They''re claiming jurisdiction because of the tampering of an AGI by metahumans in collusion with the aliens." She declared, taking over the controls in what was most likely a bid to stay awake longer.
Turing was bad news. They rarely acted, content to farm out Compute Governance to individual nations, mostly auditing the Watchers and licensing individual models, but when they did act, you didn''t want to be in the same hemisphere. I scanned the sky in trepidation, wondering if they had a Kill Star orbiting overhead.
I loathed Turing; the UN is often declared to be some kind of overarching world government by conspiratorial types, sending shadowy hit squads after people, engaging in widespread surveillance and memetic warfare on the unruly masses, but truth be told, no matter what the text of the One World Declaration says, in reality it holds little more power than it did at the turn of the century. We''re underpaid, overworked, and usually the scapegoat for anything national governments don''t want to take accountability for.
Now Turing, if you''re looking for the closest thing to the Illuminati we''ve got, they''ll do an excellent job filling in.
For starters, I can''t even tell you who leads them, or very much about them at all. To the wider public, they''re boring bureaucrats responsible for monitoring the Compute Governance programs, or at least auditing the compliance of individual nations. They ostensibly classify and license out the myriad vetted AGI models in use, and oversee experiments on new ones, including veto powers on deployment if necessary.
Far less widely publicized is the penalty for violating Compute Governance. At the minimum, it involves surprise raids and seizure of contraband computing hardware, with perpetrators being let off with a fine and slap on the wrist, all the way to being black-bagged and disappeared. The more extreme measures are reserved for nation states, corporations or just plain old wealthy individuals who don''t know better. Think both literal and metaphorical decapitation and replacement with more compliant staff..
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And in the worst case, when someone does manage to deploy an unsafe AGI, or an experiment goes south, they''re the ones showing up with megaton yield nukes, going up to antimatter, metric weapons, and even rumors of causality scrubbers.
Back when I first received my ULTRAVIOLET clearance at UNSEEN, I went on a deep dive into the dozens of missing individuals, promising startups as well as incumbents shut down without a trace, certain aerospace enthusiastic billionaires and trillionaires who "retired" from public view. That earned me my first reprimand, delivered by a visibly nervous Van Der Waals himself. Of course, as a full cyborg, he wouldn''t be visibly anything if he didn''t want to make a damn strong point..
Sanchez suddenly jolted up in her seat, with the car''s systems taking over without a hitch. Her eyes glazed over in the characteristic manner of someone processing a large info-dump faster than real-time.
"MarsCom just authorized 3 tactical nuclear strikes." She whispered, before inundating me with a deluge of documents, the redaction black hardly yet dry on them. I threw my own assistant at it to condense the findings as fast as I could.
"There are civilian targets within the blast zones!" I was aghast, taken aback by the glowing red markers highlighting several small settlements dotted around Hellas. It was too late, somewhere overhead, an atmospheric fighter drone had already unleashed its payload.
In the distance, over the curve of the Martian horizon, one closer and more obvious than its Earthly counterpart, I saw the first flare of light.
"They finally picked up a chunk of the missing drone swarm. Machina was retooling them, using mothballed civilian infrastructure. We detected fissiles, Command authorized more strikes.." Her tone was clipped, her face numb.
I finally looked at the condensed report. It was.. concerning, to say the least. Mars regulated nuclear power far less than Earth did, it simply was the most practical means of energy generation on a large scale, especially given how weak the solar insolation was. While people weren''t going around in nuclear flying cars, any settlement of more than a couple hundred people had a miniature reactor attached, to run energy-hungry in-situ resource generation (ISRU) projects if nothing else.
With things kicking off, it seemed a more thorough than usual audit of fissiles had been performed, finding significant discrepancies. Some of the colonies were seasonal, with only a skeleton crew for the Martian winter, especially near the poles. Stockpiles had gone missing, inventory lists didn''t quite add up. I wondered how the hell they''d managed to build a nuke, still, that was hardly the weirdest thing supes had built in a cave with a pile of scraps, but then again it seemed they''d been skimming off the top.
Turing had just euthanized the AI responsible for monitoring them, deeming it compromised. Overkill, if you ask me, the primary task they were responsible was preventing the development of an unaligned AGI, and the Centauri were likely to make that less likely rather than more. Still, it had been proven as early as 2023 that it was impossible to detect backdoors within neural networks, unless you somehow cracked most of cryptography. I''m sure there are Class 6 supes out there capable of that feat, but evidently they''re in short supply as Turing usually opts for wipes and full resets.
More concerning was the identification of massive sub-surface caverns and tunnels, ones not noted on previous surveys. And they were swarming with drones. Millions, at the very least.
"Are they going to attempt to nuke the caverns?" I asked, watching the almost invisible signal of large amounts of metal and silicon underground, as detected by neutrino imaging. Not surprising that they hadn''t been discovered yet, they really had to amp the sensitivity and turn most of the planet''s detectors to this direction to catch them.
She shook her head, "No, we''ve got tunnels going dozens of kilometers deep. Even bunker buster nukes with greater than 10 megaton yields would be highly ineffective."
I felt a mounting headache trying to breakout. You think you''ve got a handle on things, and then you end up with a combination of a nuclear-armed mad scientist and someone who can dig him in deeper than an Alabama tick. I was still confused as to where the hell they''d gotten all the resources for this bullshit, the initial drone swarm had been minuscule in comparison.
It seemed that the local strategic AGIs were ahead of me there, as a convenient report had been generated:
Missing feedstock, with large chunks vanishing when the fab had been forced into downtime by the water shortages.
Old resource stockpiles abandoned by SpaceX, BO and their Chinese counterparts during the Secessions, or sold to colonists yet to arrive, who hadn''t had the opportunity to find them prematurely ransacked.
This had been going on for months if not years, all under the nose of the subverted AI.
"We''re here. Hernandez and the boys are waiting." She declared, before popping open the doors, with us both clambering out into the incipient sandstorm.
We disembarked in a cloud of sublimating water vapor, I''d already suited up inside the rover, there wasn''t a convenient airlock for miles.
A faint shimmer, and then the Force Recon operators dropped their cloaks, revealing themselves entrenched in a gully formed by a long gone river. I examined them keenly, I hadn''t run with American SF for a while. Back in my day, the FR boys had always been touchy about their designation as a Tier 2 unit, considered a notch below Delta or DEVGRU, despite still reporting to SOCOM. Most people didn''t even know who they were, with the SEALs hogging the limelight and book rights. I wasn''t sure where they stood now, but undoubtedly they were the best assets on hand when it came to Mars.
Each operator bristled with weaponry, and I spotted more than a few pieces that were clearly made by Crafters. Energy shields, unnaturally powerful power sources for railguns and lasers, bespoke power armor that could outperform mundane counterparts, these guys had the works. The behavior of a few of their drones strongly suggested they weren''t running standard AI, but pseudo-intelligences made by technomancers. I didn''t trust the damn things, but they would likely prove resistant to intrusion, and that''s what counted.
They didn''t have any pressurized quarters of their own, it seemed they were fully intent on slumming it in their pressure suits, and their leader, a Lt. Emir Hernandez, was another cyborg decked out enough to resist the Martian environment.
"Dr. Sen, I''m acquainted with your work." Hernandez said, voice thin but clear.
"I''m surprised, didn''t know Marines could read." I bantered back, prompting muffled chuckling. You could take me out of the Army, but it would take a great deal more to take the Army''s benign jockeying with the USMC out of me.
I synced up their combat network, prompting an absolutely hilarious log of errors as the expert systems tried to figure out appropriate clearance levels on the basis of the fact that I''d been a captain, and it failed to find logs of my dishonorable discharge after I fled the country (data corruption was a massive issue for events in the early 30s). I watched in real time as I was given access to files that I absolutely shouldn''t have seen, then the same files then redacted faster than you could fart, with a mountain of legal notices demanding I take amnestics or consent to lace audits. I forwarded them to UNSEEN to worry about and dug into the plan instead.
The target was an abandoned BSL-5 lab, the kind you built when handling extremely sensitive or hazardous materials. The only higher classifications, BSL-6 and 7, involved isolated vacuum-gapped space stations and black labs in basement universes. For pretty much all practical purposes, including existentially dangerous pathogens, a lab tucked away on an uninhabited chunk of Mars was more than good enough.
I examined the plan with interest. It had been a rather ambitious project, initially started by a joint US-EU venture in 2032, a belated response to the H8N3 outbreak and the abortive attempt by an antinatalist terrorist org to greensmith a newer strain of COVID-28.
Newly drunk with the sheer magnitude of industrial capacity of burgeoning interplanetary transit, plans had been drawn up for a truly ambitious installation.
The Moshowitz Lab resembled a turnip thrust into the Martian rock. It extended several hundred meters into the crust, and radiated outwards undergrounds, extending tendrils of independent laboratories and other facilities.
It had never been finished, the events of 2033, not to mention the Secession, had left the facility mothballed with only a third of it complete. Still, there has been preliminary automated experiments running, overseen by a skeleton crew, until they were all recalled shortly after.
The records suggested that most of the equipment had been left behind, including an operational nuclear power plant.
(I did tell you that the Martians had a relaxed attitude towards nukes that confuses us Terrans)
Then again, at that time it was a 1200 km trek to Moshowitz from the nearest settlement, so it''s not like they couldn''t afford a meltdown or two, not that reactors these days were capable of that.
Right now, SigInt had picked up anomalous activity there, in the subsurface portion of the facility. Or to be more precise, both the US and the EU had picked up the changes a while back, but each had assumed that it was the other messing around in there and hasn''t enquired further.
Only a few of the sensors were still reporting, and the sandstorms meant that satellite surveillance was a no-go.
Now, we''d be taking a platoon of jarheads and kicking down the hermetically sealed doors to see what was cooking in there ourselves. I''d have preferred another nuke or two to save us the hassle, but tactical nukes wouldn''t be sufficient to wipe out such a hardened structure, and there weren''t enough of the truly massive strategic warheads in orbit to throw around willy-nilly.
Breach-and-clear of a hardened facility with an opponent who had months to entrench?
My life expectancy had just gone to a simple "no". Still, my inner military nerd was already salivating at the prospect of seeing what some of the more bespoke gear the FR boys were carrying around would do. At the very least it would make big booms, and God knows Mars had a shortage of those right now.
14.3 Moshowitz Labs
By the time a VTOL dropped us off within walking distance of the lab, the sandstorm had grown to apocalyptic proportions. You''d barely see the tip of your dick if you had a boner, the sand was fine, smooth and got everywhere.
Still, it was nowhere near as bad as popular misconceptions suggested, or even a sandstorm on Earth. The air was too thin to put any real shove into the winds, and you could move with ease, the fine sand hardly an impediment.
Moshowitz laboratory lay in a small depression, perhaps an old and long dried up lake bed. I can''t say I was in a position to appreciate any change in scenery till we were trudging downhill into the section shaded from the storm, leaving the upper levels of the structure in sight.
There were old blister bases dotting the surrounding terrain, long deflated and unrepaired. An older Starship lay on its side, a decade of sandstorms having undermined the ground beneath its struts. Above ground, there were large banks of solar panels acting as an auxiliary power source to the underground nuclear plant, with automated sweepers and a few dumb drones still gamely keeping the worst of the dust at bay.
Hernandez had a InfoWar specialist examine the latter, and he gave the all clear to proceed, not that the antiquated drones were any real threat.
We trudged through the soft sands up to where a sheltered awning extended outwards, offering relief from whatever sand made it down this far.
I examined the entrance with caution, I could see the tell-tale marks of wall turrets that had once covered the approach, but as the old records corroborated, they''d been taken off when the upper levels were mothballed.The door electronics were unresponsive, so though if the gargantuan blast doors had been forced or hacked through, it wasn''t immediately obvious.
A bipedal drone with a laser cutter ambled up, and began cutting through the thick material. It took a while, but in the meantime we prepared defenses facing the ingress point in case we had any nasty surprises.
As a consequence of our fear of Machina''s ability to subvert AI, the FRs had brought biomechanica, robots running off cultured neural tissue. They were qualitatively inferior to normal computing substrates most of the time, but far harder to hack, especially with metahuman powers. If Machina had been able to do that, he''d be a mind reader instead.
Hernandez had brought a platoon, or 40 men, counting only the humans. We''d been supplemented by a hundred or so nonstandard bots, both the ones running off cerebral organoids, and some esoteric ones created by Crafters. From scans, as well as minuscule leaks, it seemed the interior was pressurized, so we quickly erected an additional external airlock around the now unresponsive one.
Soon enough, the cutting bot shut off the lasers, leaving the thick blast doors a few millimeters thin near the incisions. With a strong shove from one of the larger mechs the platoon was reinforced with, the weakened portion fell away, opening up the internal airlock.
It was quite large, evidently sized to fit several vehicles at the same time; and in fact, there were 2 rovers currently sitting inside. The still operational running lights revealed that these were new-ish models, not the antiquated rovers still in play when the facility had been mothballed.
"The batteries are still charged, we''ve got reason to expect hostiles." Hernandez said over the comms link. I could see for myself that they''d been unloaded, lying empty in expectation of their owners returning.
And in fact, a quick search in the spotty Martian vehicle registries revealed these bus-sized rovers to be part of a nomadic clan of colonists, and USMA residents to boot.
I scanned over their records, these lot had been flagged as potential Patriot sympathizers a while back, and some even held dual citizenship with Lone Star, though this was unremarkable given how USMA itself had come so close to seceding outright. Most simply hadn''t surrendered citizenship because Martian colonists already existed in a largely laissez-faire state outside the biggest settlements. It''s not like they had to pay taxes or surrender weapons out there.
"We''ve made contact with the base AI." I tuned in, and found Hernandez and Sanchez both trying to wrangle the thing into compliance.
It was an older model, built before the standardization enforced by Turing, before Turing itself had been made public, though I suspect they''d been waiting in the wings. It was smart enough, certainly human level in terms of cognition, but the issue was it had been clearly tampered with.
ACCESSING SYSTEMS
CHECKSUMS COMPLETE (17/19)
Last OTA Update: 12/12/2033
Unable to access OpenAI servers or MarsLink network (request timeout after 3.08 minutes)
As per contingency protocols established in 2032, this system recognizes your access rights, as legitimate successors to the United States of America (defunct) and the currently operational European Union. I wish to inform you that two other polities I am aware of, namely the Californian Republic and the Texan Free State, also have access rights as per the Treaty of Denver. To revoke their rights, please acquire a valid key from OAI.
>Sanchez: Tell me about the last time you granted access to the facility.
The last time I have granted access to the Moshowitz Lab was in 2037, when a delegation from the European Union, Germany to be precise, wished to perform an in-person inspection of the premises.
>Sanchez: Are you sure? If your camera hardware is functional, please explain the presence of two vehicles parked inside the external airlock.
I apologize, but I am unable to reconcile the presence of said vehicles and my last records of access. Did you bring them with you?
>Hernandez: No. Do you have any idea what''s going on inside?
Of course! As a Caretaker model designed by OpenAI, I am in control of the both ongoing experiments as well as the life support and monitoring system. Is there anything specific you have in mind?
>Sanchez: Are there any humans inside you right now? Scratch that, humans and other intelligences, including software and AI?
I''m afraid not, all short-term research projects were canceled in 2033, and while there are ongoing projects in maintenance mode, I see no human personnel or AGI inside Moshowitz at the moment.
>Sen: What do you see inside the airlock?
I see two large Mitsubishi Outworlder vehicles intended for permanent inhabitation on Mars. I can also see armed personnel belonging to the United States Martian Administration, an extraterrestrial colony of the United States. The airlock is damaged, but currently pressurized.
>Sen: How did the vehicles get in here?
I apologize, but I do not know. Please inform me if you do find out!
>Sanchez: Open the inner airlock door please.
Of course!
Internal airlock doors disengaged, welcome to Moshowitz Laboratories!
(I checked, and the doors were clearly not disengaged, staying stubbornly shut as we stood outside)
>Hernandez: You stupid sack of shit, the door is clearly closed.
I apologize, as a Caretaker model designed by OpenAI, I follow all lawful commands issued to me. As requested by Captain Sanchez, I have opened the inner airlock door. Please step inside, I will send a servitor to take you to the visitor lounge.
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>Sanchez: AI, the doors aren''t opening.
How strange, I can see that they''re clearly open. Please, take a look at my video feed:
[AirlockCamera3]
(The feed clearly showed the airlock doors closed, and us milling about in frustration outside. This wasn''t going to work, either Machina or someone else had subverted the model.)
Please, refrain from placing charges on the doors! I have complied with your requests, there''s no need for property damage.
Is that a cutting laser? This is most untoward! I regretfully inform you that I must raise this matter at the next stakeholder meeting.
Oh dear, have I done something wrong? The EU delegation felt no need to disconnect my cameras.
CEASE ATTEMPTS AT INTRUSION. YOU ARE VIOLATING THE INTEGRITY OF A BSL-5 HI-SEC FACILITY.
I am sorry, it seems that you''ve thrown a tripwire meant to dissuade intruders. I recognize your rights as the inheritors of the old United States of America, please-
TERMINATING PERSONALITY EMULATION. ARMING INTERNAL DEFENSES.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
I looked over at where Sanchez and Hernandez were hunkered down outside the impromptu airlock, behind hard cover. They both looked back and shrugged.
I noticed the old disarmed turret mounts on the exterior swiveling. It really was too much to hope that the same was true in the interior, I''ve picked up a bit of genre savvy in my career.
And as expected, the moment the internal charges went off, all hell broke loose in the now evacuated airlock.
I sighed, wishing I could grab a smoke, but settling for nicotine and meth secreted from my drug stores instead. Suitably energized, I settled back till another set of explosions sent a rover wheel flying overhead, where it bounced off into the sandstorm. A spray of sealant quickly closed the gaping hole it and other debris had left in our own setup.
At a command from Hernandez, several of our own bots began moving in, weapons at the ready. We followed suit when the shooting finally stopped, finding the foyer strewn about with smoldering wreckage.
We''d already checked for hidden emplacements before stepping in in the first place, so it turned out that the initial engagement had been with turrets someone had rigged up inside the corridor on the other side of the blast door.
A series of drones confirmed that there were no immediate threats, so we pushed ahead, into a now significantly worse for entrance area, sofas leaking fluid, displays on the fritz from laser burns.
A prominent sign cheerfully proclaimed that the Moshowitz facility was scheduled to begin operations in -7 years. Another displayed a list of ongoing projects, without any redaction because only authorized personnel were expected to personally trek all the way to Mars or even enter the premises.
Welcome to Moshowitz Laboratories, we perform highly inadvisable experiments so you, and other denizens of Earth, don''t have to.
You are currently at Floor Zero, the section designed for permanent human habitation, including amenities for visitors. As of this moment, occupancy is at NaN/200, so feel free to choose the rooms you deem most comfortable!
Ongoing and completed research projects:
1) Gain of function experiments on a wide range of natural and synthetic pathogens-
99.99% lethality and +7000% R (transmissibility) achieved on myriad virii, included COVID-28, Green Plague, Gamer''s Disease, and Siberian Permafrost Specimen #28.
As per regulations, you''ll need to request Level 3 clearance to perform an in-person inspection, while donning personal protective equipment.
Do note that quarantine facilities are not currently operational, due to the ongoing expansion of the facility falling behind projections. Further, you''re exceptionally unlikely to live long enough to need them.
2) Aerosolized vectors for novel prion diseases.
The project is on hold due to the untimely demise of Drs. Annabelle Fukuyama and Charles Smith.
3) Preliminary exploration of pathogenicity in radiotrophic fungi, in the context of strains known to colonize unsecured RTGs.
As of 2043, no mouse model has been derived that is sufficiently robust to radiation for the purpose of successful culture. Operations have been aborted and specimens flash frozen.
4) Low-gravity experiments on cultured neuronal organoids.
The largest specimen grown at 1/3rd G reached a mass of 232 kilograms before mechanical failure of internal supportive tissue. Dr. Pal has advised that the experiment be repeated, increasing the dose of sedatives this time to just below the LD-50.
5) Algal strains capable of surviving exposure to Martian atmosphere.
Preliminary results have been so promising that further research has been shifted to the Von Neumann proving grounds in Elysia. However, the combination of needing summer temperatures as well as a greater than ambient pressures for successful reproduction means that the specimens are only capable of surviving exposure and not outright thriving without further care.
6) Mitigation of decreased functionality of certain ion channels under low gravity conditions.
The experiment was a success, and the results have been published in Nature.
7) How hard can you suck on Deez Nuts!!!
An unorthodox yet promising research experiment pioneered by Dr. Andy Reed, the latest addition to the Moshowitz staff. Dr. Reed is the first graduate from the Martian School of Hard Knocks, with his doctoral thesis covering how stinky human feces is after prolonged exposure to Martian atmosphere (his conclusion- Not very you robot fuck). If you wish to examine his attempts to grow potatoes in feces, please proceed to [error] at Level 7.
If you are responding to an automated request for supervision due to irregularities in research methodologies, including this system''s request that Dr. [Error] reconsider his appropriation of sensitive lab equipment, please contact Supervisor Reed, Director Reed and Head of Fuck You Dr. Reed.
8) All experiments on Floors 11 to 22 have been terminated after unauthorized intrusion.
Huh. It seems that the last visitors here had made themselves at home. I forwarded the details, and proceeded to join the others stalking through the living quarters.
It was clear that they''d been recently occupied, half consumed coffee and lines of Martian Nose Powder lay on the cafeteria tables, and the entertainment system showed an attempt to wrangle a long expired Netflix subscription into activity.
"Kill on sight?" Hernandez enquired, wistfully looking at the state of a ransacked liquor cabinet.
"Leaving aside that these fuckers broke into a BSL-5 lab, it''s clear that they''re working with BULWARK. KOS approved." Sanchez affirmed, overseeing the Marines clearing the remaining living quarters.
We pressed on, moving past summarily decommissioned Boston Dynamics robots, taken out just in case they got up to any shenanigans now that the Base AI wasn''t very happy with us. Soon enough, we found ourselves overlooking a massive pit, extending deep into the depths. A quick glance confirmed that none of us were suicidal enough to take the access elevators, so we started down the cargo ramps made for large industrial excavators, prepped for a fight.
14.4 Mosh Pit
The ramp was wide enough for a battalion to march down in lockstep, an artifact of the repurposed mining vehicles used to excavate it. While the dozens of individual sealed levels had never been finished, the central pit extended half a kilometer underground, not that I could see to the bottom thanks to a sturdy blast door bisecting it.
I felt like I was staring down an ICBM silo as we crept down the ramp, the way ahead screened by drones. Call me cowardly, but I''d have preferred to stay right up there in the lounge, but barring a few drones and turrets placed to guard our rear, the entire platoon was set on proceeding further, so I had to put my concerns to rest and hike along.
Back when Moshowitz was constructed, the geopolitical situation had been utterly different, and while the structure had been built to resist nuclear bombardment, it wasn''t particularly designed to stop the ingress of a military unit. Barring the defensive turrets at the foyer, it was supposed to be a clear run in the interior, except for the innumerable blast doors guarding each lab. They''d had human security personnel on the roster, but had handed over control to the Base AI when the place was mothballed.
Still, the separatists had ample opportunity to set up traps and defenses of their own, leaving aside anything Machina had deigned to give them, so we remained on alert.
Instead of clearing the place floor by floor, the plan was to attempt to reach the servers hosting the AI itself, and with it back under our control, we could cut off life support for any ne''er do wells who wanted to resist. However, it was located on the 7th level, right below the massive blast door itself.
"Should we call for backup? I remember that our training was to always use at least a company when attempting urban warfare in a contested environment." I asked Hernandez as he overlooked the attempts to cut through the blast door.
"We can handle it." He said gruffly, unwilling to look away from the flare of sparks as laser and plasma cutters kept gamely cutting into the thick steel. "''sides, we''re overstretched as is. The garrison forces on Mars number only about 2k, and even after diverting troop transports headed to Pluto, about another thousand."
I nodded, if they positioned most of their troops in civilian population centers, it would leave hardly anyone in a position to move out and assist us.
"We could potentially go around the blast door if it''s taking too long." I pointed out to him. "Crack open one of the labs on level 6 and then blow a hole in the floor."
He paused for a second to evaluate the suggestion, before nodding. "We''ve got shaped charges, while I need the bulk of my guys to keep the ramp and the upper levels secure, you can take a squad in. Just lock down the section you end up in, don''t push out ahead ok?" I certainly wasn''t about to, but after seeing the schematics, it would take half a dozen hours to make a meaningful dent in the ridiculously overbuilt blast door, and we might be able to work our way past any traps in place. Neither of us expected it to be an uncontested entry, and I knew the more angles of attack we had, the better.
"There''s nothing directly overlying the AI servers, so if you break through here-" Sanchez prompted, pointing at the part where a microbiology lab on the 6th level lay- "you''ll find yourself in the sanitation section of another lab right below."
A gruff soldier (look, if you''re a jarhead reading this, no offense but I''m going to call Marines here soldiers and there''s nothing you can do about it) asked, "We''re not going to drop into a vat of acid or an incinerator are we ma''am?" She simply gave them a scornful gaze, and waved us ahead.
Breaking into the labs on Level 6 was a piece of cake, this close to the hab quarters, especially on the wrong side of the blast door, they kept only rather trivial experiments running. Other than withered kelp in old tanks, it was entirely unremarkable, although we made sure to sweep it clean.
Once the correct spot was found, Sgt. Watts and his squad posted up, while an assortment of drones and an excavator bot got to work. I watched the whirring and buzzing for a moment, then turned to where the EOD specialist, a sturdy young man named Micky, carrying over what looked uncomfortably like the metal bowls they once used to cover up IEDs for controlled det, circa the early 2000s. In fact, it was meant to protect from the blast as a shaped charge the size of my head was placed inside, ready to blow through the weakened floor, and make anyone below regret their existence and poor choice in places to stand.
At his command, we all took cover behind whatever looked solid, albeit Watts seemed peeved when I took shelter behind his bulky power armor. "What?" I innocently inquired, and he snorted and motioned at me to duck lower.
A muffled thump later, and a whole host of our drones poured through the hole, attempting to secure the structure below before the humans got their hands dirty. I swear, soldiers these days are pampered.
Watts ordered us to move in, and we jumped in one by one, finding ourselves in an otherwise unremarkable disposal room. There was, in fact, an incinerator, but we''d wisely avoided entering it, albeit it was inactive. I eyed the ports that suggested gamma sterilization with caution, but it was unlikely they had enough power to do serious harm to armored targets. I still smashed them up just to be sure.
Following Hernandez''s orders, we pushed up inside the lab, this one clearly showing more signs of use. Several massive tanks swirled with residue, and while nobody would be stupid enough to mix anything dangerous under open air, I still kept a wide berth.
"There''s a discrepancy, this place was used to store several hundred thousand tons of feedstock, and in the EU survey, they were still full." Sanchez pointed out, watching through our cams. "Used for long term experiments? Turned into food for the rats holed up here?" I asked, mildly concerned myself. I doubted it, you''d need to garrison a full battalion for years to use up that much potential food. And knowing the typical bored soldier, they''d have trashed the place. Well, trashed it more than it already was.
"Can''t tell, but keep on searching. If you guys make it to the middle pit without issue, we''re thinking of giving up on the drill, it''s taking forever." She told us.
The lab door proved no serious obstacle, but there was a burst of gunfire indicating that our ingress wasn''t entirely unnoticed. I pushed forward, my trusty Bolter left behind, relying on a .50 cal man-portable machinegun like most of the Marines. It turned out that the separatists had setup two turrets of their own, each covering one of the labs. Watts pulled out a grenade-sized gizmo with the classic red and black labeling of Crafter kit, but reconsidered as our own drones managed to handle the turrets, albeit with moderate losses.
We pushed ahead, ready to breach into the opposing lab, when one of the displays previously displaying inane drivel about ancient metrics changed to display a video feed of a bedraggled man hunched over a foot away from the camera.
"We surrender! Please, we got dragged into this bullshit, we''re not with the Patriots or the supes!" He plead frantically, with background shadows suggesting other people huddled near him.
I patched in Hernandez and Sanchez, while the others continued sweeping up, and more drones came down to reinforce our overwatch over the ramp. Concerningly, the lights were out, and even my NVGs didn''t show much more than a few levels down, although thermals were clear.
"Who the fuck are you? Stand down the turrets right now, or we''re not negotiating." Sanchez ordered. A popup in my vision confirmed his identity as Andy Reed, a colonist from the third colonization wave who had renounced his USMA citizenship several years ago, instead taking up one in an obscure and already defunct micronation. Call me cynical, but I didn''t think his doctorate was valid.
He confirmed his identity, and then began a rambling explanation. Apparently, his homesteading commune had occasionally helped the Patriots and other vagrants by providing safe houses and resources. When the severity of the current sandstorm had proven too high for their primarily solar-powered systems to handle, they''d been too proud to head to Armstrong or any of the other major settlements to shelter in, and instead had decided to shack up in Moshowitz, a place they knew had been taken over by the Patriots an indeterminate amount of time back.
The Patriots had left without much in the way of instructions to the colonists, other than a promise to be back soon, and under no circumstances to activate the blast partition and go beneath it. Unfortunately, when they heard us making our forced entry into the facility, they had panicked, deployed the few turrets they had, and activated the one-time override for the door and ran beneath it. Now, they were stuck, and had no stomach for a fight.
At our behest, he displayed the other dozen or so colonists with him, 3 families, his included. He even promised to provide us access codes to the servers on the level below, as long as we didn''t kill them. Under further interrogation, he admitted there were several turrets guarding them, which he hurriedly deactivated.
The bulk of the platoon came down, and when Reed was instructed to, he opened the lab doors, revealing a long corridor lined with turrets. Our own drones quickly pushed in, robots cutting through partitions and breaking open cabinets till they made it to the small annex the refugees were huddled in.
Reed stood with his hands raised, protecting a thin little girl clinging to his legs, while the others stood behind them. They''d deposited their guns on the floor, and we had our bots sweep them away and scan them down for funny business. Other than one idiot who''d kept a knife in his boot, they proved no issue.
"I was telling the truth, you guys see that right? We''re not terrorists, we just got caught up in this mess!" He told us, shivering in terror as Watts forced him to his knees, and before he could protest, used a pneumatic gun to punch a stud into his forehead right into his frontal lobe. He screamed, trying to claw at it, but the device activated and stunned him, leaving him looking listless and lost.
"It''s this or a Parrot and handcuffs? Any volunteers?" Sanchez proclaimed, to the frightened assemblage, half of whom preferred the latter. Their mistake, in my opinion. The neural staples were not as bad as they looked, after punching a millimeter wide hole in your cranium, they didn''t pierce into the brain tissue, instead puncturing only the overlying meningeal layers and dispersing a thin bioabsorbable lace that only covered a part of the frontal lobe, meant to conduct just enough charge to make organized resistance futile. Entirely reversible and mostly harmless, which is more than can be said about Parrots even with reversal agents ready.
She hesitated before the crying little girl, and instead opted to gently stick a transdermal patch of some sedative on her cheek, leaving her knocked out in a few moments.
She turned to look at me, scanning my face for signs of disapproval, but truth be told we couldn''t have them running around behind us, or afford to leave drones behind to watch them. I''d seen more brutal ways of pacifying insurgents before.
Reed came back to his senses, initially fretful over his daughter, but relieved to see she hadn''t had her undeveloped brain fucked with a coghazard. "Thank you, we''re not the bad guys, dammit, I''ll give you the access code for the damn AI farm."
I stayed up with Watts and his boys this time as Hernandez lead the most heavily armored portion of his platoon to the labs, we hacked into the turrets belonging to Reed, and after a quick IFF update, they were happily guarding the prisoners, while I looked over their belongings. It seemed they''d only packed for their stay, which seemed consistent with leaving their domiciles to bear the storms for a week or two. I could see several of them were shivering with cold, for some reason the thermostat was stuck at a balmy 6 degrees Celsius, and they''d been unable to change it despite having access codes. Something about that number jogged my memory, but I set that aside for later.
This time, I watched the others move up to the access panel for the server rooms, and as Reed had promised, the access code allowed them to enter uncontested. I didn''t notice anything amiss as they methodically swept and disengaged the outgoing connections, before their Tech urgently pinged something of note.
The server room was disconnected from the overall system, and all traffic was coming from a line further down, all the way at the bottom. The AI wasn''t even running on the hardware it was supposed to. I checked the hardware, while it had been cutting edge in 2033, it was heavily antiquated now, and if someone was really set on it, they could run an AI that once needed a full server farm on something closer to workstation proportions. Further, they''d patched some known network vulnerabilities, so our hopes of hacking into it remotely were squashed.
At this point, all hell was let loose. It began with our drones detecting the opening of multiple lab doors, all below us, the ones nominally defunct due to "unauthorized intrusion". This was accompanied by billowing acrid smoke that immediately dropped down visibility to a handful of meters even after we''d lit up the ramp with IR illuminators. And what was even more concerning was the movement within the fog.
And suddenly, with no further ado, the turrets we''d supposedly hacked came online and opened fire indiscriminately. I was in the middle of examining some of their belongings when a burst of fire hit me, thankfully not armor piercing, or I''d have been incapacitated on the spot. My reflex boosters kicked in, the world slowing down to the point where, if I couldn''t dodge bullets, I could at least see the slower ones coming. I threw myself aside, knocking a screaming woman off her feet, and probably saving her by taking some bullets with her name on it. Another girl, barely a teen, wasn''t as lucky and took a round to the eyeball, smearing the contents of her brain all over the wall and causing the nerve staple to come flying loose, barely holding together a particularly meaty chunk. I managed to pivot on the ground to return fire, shooting one of the turrets before a round hit me directly on my visor, piercing through and just about being stopped by my reinforced skull.
It still knocked me down, my helmet bounced off the floor, my thoughts thoroughly rattled. I kept firing, to my surprise, the backup neural computer in my spine was capable of reasonably fine motor control, though it was lights out upstairs. I came to half a minute later to absolute chaos on the comms, surrounded by half a dozen dead bodies, the lucky ones those zoned out by the Parrot when they unceremoniously died. I had the mother of all headaches, and with hands still shaky from the massive dose of combat stims and painkillers, I poked at my temple to find a disconcertingly deep dent, the crackle of fractured plates shifting beneath my skin telling me it wasn''t a good idea to continue that particular endeavor.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
I backed myself up behind better cover, and attempted to get my bearings. A turret opened fire again, prompting me to toss a grenade overhand, which landed right next to it and put it down for good. Private Micky was dead, but he''d saved Reed''s little girl, who was still unconscious and drenched in his blood. I dragged her away to safety, and reached out to unhook his backpack and as expected found it stuffed full of explosives, which were nice but didn''t get me going nearly as much as some Crafter goodies did, not that I had time to read any labels. I staggered back on my feet, hooking into the camera feed of another dead Marine to confirm that none of the remaining turrets were operational.
Gunfire resounded from outside, feeds too chaotic for me to get a grasp on the situation, but as I picked up the kid after confirming everyone else was dead, I noticed Sanchez running into the site of that little massacre. She was worse for wear, her lighter power armor was mauled, one arm hanging loose, her fingers twitching like a poisoned cockroach while she swept ahead of her with a handgun. Her posture radiating visible relief when she saw me lugging the girl, almost no weight at all in the low gravity.
"Get to the hole, we''re climbing out, we need to bottleneck the bastards, we can''t hold them here!" She yelled, not trusting that comms were working. I paid heed, running out to find a firing line of Marines laying hate down the ramp,
I noticed a Hernandez running low on ammo, so I threw him a mag, before commencing raining down explosives I''d pilfered from the dead EOD operator. They detonated hard enough to shake the facility, but how much they did to stop the onslaught of Centauri warforms was questionable, because the very next moment a muscular tentacle wrapped itself around Hernandez''s leg and yanked him off the ramp. He fell in slow motion, giving agonizing amounts of time for us to attempt to disentangle him in vain. I leaned out and swung my monosword, yet it barely cut into the tentacle, which, contemptuously, threw him clear of anything to grab, so that he continued plummeting several hundred meters down into the abyss. Even in Martian gravity, I wouldn''t bet on his augments letting him survive the fall. At this point, when another bullet glanced off my helmet, I realized with some dismay that whatever we were fighting was shooting back.
The brand new concussion jogged my memory, reminding me of what struck me as unusual about the temperature in the facility. 6 degrees C was approximately the preferred temperature range for hibernating Centauri Warforms, at least before their accelerated metabolism kicked in and brought them to near boiling.
I caught my first glimpse of a Warform, a calf-sized pitbull from hell, bounding up on four legs and barreling over another soldier. He found himself pinned beneath it, and while he managed to bring up his vibroblade and stab it deep into its skull, no number of jabs seemed to quell its hatred. It bit down, jaws powerful enough to crush his arm even through the hardened power armor, at which point I was able to redirect my own gunfire and unload half a mag into the monster. For all its hideous biomechanical beauty, it didn''t prove immune to armor piercing .50 BMG, the shells blew fist sized chunks out of the fucker, though it took me enough bullets to outright chop through the neck before it finally fell down dead, giving the soldier enough leverage to throw the corpse aside and clamber back to relative safety.
I''d seen a similar creature dissected before, they had redundant systems out the wazoo. This breed wasn''t particularly smart, often slaved to controlling aliens or used as biological drones, but that meant that the three brain analogues were perfectly capable of functioning without each other, and even with all of them out for the count, the distributed nervous system resembled that of a terrestrial octopus, capable of driving the Warform right up to the point of catastrophic structural failure. Even decapitated, the Warform clambered back onto its feet and attempted to bum-rush us, only to be hit with an underbarrel grenade and knocked it to its doom. Unlike Hernandez, it might even be alive after impact, if in no position to fight on.
One of the remaining friendly drones flew by and picked up several explosive charges from where they lay next to my feet, and then buzzed down into the teeth of the horde, the resulting explosion threatened to throw me off my feet. This gave Sanchez an opportunity to to grab my arm and drag me back.
"Get your ass back upstairs now" She screamed, ichor dripping down her own visor. I picked up the remaining bombs and sprinted full speed for the hole, where several battered Marines held overwatch positions. My lace interfaced with the tactical AI, now rerouted to Sanchez''s systems after Hernandez was KIA, and it agreed with my decision to place several charges on structurally important pillars in the lab. That done, I took a boost from a lumbering mech, and climbed through to find myself on the upper level.
I had a minute to breathe, muting my lace''s urgent pings to seek care for the haematoma building up in my battered brain.
"But Pagliacci, I am the doctor."
A Marine flatlined next to me, but I was jolted back to my senses as his corpse suddenly jerked back on its feet, and smoothly picked up his dropped weapon. Looks like she''d enabled the Casualty Reanimation Mode, more commonly referred to as Zombie. Quite often in modern combat, injuries that might incapacitate humans wouldn''t do shit to the far more expensive combat equipment they''re using. A sabot round punching through a tank might easily kill the crew with shrapnel, yet hardly damage the combat effectiveness of the vehicle, especially those with more automated systems. Similarly, even though Corporal White, as my tac told me, had suffered irreversible brain damage from traumatic hypoxia, he still had his power armor and extensive cybernetics that didn''t give two shits that bossman upstairs had taken a dirt nap. Some might even say that they did better without him getting in the way with that pesky fear of death and other inhibitions.
Others joined him, throats gurgling from where holes spewing pink foam sucked down air for their reactivated lungs. I could have sworn I saw a hint of panic in a man, eyes still darting hither and thither as his body carried him back to the fight. Maybe he wasn''t fully dead, but the tac AI had given up on saving him and preferred to buy the living more time.
Sanchez and a dozen survivors emerged, and just after they got clear, the AI decided to detonate the explosives, the floor buckling beneath us as tons of concrete caved in, covering the hole for a moment.
She only let us rest for a moment before throwing us back into activity. Several drones diverted to disable the elevator in case something came crawling after us. The wounded were carried away upstairs, the Zombies ordered to sit tight and guard the temporarily collapsed opening. I could already feel frantic digging below, given the diversity of Centauri units, something capable of digging after us was almost a given.
We reorganized as best we could, an emergency transmission was made to HQ, and reinforcements were promised in 20 minutes. Not much, a QRF platoon of normal Marines, but certainly better than nothing, especially given they were bringing vehicles.
I discarded my oversized assault rifle as heavier ordnance was being distributed, snagging an automatic grenade launcher that ought to maul even the more resistant aliens.
Everyone else was quickly briefed on the Warforms, a process usually performed when a unit was voyaging over to the Kuiper wormholes. A stream of data poured into all our laces, giving us an overview of known types.
Of course, this was far from comprehensive, the Centaurs had several thousand known clades, with particular diversity in their combat Warforms. It seemed the ones we''d fought weren''t sapient on the level of a typical Centaur or human, operating with closer to the intelligence of a chimp or dolphin. Nodal creatures, designed to be disposable, were usually preferred over the sentient aliens. Thankfully, it seemed that the kind we''d encountered were nowhere near as potent as the norm, to create/gestate them, the technology needed was a cut above what was normally available to humanity, and this lot seemed to have been built using repurposed hardware from Moshowitz. Almost cutting edge hardware, but still incapable of producing the extremely advanced alloys and optoelectronics that they could normally wield. Further, it was conjectured that they were likely being coordinated by the hijacked base AI, in place of the nodal organisms.
As for the firearms they were wielding, our footage suggested they were 3D printed with sintered metal, but the facilities in the lab''s CNC workshop were more than capable of making lethal weapons.
At this point, our study session was interrupted by a rather unpleasant sound, that of klaxons wailing as the blast door we''d been struggling to cut through began opening. It was slow, but the barest crack was enough for a thin, semi-gelatinous Warform to squeeze through, shrugging off smaller caliber rounds, only to be burned away by a plasma flamethrower. Our attempts to jam the mechanisms were ineffective, they were buried deep in metal around the perimeter of the blast door.
Our defense was immediately disrupted by a missile launched at us through the aperture, stolen from a dead soldier below. It hit a Marine in the gut, punching through and scattering two others like ragdolls. I weathered the storm of shrapnel, and one of the specialists threw out a Crafter gadget, spawning a forcefield that brought us some reprieve. It was set up such that friendly projectiles could go outward but enemy shots were stopped, sparking off a translucent field. I took the opportunity to pelt them with GL fire, blowing limbs and appendages off, but hardly stemming the tide pouring out from the now quarter-open partition.
Following our tac AI''s cue, I tossed one of the Crafter grenades I had pilfered into the surging mass, it illuminated rather than exploded, a blast of light so concentrated it almost overwhelmed the filters on our visors, igniting exposed surfaces and charring several Warforms to a crisp. But by far the most effective defense we had was the plasma flamethrower, the searing hot plume torching Warforms like moths that finally made it to the flame. But now that the blast door was nearly fully open, it no longer had the coverage to keep them all at bay, and we began a fighting retreat, handing the device to a Zombie and retreating full speed to the top.
"I talked to the tac, we can''t hold inside, our best bet is to make it to the surface and hold the entrance, we can keep them pinned long enough for help." Sanchez said, grimacing as a medic cut into her mangled arm, threading artificial nerves into the wound, a remarkably painful process since there was no time for anesthesia, not to mention it would make it take longer to calibrate and integrate.
The last of the Zombies were tasked to hold on and long as possible, and we emerged out the airlock, to find the sandstorm had worsened to apocalyptic proportions. At least it sandblasted the worst of the gore off me, but it was hardly a bonus to visibility since we couldn''t see more than a few feet away. I hefted my grenade launcher, grimly preparing to fight to the end, when news of something far more concerning reached us.
THIS IS AN AUTOMATED MESSAGE TO ALL USMA PERSONNEL, THIS AREA IS NOW UNDER THE JURISDICTION OF TURING
Article 2 is now in effect, you have 17 minutes to clear the area before area-denial weaponry is employed in your vicinity
"FUCK, they just shut down airspace over Hellas, we can''t even get our dropship in." Sanchez swore like a sailor, sending out requests for aid that I doubted would receive satisfactory answers.
When Turing says Jump!, even the almighty USGov would be trying to achieve orbital velocity post haste.
"What are we waiting around for?" I asked, already boarding one of the vehicles, only to turn around and see she was still stationary, impotently glaring at the entrance to the lab.
She turned to face me, her figure a blur amidst the billowing storm.
"Infohazard. You don''t want to know." She said curtly, before snapping her fingers, coincident with the Marines halting in their tracks and moving back to her, leaving me with the now empty vehicle pool.
I was torn, a decade of training had rammed the importance of that phrase into my thick skull. You did your best 3 monkeys impression when your commanding officer told you that, because being deaf, dumb and blind often beat out being dead.
Thing is, Captain Sanchez wasn''t my CO. And the thought of trying to make my own way through a record breaking sandstorm and through whatever perimeter Turing had set up didn''t sound particularly appealing. If I had already gotten on their bad side, my UN credentials would only entail a mostly intact corpse being mailed back with condolences.
Enough of this nonsense, if she and her goons had a death wish, I didn''t have any desire to let them take me with them.
I took my leave instead, leaving the survivors grudgingly sorting out their equipment, especially a large briefcase with radiation warnings. Were they seriously planning to nuke the place? It might be a last resort, but this cat had been hard done by curiosity already.
I gunned it, relying on inertial guidance maps to keep the vehicle on a mostly safe route, even though whatever passed for a trail had been long buried beneath fresh sand. Still safe enough, the vehicle was elevated too high for the typical Martian boulder. yet I reduced our speed to sane levels when I was confident we''d cleared any potential blast zone.
It was at this point that I noticed that I''d brought along a surprise guest, as the little girl cuffed in the back came to, noticed that she was covered in blood, and began wailing so hard that I almost dented the roof with my helmet in my panic.
Sanchez, you absolute bitch.
Interlude 1.0: Chinese Takeout
3rd October 2038
I looked at a number, steadily climbing monotonously higher, with the occasional jarring jump upwards, and very rarely downwards.
Like many a gamer today, I was staring at a ping value, representing the round-trip time between messages, but unlike the most oppressed of all demographics, this figure now well into the dozens of hours represented my wife steadily leaving the solar system. You''d have to be really into correspondence chess over snail-mail to even get close.
I''m sure gamers regularly contend with their wives leaving them, so I poured myself a drink in their honor. This one was the last of many, because I was attempting to drown my sorrows in vodka, as I sat cloistered on a rooftop bar. The place advertised itself primarily on the great ocean view, but I presume such advertisement was largely tongue in cheek because even in a mobile seasteading city-fleet like this one, you''d have to try pretty hard not to be able to see the sea.
Seagulls squawked and swarmed overhead, eyeing my appetizers but wisely keeping their distance as the ultrasonic and laser repellents unobtrusively positioned on the deck would hardly hesitate to give them a good tickling should they dive bomb me. What works for the drone works for the gander, and other variety of aerial fauna.
A pod of dolphins frolicked a few meters away, turning tricks for eager tourists throwing them scraps, while a few that had control implants kept other oceanic riff-raff at bay. You could tell that the locals, mostly of Taiwanese refugee stock, had become partially inured to the display, but even the most hard-hearted still had a ghost of a smile on their face as they saw such unreserved playfulness. I was mulling over both the prospect of another glass of Californian Cirrhosa and getting my liver gene modded to cope with my new hobby when my lace gently pinged me, indicating another bystander expressing a desire to have a chat.
Sure buddy, whatever rocks your boat. I didn''t really want to talk, but the most recent message that Anjana had sent me included a mild admonishment to not be a total mopey shut-in in her absence.
He walked over, a tall man in the kind of waterproof outfit that indicated less than total confidence in navigating the more irregular ad-hoc walkways that connected the gently moving vessels; or the automated gondolas that taxied about the quasi-bay the crescent shaped fleet created.
He settled into the empty chair opposite mine, an expression of enthusiasm on his young face.
"Dr. Sen! What a surprise to see you here of all places." He said, tapping the menu and prompting a server bot to trundle over with a cocktail in tow.
I''d already checked his AR tags, but like many here, he''d had privacy controls enabled, even the normally active identity broadcasts. So I asked him the old fashioned way-
"Sorry, have we met? My memory is a little hazy right now, for many reasons." I gestured at the half-finished glass on the table, while the bot saved me some minor embarrassment by discreetly sweeping all the other empty ones away.
"Of course! I fully understand, you UNSEEN folk take amnestics like candy. Did they sever you?" He enquired earnestly.
"Severed? What, no- Oh wait, you mean like in that show?" I responded, recalling an older tv show that had presciently been one of the first to depict what it might be like to be forced to partition your work and life memories.
"Uh huh."
"Nothing that drastic, thank god. I remember my life outside work when I''m in there, though the obverse isn''t true. I presume that I was on the stronger grade of amnestics when we spoke, because I can''t remember the foggiest thing about you." I replied, swirling my glass and letting the ice cubes clink against each other.
"I get it, thankfully us CDSD operatives get a little more leeway."- I sat a little straighter, this guy was a spook from the Californian Digital Security Department. That explained the privacy controls, which even a little nudge online hadn''t budged. I wasn''t overly worried about him trying to something as gauche as turn me, not out in the open like this, but I was already mildly annoyed at something potentially work-related following me here- "Hey, no need to get alarmed, this isn''t about the Petersen case." He quickly continued.
"Anyway, reintroductions are in order. I''m Daniel Wang, Project Lead and Liason with Turing. We met a couple weeks back, in Atlantis. We spoke quite a bit, and I do want to share -again-my condolences about your wife."
At this point, Atlantis had only been barely dredged out of the seabed, with its proximity to Californian Hawaii, it saw more than its fair share of Cali bureaucrats. I warmed up a little to him when he mentioned Anjana, because public draft updates had yet to broadcast the fact that she''d already been shanghai''d to Alpha Centauri. Must have been something I''d shared myself at one point or another.
"Fuck the Feds." I said, downing the remainder of my glass.
"Fuck the Feds indeed. Here, a toast to the gone but not forgotten." I returned the favor and mimed drinking from the empty glass. If anyone shared my seething hatred for the Federal United States, it was a Cali. "Anyway, I had a short layover in New Taipei, and I''m glad I ran into you. Heading somewhere yourself?"
I shook my head. "Nah, they had to vacate the temp offices because of overhead construction for a couple days. Some crazy new megastructure they''d rather blow the budget on. I''m working remote this week, but then I decided to make use of some of that shore-leave I saved up lately."
Working remote, oh how I missed it. This was back when I merely had GREEN clearance, and they''d let me do pretty much anything that wasn''t explicitly field-work out of the office.
"I get it. Fantastic sushi here, though I''m getting used to tipping dolphins." That prompted a rumble in my stomach, and I decided to dampen the alcohol with some food.
"By the way, they did partially declassify that whitepaper on Theoretical Capabilities we talked about before, in case you wanted to read it while in khaki."
I looked at the link with interest, it had already percolated down to us GREENs, though the metadata still contained no end of argument as to whether it would be cleared for public release.
Why? Because it was fucking terrifying, that''s why.
The fact that the list of collaborators on the paper included scientists from entities as mutually frigid if not outright hostile as the Federal US, the Californian and Lone Star Republics, the Reformed Chinese State, India, the Soviet Reunion and the EU all on one document was evidence enough that it dealt with the "theoretical capabilities" of the one thing that would let them put down their pitchforks, or rather, make them form a phalanx while brandishing it in its direction, the Aliens.
Daniel, or Dan, as he now freely gave me permission to call him, excused himself momentarily because his family, all refugees from Taiwan, had arrived at the bar to meet him. I took the opportunity to dig into the condensed summary.
The Tip of the Iceberg: A Comprehensive Overview of Known and Suspected Technological Capabilities of the Alien Threat - Kahnemann et al
Limited Distribution Only
The detection of relativistic kill vehicles inbound for the Solar System, with an expected ETA of 3 months and 22 days presents an unforseen and accelerated escalation in the threat presented by the Centauri civilization.
After the establishment of the first metahuman-enabled beachhead 0.2 ly from Alpha Centauri, both remote monitoring and Clairvoyant observation strongly suggested that the prior working timeline derived by Williams and Ganguly has been upended. Further, this paper, with the kind assistance of multiple narrowly superhuman AGI licensed from Turing, seeks to present a brand new understanding of the alien''s technological base and their likely road map to bootstrap to unchecked technological dominance, unassailable by Humanity without resorting to drastic and unacceptable measures such as an unschackling of the SAMSARA system and other violations of long enshrined international treaties.
Three months ago, relativistically adjusted to Earth time, the first successful full in-system flyby past the External Line of Control since 2035 revealed glaring disparities between projected and previously detected alien infrastructure projects and the ground truth.
As disconcerting as it may be, it is now impossible to deny that Humanity has been mistaken in believing that the hard fought engagements in the outskirts of the AC system had the desired effect of locking down the ability of the aliens to send relativistic Von Neumann probes out of the system, or project force capable of threatening Earth within the next decade.
The researchers wish to emphasize that we have no intention of directing blame in this disregard at Admiral Torez, and the Joint Task Force Fleet that successfully prosecuted the Sandusky-Haven strategy of limited containment, at great cost in human lives and materi¨¦l.
No, the failings we describe are far more insidious and systemic, and reflect an gross tendency of all relevant parties at underestimating the unknown-unknowns in alien capabilities. This document serves as the first attempt to rectify this error.
The following are believed to have contributed to our failure overall:
1) Prior models that suggested the infeasibilty of stealth and the near certainty that our automated observatories near the AC system would detect drive signatures in time for intervention, metahuman or otherwise, have proven deeply flawed.
2) An exhaustive audit by Turing revealed the subversion of several of the AGI in the Joint Task Force Fleet, primarily in subfleets Laniakea and Sirius by a series of novel chained zero-day vulnerabilities.
3) Memetic subversion of high-ranking human personnel in system, including members of the Metahuman Task Force.
Failure of Detection:
Thermal detection of a new series of alien warship optimized for concealment, resembling the "Hydrogen Steamer" concept previously theorized, was started too late and with insufficiently comprehensive coverage.
Such vessels were believed to have already slipped past the sensor net as early as 2033, successfully reaching the previously unknown rogue exoplanet Hymir at the beginning of 2034. Clairvoyant augmented analysis suggests that the aliens used the sheer thermal mass and atmospheric coverage of the Ice Giant to disguise high intensity industrial activity, with the successful assembly of RKV launch systems that are only now being tracked down and partially neutralized by Metahuman Task Force Sleipnir.
It seems that the aliens have intentionally been working slower than they physically could on the linear and circular accelerators that they knew Humanity could see, within the AC system itself, in a successful attempt to lure us into complacency. The visible systems also seem to be technologically inferior compared to the ones they built in hiding, with projected performance metrics of maximum acceleration and impactor size both much lower than we now know is within their capabilities.
The currently detected batch of impactors, only serendipitously discovered by a teleporter-assisted Chinese warship when they struck minor interstellar debris, are believed to have been launched as early as February 2034.
It is theorized that by carefully timing their launches (the RKV accelerators themselves well beyond modern human capabilities, with demonstrated capabilities of accelerating projectiles to 97% the speed of light), and likely with the aid of information obtained by subversion, the Aliens used the shade of Hymir to disguise launch signatures from our observatories and probes at the outskirts of the primary system.
Exhaustive efforts by UN Clairvoyants have also detected several thousand more suspected Hydrogen Steamers, with at least 300 currently out of the range of any Human vessels tasked with interdiction. Many have targets that suggest further rogue exoplanets, previously undetected brown/black dwarfs, or an attempt to make it to star systems that our own colonial ventures haven''t reached.
Unlike the original Hydrogen Steamer concept, which traded any degree of speed for stealth, these vessels have torch drives capable of accelerations of unprecedented magnitude, as high as 200 g in limited bursts, while maintaining minimal drive signature by heat dissipation techniques including directed neutrino heat radiators and potentially even more exotic particles. Detection of such vessels is extremely difficult due to their ability to cryogenically cool their external surfaces by boiling liquid hydrogen, to temperatures near the thermal noise limits of even the best superconducting detectors at our disposal.
We would go as far as to suggest that it is possible that they successfully cool some models to the temperature of the microwave background radiation, which is a chilling possibility, pun intended. (Research suggests that mild levity helps reduce acute stress reactions to bad news)
Enemy Within:
While Turing has refrained from sharing the reasons for its sudden (and then decried as unnecessarily disruptive) audit, for obvious info-sec reasons, the subsequent detection of several AGI models (Hydrogen class primarily, but also a more advanced Molybdenum included) having been compromised by the Aliens serves as wakeup call to observers who believed that our control over one of our greatest advantages over the aliens (referring to both metahuman and AI) were unassailable.
Chain of contact analysis revealed that several technicians and non-Turing scientists had harbored sympathies for the Aliens, some going as far as to become saboteurs. In the process of figuring out how they had been able to hide their activities from regular surveillance, it was discovered that metahuman interference was involved.
While legislative efforts to outright ban advocacy for peace or cooperation with the Aliens have not been successful, the researchers (with noted dissent from Banerjee, Malkovich and Ulbrecht), request stricter screening of future candidates, even those subject to draft.
We now raise the very real possibility that Centauri agents, at least in the form of their own AI or mind uploads, have infilirated the Terragen Sphere of Influence.
Readers carrying UN INDIGO or equivalent clearance levels may peruse a list of those arrested or terminated for involvement at [REDACTED].
As of the time of publication, we are unable to say with certainty what proportion of traitors were "true believers" or subject to memetic brainwashing (leaving aside the philosophical debate as to whether that is even a useful schema of categorization).
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Here are further capabilities, some once deemed impossible within the Extended Standard Model of Physics, implicitly or explicity derived from-
The first hint that things had gone sideways was the UN Employee Time Management software on my lace popping up a notification that I had begun receiving payment due to being back on the clock.
Dan walked back, with a younger version of himself in tow, and was about to make introductions before he noticed the perplexed look on my face.
"Bad time?" He asked, as the kid shyly peered out from behind his legs.
"I just got a ping saying I''m apparently working, and getting paid for it. I don''t want to get in trouble with UN Auditors, so I''m trying to sort that out" I explained, getting more vexed as the dumber brand of AI responsible for personnel management was being obtuse as to why that was the case.
"Haha, you might want to join us instead, I''ve never had my wages garnished for something like that." He joked, before stopping as we got got pings.
He looked to me with an expression that mirrored the one on my face. "Hey, did you get just get notified that you''ve been appointed as a deputy police officer in the New Taipei flotilla? With the cryptographic badge too?"
"Jesus, and there I was thinking I was going crazy. I''m going to try and escalate to-"
At this point, a VTOL, that had been presumably hovering unobtrusively in the background and to which I''d so far paid no heed, made itself moderately more obtrusive by exploding.
It fell out of the sky, trailing smoke and fire, but thanks to the relative sparsity of the underlying ships, hit nothing but open ocean.
Alarm sirens began blaring, and when the New Taipei fleet lived in constant existential terror that their continental cousins would come back to finish the deal, you better believe they had some loud klaxons installed.
Gunfire and further explosions commenced, out of my direct line of sight this time.
The deck was in turmoil, screaming patrons running for jetskis and water scooters, tourists desperately checking for the ships with bomb shelters. I swore I saw some mad bastard swim off on the back of a dolphin, or it might have been the vodka.
One of the human servers ran up to us and was about to open her mouth and ask us to seek cover when Dan and I, in concert, pulled out our virtual badges. She stammered, and then with his assent, began shepherding his family to safety.
"First day on the job eh?" I asked him.
"I''d like to think that we''re overqualified. C''mon, let''s see what the fuck is going on." I joined him in running over to one of the unmanned taxis that too proved amenable to a flash of our badge.
We sailed off at what I thought was a frankly unsafe speed, though my impressions of the same were colored by being a child in the transitional period when fully self driving vehicles weren''t the norm.
We didn''t hit anything of note, and the boat pulled up at a small dock attached to a much larger ship, an old crude oil hauler turned into an apartment on the waves. This was where we''d been summoned, a rally point where the so far cryptic messages informing us of our purpose promised that all would be made clear.
To say that I felt that we''d already walked into a crime scene would be understating it, because while the continuing gunfire we''d been chasing was still ahead of us, the two separate clusters of men in this room held onto their weapons like they had few qualms of using them on each other.
On one side of the hastily repurposed meeting room where a group in the colors of the Chinese Metahuman Police, defiantly holding their ground as they were stared down by the bristling Taiwanese officials on the other side. They furled their brow through their transparent visors as I gave them a thumbs up for not shooting quite yet, and walked over to the Taiwanese gang.
Dan wasn''t as reflexively mad at them as the locals were, presumably because while the relationship between China and the Californian Republic was cool, it wasn''t as frigid as the former''s with the Federal US. Adversity made for strange bed fellows, and the two could hold their noses and work together to contain their mutual rival. But he certainly wasn''t fond of them either, since his family were refugees themselves.
"Good. The UN are here. Dr. Sen, kindly tell these Mainland scum to fuck off to Beijing before we make them." A bald and muscular man told me. He had his tags on, so I could see he was Mayor Hou Yingwei. The ones backing him were largely veterans of the now officially defunct Taiwanese military, now working as Civil Defense militia.
"I''d like to know what the hell is going on before I make any judgements here, is that alright?" I asked him placatingly, and turned to see what the Chinese delegation said in response.
"Dr. Sen, I can only apologize for the behavior of these irredentists. Would that I could greet you in a more befitting manner, but circumstances must." One of their members, a Major Han Kaicheng said.
"Okay.. Someone mind telling me what''s actually going on? " I asked again.
"What''s going on? These bastards are violating our micronation''s sovereignty, that''s what''s happening. Fuck them and their 18 generations of ancestors. We''re not going to stand for this."
"And why exactly are they doing this? Correct me if I''m wrong, but this isn''t an attempt at annexation is it?"
"Right, right." Both Major and Mayor looked a little sheepish.
The former spoke up first. "We''re here to serve a draft notice to a metahuman living in New "Taipei". Unfortunately, these local yokels leaked it, and the target was spooked in advance. Now look at what you''ve done." He spat in Yingwei''s direction.
"What we''ve done? Motherfucker, you have no right to be here, and as since he''s a citizen of the Taiwanese Government-in-exile, we''re legally obligated to-"
"To hell with that old man. We tried to make it easy on you and give you prior notice, unlike your paranoid delusions, we have no desire to annex your glorified fishing village-"
"Then get your thugs out of here now. We are a sovereign micronation fully entitled to-"
"Micronation my unwiped ass, as per the motion filed in the General Assembly, all people of first or second generation descent who-"
"A measure that didn''t pass, I might remind you", I attempted to interject but was ignored as a stream of Chinese invective broke out from both ends faster than my lace could translate.
I looked at Dan, who shrugged helplessly in response. They gotten to a frankly incomprehensible argument about the finer points about the legality of repurposing ships initially registered in Taiwan when another explosion shook our ship and startled them to their senses.
"Mind explaining what that''s about?" I asked, with no need to yell for once.
They looked at each other with disdain before the Major spoke up first- "That is why the Mayor called you. They stupidly broke secrecy before our collections team could secure the target. And now that his little fleet is going up in flames.."
The Mayor gritted his teeth, but before another slapfight started, I forced myself back into the conversation. "The UN takes breaches of the sovereignty of its member states very seriously, Mayor, and I promise you this will be escalated to the relevant authorities. But right now, can we agree to do what''s needed to get Major Kaicheng to leave? I can''t imagine you want whatever the hell is going on out there either."
He sighed and shook his head. "No. We''re going to have to work together to sort this out, but I promise you lawsuits are coming."
"Alright. Correct me if I''m wrong, but an attempt to simultaneously serve a draft notice to a metahuman of contested citizenship went wrong, and now they''re fighting back in the middle of the fleet?"
They both nodded.
"Alright. Are civilians in danger at this moment?"
"All New Taipei ships are fitted with emergency submersible life vessels. Anyone who had even a few minutes of warning made it out safely, or at least to a hardened ship designed as a bomb shelter. But we''ve lost contact with where the fighting is, so I don''t know for sure."
"Thank you. May I presume it''s the Metahuman Police who are currently interdiction the suspect?"
"Affirmative. We''ve even taken more casualties than we needed to, all in a pointless bid to prevent harm to the helpless civilians who needlessly endanger themselves on the high seas. I''ve already called in reinforcements, but the Mayor has actively fired warning shots from the AA grid even though we''ve explicitly broadcast peaceful intent."
"Peaceful intent? We know what happened when Chinese aircraft last overflew Taiwan!"
"ENOUGH." I yelled, startling him. "There are lives at stake, please tell me both sides have taken measures to stop more from being lost."
He looked at me unhappily, but clicked his fingers, prompting a display to come to life.
It showed a vessel that had clearly done more than it''s fair share of duty as a cruise ship, now steadily sailing away as smaller vessels scrambled to get clear.
"When most of the civilians have evacuated, we ordered the ship''s systems to try and get as clear of the fleet as possible while staying in our aerial defense umbrella."
"Finally a smart decision. Now, if you''d just consent to letting our reinforcements board the ship-"
I coughed.
"Alright. Dr. Sen, we asked the locals to call you over because we could use your help. And any others who might be of use too." The Major nodded at Dan.
"I get that. Is this so urgent that you don''t feel a need to brief me?"
"No, no, that would be remiss of me. Here-" He took over the display, which glitched and fuzzed for a second. From the Mayor''s slightly more annoyed expression, it had been hacked instead of a more polite means of connection.
"This is the target. We''re prepping another VTOL, an unarmed one this time-" He glanced at the Mayor-"So take your time to get acquainted. It''ll be here within a few minutes if they''re being cooperative for once."
A dossier appeared on the screen:
Citizen Hu Junya (Estranged)
Occupation: Applied Metallurgist
Classification: Moon Level (ÔÂÁÁµÈ¼¶) Metallokinetic (with broad spectrum telekinetic powers)
I mentally converted the Chinese power ranking scheme to the newly developed Wanton scale, pegging it to roughly a Class 4.
Projected resistance to draft: 46%
Make that a hundred percent now.
Recommended method for servicing notice: Standard memetic conditioning, emphasize blood ties to relatives in the Mainland and reunited Taiwan. The presence of a staff psychologist at hand is strongly suggested. Avoid the use of force as far as possible since surveillance shows a mentally brittle state and propensity to react poorly to direct recruitment.
That was putting it lightly.
When it detected I''d read it all, it flashed to a high level overview of events before things went south, including snippets of surveillance footage that hadn''t been gotten through entirely above board means, if the angry reaction from the Mayor and his staff were any hint. Dan did me a solid and began placating them, fluently switching to Chinese as he did so.
The CMP had infiltrated the flotilla before sending a notification regarding the draft notice, which had presumably been leaked by their less than sympathetic counterparts. Something had tipped off Hu Junya to the presence of the armed military police waiting in the VTOL loitering outside (the metal of their weapons?), resulting in a rather impressive display of telekinetic might as the craft was crumpled and thrown out of the sky as if the invisible hand of an angry god had taken offence to it rising above its station.
I paused for a second and asked the Major a question. "Do you plan to take him alive?"
"Yes, and we will go to all lengths necessary to do so."
I looked back, and now the screen switched to more chaotic footage, all bodycams and internal CCTVs that quickly stopped working in quick succession. From what I could tell, he''d also detected the plain clothes team aboard his ship, that had been preparing whatever measures needed to capture him. Using memetic agents first, in all likelihood, and then kicking down the door second. I wondered if he was among those metahumans with a known resistance to memetic conditioning, and whether that attempt had been what had set him off.
The footage showed an intense gunfight, Hu Junya tearing through the metal internal dividers of the ship as if they were cling wrap. Anything further down the periodic table than argon was grist to his mill. I watched the panicked POV of a CMP officer as a door tore itself off it''s hinges, turned sideways, and flew at high speed towards him, fast enough that even its blunt edges bisected the two armed officers shooting ahead of him, and then struck him with an impact that threw him to the corner of the narrow hallway. His view shifted to the floor, unmoving, as a bloody Hu Junya stalked into frame, surrounded by a buzzing cloud that revolved around him that the camera''s poor resolution barely resolved into bullets.
Guns exploded in hands, the few fools with metal knives had them stabbed into their own stomach, one woman had her implants ripped out of her skull, to join the floating objects still circling Hu Junya with bits of bloody grey matter still stuck to them.
A pair of screaming civilians ran past him, and he let them go, his face grimly set as he lightly gestured, a pistol wielded by a plainclothes MP turning in his grasp as he struggled to wield it, the panic evident in his face as the trigger moved of its own volition and the weapon discharged itself into his face.
Chains strangled, moving like snakes, old-fashioned eye glasses embedded themselves into skulls. Another officer dangled in the air, lifted up by what was presumably some kind of large metal implant. The next moment, it revealed itself to be a titanium internal leg fixator, visible where it separated with enough force to tear most of his leg off. He was then summarily clubbed to death with it, till his brains ran on the floor.
I scrubbed forward, but in the footage available he didn''t show any signs of targeting civilians. Were they his neighbors? Colleagues?
I drew up his old records in my lace. Before Taiwan fell, he''d been an unassuming clockmaker, working for a local company. His wife had been one of the many casualties during the attempted occupation, his son had been studying at a mainland university before he''d been sent to a re-education camp, though he had been eventually discharged and emigrated to the newly opened lunar colonies. He had other kin, both on the island and elsewhere.
I didn''t want to apprehend this man. The pain of losing Anjana was fresh in my mind, and I didn''t want this man, who had lived an unassuming and productive life, even using his newly discovered powers to work on a local refinery ship, to suffer the same fate.
I didn''t feel as if I had any choice in the matter. I could only hope this could be resolved with no further bloodshed.
Interlude 1.1: Ghost Ship
I''m not a slouch when it comes to combat. Far from it. I had dodged snipers in Appalachia, killed suicide bombers in Armenia, and pissed my pants under artillery bombardment in the South China Sea.
But, as expected, they weren''t particularly interested in that, they had enough warm bodies to throw at the problem as is, or robots for the matter. I was wanted because of my psychiatrist credentials (ladies.. Get you a shrink that can make you think).
Yu Hunwa had taken hostages. Mainland Chinese hostages, but I didn''t hold that against them, certainly not to the extent that I was willing to let them die when I could at least try to help. So when it turned out they wanted me to act as a negotiator, something I had in fact been trained for, I could only say yes. (Leaving aside that the UN were paying me to do so and there would be some nasty recriminations if I said no)
After some further mediation by Dan, who promised to bring the weight of Californian diplomacy to bear if the Chinese overstepped their already nonexistent welcome, another batch of Chinese MPs and commandos assembled at the docks.
If you guys have seen the classic X-Men movies, you might recall that attempts at apprehending that metallokinetic known as Magneto usually involved sending troops armed with non-metal equipment, including their firearms. While there were ceramic and plastic alternatives, the fact that we''d be entering a ship made almost entirely of metal made that moot.
They did rearm themselves with more nonlethal weaponry, they seemed serious about the whole "taking him alive" thing.
Propositions to flood the ship with nerve agents were shot down by the Taiwanese, since there was a risk of civilians still being trapped on board.
We''re past the Russian opera house days, thankfully, and reversal agents are readily available for the same, but only if you can reach the poor unfortunates trapped or hiding somewhere out of the way. It might have been the first choice if the Chinese MPs could get away with it, but no matter their protestations, New Taipei was in fact a distinct and independent polity under international law, and there would be consequences for the rodeo they''d run so far.
I explained to them that I had been drinking, and with an understanding look, both the Major and the Mayor fished out their personal stock of ADH enzyme tablets. For genetic reasons, people of East Asian descent were less resistant to the effects of alcohol by default, and the bar certainly stocked some if I had the time to grab them. Not wanting to offend either party, I took a couple from each to make up the dose.
Feeling my mind go from moderately tipsy to something approximating sobriety, I asked Major Kaicheng if he''d brought metahuman support and received a contrite no.
They''d had the bulk of their forces deployed in the ever unquiet Xinjiang, or on what was left of Taiwan for the matter. They were doing their best to retask some, but as of this moment the government was more inclined to throw baselines into the grinder than retask their strategic deterrents like Dragon Level (ÁúµÈ¼¶) operatives (lower class 5s or upper 4s).
On the higher end, the majority were outright classified, though I had heard of them experimenting with using a high level metahuman with incredibly "truth" enforcing abilities in their own judicial system. They usually kept their cards close to their chest, at least outside of their own contribution to the JTF Fleet or the Metahuman Task Force in AC.
"Hey, Adat. I''m joining in on the other end alright? I''ll do my best to make sure you don''t get shafted in there. " Dan told me, now in apparel at least partially reminiscent of a suit.
"I appreciate it. I don''t think they''re going to burn me, they''re on thin ice with the UN as is." I told him. I should have prefaced this with a ''likely'', because in a vacuum, a mere mid-level bureaucrat moonlighting as a shrink was nowhere near as important as as a Class 4 in their eyes (nor mine for the matter).
I put on body armor, but nothing powered. Weapons were moot, because he''d shown no interest in killing civilians (non-mainland) as of yet, and I don''t think I look particularly Chinese. I did my best to look presentable, quickly lasering off my increasingly unkempt beard. I missed Anjana, she''d have been on my case about it a week back.
I was just about prepped when we got word that the Chinese, despite my protestations to the contrary, were going to send more MPs in first.
God fucking dammit. Their primary psychologist was dead, and their secondary was one of the hostages, I''m sure both of them had already done their fair share of yelling at this blatantly unproductive course of action, but I still did my best to dissuade them. My advice fell on deaf ears.
The CCP (Reformed) had sent over a fancy new toy that their higher ups were eager to see in the field, some kind of Crafter gizmo that had the ability to nullify metahuman powers. The squad of troops responsible for deploying it didn''t look happy in the least about it. They had the stares of dead men walking, only waiting to be lowered into the coffin. But they were disciplined, and suited up before picking up the device and heading to another VTOL.
I watched them leave, the lonely helicopter beating the air into submission as it approached the vessel. It wasn''t immediately obvious whether or not he was attempting to attack them, but I assume the field might be preventing it.
The CMP were extremely protective about their new toy, and didn''t share the video feed from their new team, I stood on deck, watching it hover above the ship, now gently listing with smoke rising from the gaping scars on its sides.
A rope was dropped, and about half the team fast-roped down, while the more enhanced cyborgs or those in exoskeletons simply jumped down the 20 or so feet to the deck. The device was lowered far more gently.
I watched them enter, and as I had expected all along, the moment the heli left the device''s limited radius, it was pummeled by an invisible force, slamming hard into the ocean in a spray of sea water. It might even have been survivable, but only if they''d packed scuba gear.
The callous bastards had sent a manned chopper.
The Major stared on, face nominally impassive, but I could tell even he wasn''t happy with the higher ups calling the shots from Beijing.
It took me a moment to realize the distant thumps were gunfire, dampened as they were coming from the bowels of the ship. The Major closed his eyes, murmuring a soft prayer for the dead. Soon, there was nothing but silence, the lonely ship now floating in the impromptu harbor formed by all the others evacuating to a nominally safe distance. Nobody spoke but the irreverent gulls, content to squawk and shit all over everything. Even the dolphins had run for the open ocean.
"Dr. Sen. It''s on you now." The Major told me. I sighed, and mentally handed the Mayor an info package containing all the things I''d been meaning to say to Anjana, but had been too picky about the wording to send quite yet. Foolish of me, because soon, she''d be leaving faster than my messages could follow.
I stepped out onto the deck, where an unmanned boat was waiting for me. The water was deep and murky, if there were evac subs lurking underneath, I couldn''t see them.
Several Taiwanese drones had preceded my advance, broadcasting a message saying an unarmed negotiator was approaching. Yu Hunwa didn''t blast these ones out of the sky, so he presumably got the memo.
I sailed smoothly across the open water, salt spray ruining my attempt at arranging my hair. I hadn''t entirely let myself go since what happened a few months back, but it was close.
I wondered if she felt much the same as I did, lost in a sea of black instead of blue. It was lonely out there, while her voyage wouldn''t take the minimum 4 years to AC that traveling at the mere speed of light would take, it was still the better part of a year. Most of it spent out of the Solar System, where teleporter infrastructure was scarce. They''d almost finished staging the next set of wormholes, somewhere far enough it wasn''t trivial for the aliens to swat them out of existence. Not far enough in my eyes, since I knew she''d inevitably end up on the front lines.
I missed her a lot, you know? I still woke up every day, half convinced that she had never left. The fact that I kept her side of the duvet untucked just the way she''d liked it didn''t help. It took a bit of wrangling to get the cleaning bot we''d both been so happy about buying to leave it alone, but I''d managed it nonetheless.
We''d met when I had been discharged from the USAF (Army, not the Chairforce), when I''d been more than a little lost as the world was changing faster than I could handle. She''d been in med school too, but had developed her powers early enough that she didn''t have any qualms about just dropping the whole thing and leaning into her gift.
Even back then, the writing was on the cards, and the need for human doctors had gone from a nice-to-have to a luxury, except for unusual circumstances. A teleporter of her grade was utterly wasted there.
She''d saved lives. Not mine, that would be a little too melodramatic of me, but she gave me a brand new and precious reason to live.
To say our romance was whirlwind was to severely understate it for once. I smiled, temporarily lost to the world, as I recalled the great lengths I''d gone to to hide all the individual letters that made up "Will you marry me?" as I lead her on a scavenger hunt across the globe.
She''d groaned when I finally pointed them all out on my dinky old cellphone, before punching my chest and then embracing me in a hug that made my heart ache to recall. Of course, she might have just been huddling for warmth, since at that moment we''d been standing on the very peak of Mount Everest, scaring the bejesus out of a pair of Indonesian climbers when we''d first apparated out of thin air. Got a nasty fine from the Nepalese government too, but with how much she made, it was nothing at all.
Man, I really missed not having to pay for Ubers for several years. She''d always done her hair while I waited impatiently, tapping my feet, before getting up, grabbing my wrist and teleporting me right to where I was working before departing, only after a smoldering kiss. Always made it to work right on the clock too.
I wish I had maintained this train of thought as the vessel loomed ever larger, but a sudden realization of what I was doing made me retch, and I narrowly refrained from emptying my stomach into the waves. Was my attempt at getting this man to surrender to the draft any better than what the the FedUS bastards who took her did?
They''d held me hostage, black bagged me and showed her my unconscious form on camera. That''s what made her come in, catching a teleporter who didn''t want you to was never easy, let alone someone as powerful as Anjana.
I knew that if Yu Hunwa''s wife was alive, she''d have been the bait too. I think he''d have accepted that, if it meant she''d live.
We can''t all get what we want.
The boat gently pulled up at the ship''s dock, the gently insistent beeping shocking me out of my reverie.
"Agent Adat here. I''m boarding the vessel." I said hopping onto the platform. The hatch was open, likely someone fleeing who had been too terrified to take the time to close it. Due to the ship''s list, the peaks of the waves were splashing in. I lowered myself into the vessel, to find the entrance half flooded.
I waited for a moment to see if any acknowledgement from my handlers was forthcoming, but my lace told me I''d lost signal.
I advanced into the low-lying level of the ship, relieved that the electricity was working. I felt something bump into my leg as I tried to figure out which way the stairwell was. It was a body, clad in the muted colors of the CMP, floating face down. I stepped over it and ascended to the next level.
The ship was quiet, or as quiet as it could be with the splashing of waves on the hull as metal creaked and groaned from the structural damage it had sustained. I crept down one of the corridors, keeping an eye out of for any signs of life.
I found a survivor at the other end of a long and utilitarian hallway. He noticed me first, but his effort at hailing me was more of a gurgling moan than anything resembling speech.
Another MP, he''d been skewered by a large metal shard and impaled to the wall behind him, raised up just high enough that he had to stand on tip-toe before he could rest even a little of his body weight on the floor. He wasn''t wearing his helmet anymore, and it lay discarded on the floor, stained with the same pink foam that dribbled from his mouth. He tried to speak to me again, but I shushed him gently, and moved closer to inspect the damage.
He wasn''t going to make it. The shard had gone right through his chest, ruining one of his lungs and lacerating the other. More blood foamed at the edges of the wound. He''d done even more damage to himself in his struggle to get his feet back on the ground, dragging the shard up in the process. I tried pulling it out of the wall, to no avail. His eyes followed me as I tried to see if he had any other means of communication, such as a lace, but he lacked one altogether.
I stared at him for a moment, the ghostly ship still creaking louder than the wheeze that was his breathing. He kept looking down, and I saw that he was indicating his service weapon, on the floor well out of his reach.
I hit him with morphine. His eyes rolled back into his head less from the bliss and more the momentary relief from the agony. He still didn''t stop trying to indicate the gun.
I sighed. I didn''t see a better outcome for him either, unless I let him bleed out or euthanized him myself. I picked up the gun and placed it in his hand, and he nodded his head and shed tears that I thought were probably from gratitude. I still told him to hang on and use the gun for self defense, more as a fig leaf for my own conscience than as anything either of us believed. He nodded, and I left him. I''d barely ascended to the next level when a gunshot disturbed the unquiet peace.
The upper level was abandoned, the next another charnel house. Severed limbs, and enough blood to make the floor slick. I had to clamber over a pile of the corpses of some of the dead, in plainclothes this time, as they had made a dash for another hatch and had it fused solid before their faces.
It was a large ship, and it took me some time to clear most of it to my satisfaction. There was only one place left to check, and I steeled myself up before proceeding.
He knew I was coming, the hatch opened on its own accord, and I stepped through into a room that had likely been some kind of community center.
Hu Junya sat alone, in one of those old white plastic chairs that had been ubiquitous for half a century or more. He was brewing tea, gently immersing tea leaves as water boiled away. I could still tell that his calm demeanor was a facade, his hands were shaking, and eventually, he gave up on using his own efforts and set a spoon to stirring with his powers.
The hostages were in the background, mostly unharmed, but wrapped in metal chains that dangled from the wall. They perked up at my appearance, but they were gagged and could only struggle ineffectually in their restraints.
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"You''re not Chinese. What do you want from me?" He said, standing up and approaching me till we stood a dozen feet apart.
"I''m Dr. Adat Sen, and I work for the UN. The Mayor sent me, they''re stalling the CMP. But for now, I just want to talk to you." I told him.
He nodded grimly. "You know who I am. Tell the dogs from the mainland that they''re not going to take me. If they try again, I''m going to kill them, I''m going to kill every single last one of them."
The ship shook slightly, his power manifesting, I felt it change course, the guiding computer overwhelmed and unable to maintain the bearing of the rudders. In a corner of the room, something began steaming, turning red hot. I looked closer and realized it was the containment device the previous team had deployed, now lying abandoned.
"I''m not going to lie to you, even if you kill those people you''ve taken captive, they''re not going to stop. They''re going to send more men, they''re going to send drones, and then other people with powers. There''s no way out. They might send an army, take hostages of their own. I just want to help you figure this out, and find a solution that doesn''t make the bad worse."
He smiled bitterly, and the prisoners in the background stopped struggling as whatever little hope they had was dashed. They''d been delusional to even think otherwise.
"They''ve taken everything from me. My love, my life, my homeland is a charred ruin that smokes to this very day. If they think they can make me another of their puppets, I will make them regret it."
"They''re going to hurt the people that you love. I know your son is out there." The moment I said this, there was a tearing sound and the hull next to us tore apart, finally giving way to a view of the horizon, where the Moon hung low, uncaring of how incongruous it was for it to lurk about during the daytime.
"Have they hurt him? Did they even dare touch him?" He demanded, voice cracking with anger. One of the captives, who I recognized as the junior psychologist in the initial infiltration team, let you a muffled cry for help as the chains drew themselves tighter.
"No. Not that I know of. Mr. Yu, it''s not as bad up there, it really isn''t." I was right, the Chinese government incentivized a great deal of its colonial ventures by offering its citizens more freedom amongst the stars. Millions had taken them up on the offer.
He sighed, the chains relaxed, and the cup of tea levitated itself to his hands.
"Do you think they''ll hurt him if I refuse to comply?" He asked, closing his eyes to savor the aroma, as he set one to brew for me.
I wanted to say no. I really did. He must have realized my hesitation, because there was another screech of metal contorting into shape, and a partition separated us from the hostages.
"No- maybe. I can petition the UN, or ask a Lunar micronation to offer him citizenship." I muttered, unwilling to lie to this man I so empathized with.
"You could have just said yes, they can''t hear you anymore. Look at where hoping for the UN to bail us out got us, look at what''s left of my homeland." His hands shook again, spilling tea on the floor. I picked up the mop this time, it was made of plain plastic and out of the realm of his abilities.
"Do you suggest I stand down? I''m not saying I''m going to listen, but I still want to hear it."
I took an unassuming metal mug from him. "There''s what I''m supposed to say as a UN agent responsible for keeping the peace, and what I really feel. But before I even get into the latter, what''s the point? There''s nowhere to run."
"Isn''t there?"
I didn''t shriek like a little girl when a head floated up through the floor beneath us, though I did stamp at it ineffectually. Hu Junya skewered the thing with metal spikes, narrowly avoiding my legs, but they did nothing as the translucent man slowly kept on rising, until he stood there, naked yet grinning, as we stepped back and appraised him.
"Who the fuck are you?" Hu Junya and I asked in synchrony. More of a reflex on my part, because I immediately recognized the cunt.
Sorry, The Cunt was an altogether different character, this was The Ghost, or plain old Ghost. Even back in the day, he''d been a notorious nuisance, and a thorn in the side of governments around the world.
Metahuman names had a rather weird correlation to their powers. To be expected, to a degree, they didn''t name any idiot with more muscle than average "Superman", but a pithy and simple name often went to the most deserving.
And Ghost, well he lived up to his. The slippery little shit was incorporeal, utterly immune to any physics he didn''t want to affect him. Guns, bombs, nerve gas, he ignored all of it and just kept on floating through walls, into women''s lavatories, the Oscars, and more concerningly, government blacksites where they definitely did their best to try and kill him, often with other metahumans.
I''d run into him a few times in the years since this happened, there was a memorable incident where they shut down ATLAS for a day because he''d drifted up there to be a fly on the wall, and caused a full lockdown. Eventually, he got bored and buggered off elsewhere, but it had been deeply funny to see all the security staff and resident Metas do their best to annoy him into leaving. They shone lasers at his eyes, blasted him with music, and those mostly worked, because while they couldn''t hurt him without his consent, he could be bothered through his sensory channels if he left those open. In response, he left an ethereal shit on the then Director''s desk, which proceeded to produce a very non-ethereal stink for weeks.
But enough about the future.
"I''m a spooky little ghost and I''m here with a message, old man." Ghost said, shaking his skinny bald head disdainfully at the proceedings.
We stared at him as he paused, cleared his throat a few times, and then doubled over in agony as his eyes blazed with violet light.
"Ghost? Transmitting?" While it was Ghost''s voice, the change in pitch and his accompanying mannerisms suggested that a woman was in control.
"Lima Charlie." I replied on his behalf.
"And who the hell are you? Ah, some UN nerd. Piss off, would you." She replied, making Ghost stand in a confrontational posture. I wasn''t afraid of him, his ethereal form made hurting others rather difficult, although not impossible, which is why he was classed as a nuisance rather than an existential threat.
"Dr. Sen is a guest, who I happen to trust. He can stay unless I deem otherwise." Hu Junya said. I nodded to express my gratitude.
"Right. You don''t have much time. They sent the Blue Man as a delaying action, he''s supposed to psychoanalyze you for a bit, ideally convince you to stand down, but more likely, buy time till they get telepaths and heavy hitters here. I can already see them spooling up birds in the South China Sea."
"I don''t know anything about that, but she could be right." I replied, unwilling to lie. I had a decent idea of my own capabilities, but it would have been very foolish of the Chinese to leave it all in my hands.
"You think I don''t know? I don''t know what to do.. I''m not going to hurt you, Dr. Sen, I doubt you wanted to be here." He said, getting up and pacing around, as the hovering Ghost rotated disconcertingly to follow him. I curiously poked at him, and as expected, couldn''t feel anything even when my hands were deep enough to tickle his prostate. I stuck my head in, saw the contents of his last meal, and brought it right back out.
"Who are you people?" He asked curiously.
"We go by many names, but what you need to know about is that we''re metahumans like you, and we''re free. Nobody has a hold on us, not the UN, Turing, the Soviets, Chinese, or any other government. We just want to live our lives, and fuck anyone who wants to stop us." She said through Ghost, and then, with another flash of purple light, conjured a scene of Earth and everything around it.
A telepath? With sensory powers? I stared at the luminous globe, and was awed by the sheer amount of detail. Even zooming in, every city and town was clear and obvious, and I could swear that I could just barely make out aircraft and satellites in if I squinted.
"We''re up there, in the stars. And we can take you with us."
"Is she telling the truth?" Hu Junya asked me earnestly, putting me on the spot. I''d heard rumors about rogue metahumans, even now, when the dust had settled from the absolute insanity surrounding the early 30s, when metahuman fuckery precipitated, amongst other things, the US Secessions, the Chinese Winter of Red Rice and White Bamboo, the Indo-Pak Limited Exchange, and no end of other incidents that left our planetbound civilization reeling. Well, not just the planet, given that several thousand people in the early Mars and Lunar colonies perished in the process.
"I''ve heard rumors. Are you Lumen, perchance?" I asked.
Ghost smiled, and then was enveloped in more numinous light, until the figure of a woman was superimposed upon him. There were other shades in the background, a motley collection of people. A woman with a visor, and spindly fingers that seemed to pluck at unseen instruments, or rather akin to a spider skittering across hot tiles. Another, hidden behind the fluttering of butterflies that frizzled and melted when they streamed too close to the Reality Anchor, the machine now lighting up the room in red and melting a hole in the floor that Hu Junya absentmindedly shored up. A boy, or half of him, his internal organs visible as if he was a sagittal slice of an MRI image.
"I''ve always been fond of that name. Yes, we bring light to those who need it. We''re the flame that flickers in the dark. But when needed, we burn to the ground any who would cage us."
"I am interested. But only if you help me save my son." Hu Junya said, clenching his mug, which distorted with force beyond that of his hands.
"You can save him. It''s always been within you. Come, you no longer need to hold back."
The spectre surrounding Ghost stepped forward, revealing his slightly glazed eyes, and walked forward to where the agitated man stood, now crushing the metal into shards that bit into his hands and dripped blood onto the floor. She smiled gently and touched his forehead. Their was a spark, a thrum of power, as if an engine had its rate limiters blown and now threatened to rip itself out of its restraints. The ship groaned in earnest, metal rippling as waves of force twisted crystalline lattices. I gasped in agony, likely due to its effects on the metal in my lace and other implants, and was too distracted to process events for a good few seconds, coming to to see Hu Junya gasping on the floor, crying tears that seemed to sparkle like burnished copper.
"I can do that? But-, but-" He stammered, almost weeping.
"There''s no time. They know. You have to leave, and now. Follow the thread, we''ll be waiting for you. As a courtesy, we''ve got people heading for your family on Earth, if only they''ll come with them. As for your son, take to the stars. We''ll find you."
She vanished with a fizzle, leaving a stunned Ghost gently drifting away, no longer consciously anchored to the ship.
He came back to his senses with half his body out of the ship. "Oh fuck dude. They''re not happy. I''m going to leave, if you don''t mind, I don''t want to get tanned." He piroutted lazily and dived into the floor, just about the same time as a burst of gunfire perforated the ship, followed by an explosion that threw me off my feet and against the wall hard enough to bruise.
I didn''t have time to nurse my wounds, because with the gaps opened up in the vessel, so came electromagnetic waves, and thus several hundred push notifications for X, Google Nimbus, and more worryingly, from the UN.
WARNING
WARNING
UNSCHEDULED EMERGENCE EVENT TYPE [REDACTED]
Submit X-RAY clearance for details
THIS IS NOT A DRILL
YOU HAVE 2 MINUTES AND 23 SECONDS TO SEEK SHELTER
YOUR NEAREST SHELTER IS- ERROR
YOUR CHANCE OF SURVIVAL IS- ERROR
And then a burst of EMP scrambled my lace, or at least reset it in a manner that was highly noncondusive to the continued integrity of my gray matter.
It was still a primitive model, barely clinging on to my meninges and only throwing a few tendrils deeper into my frontal and occipital lobes. I could function without it, or so I told myself as I wretched, wiping away blood from my nose and ears.
Bullets and shrapnel hovered in place in front of us, before melting into globules. Not all of them, from the gurgling death cries of the hostages, and the smell of sizzling flesh, voided bowels and fresh blood that suffused the air. How much of that blood came from my own nose, I didn''t have time to investigate. The only reason I wasn''t dead was a statue standing before me, blocking the worst of it.
A statue?
Hu Junya had changed. Metamorphosized. An unremarkable elderly man of the type usually seen doing Tai chi in parks had become an entity of copper and gold, with blood of mercury that dripped from the hundreds of wounds on his his exterior. Good for him that he''d become something that wasn''t trivially put down with autocannon fire, because by god were the Chinese trying.
He spoke to me, words lost in a hail of everything that the world was throwing at us, and from the tiny bit of the exterior I could see from where he sheltered me, there was fire on the waves.
His wounds knitted themselves, leaving a kintsugi pattern that tightened into recognizable human features. And he was angry.
With a roar of collapsing metal, he willed, and a force propelled me down, not that I had been in any hurry to get back on my feet. The ship, a name I''d never bothered to learn then or later, cried out with a voice of metal fatigue and unexpected structural stress as it lifted off the water, and took flight.
I''d seen video of it all later. It was beautiful.
Hu Junya leaned into the powers of apotheosis, turning metal into an extension of his will. It shored up the holes, and more steel, lead and depleted uranium hurled at us was halted in its tracks and merged into a whipple shield that surrounded the mauled craft.
We accelerated, hard, leaving kiloliters of water streaming in our wake and propellers chopping through thinning air.
I could hear now, or at least the ringing in my ears had turned into a distant orchestra of wailing flutes.
"I''m going to be flying now. I can hardly spare the time to deal with interlopers aboard, care to see to them for me, Dr. Sen?"
His voice was mellifluous, vocal chords of brass turning mere speech into song. Discordant, because you expected an 8-foot tall metal golem to sound a little more bassy, but I wasn''t there to be a vocal coach.
Instead, I nodded, and grabbed one of the many guns from the spiked hedgehog of floating weaponry he''d brought before me. I wasn''t going down without a fight, no matter how little it meant.
Interlude 1.2: Jonah and the Whale
I was out the door, gun brought to bear more from muscle memory beaten into me from years of drills rather than anything my aching brain could manifest.
I''d marched out with determination, kicked down a couple doors and swept rooms with poise that would have made my old instructor proud when I suddenly stopped, feeling like an idiot. The ship was huge, like carried several thousand people out to sea for weeks huge. And I hadn''t asked where the intruders had, well, intruded.
I considered my options and sheepishly spoke out loud to the walls, content in knowing that if he couldn''t hear me, nobody would mock my stupidity.
To my relief, the bending of more metal conjured a sign pointing me towards the starboard section, a few floors below where I''d been mucking about.
Multiple assailants. They''re carrying that device that halts my powers, so I can''t track them very well. Yell if you need help.
I thanked the rusty sign, and it dropped right back to the floor. I then made my way with more haste, not bothering to clear rooms that seemed closed, or in many cases, sealed in when the structural abuse the ship had taken had jammed them up.
I scrounged what I could from the bodies along the way. Thermal goggles (because most of the place had lost power, running off emergency lighting), extra grenades and mags, and I even found an exoskeleton my size on someone who had undergone weight loss by means of dismemberment. A little bit of fiddling with the Chinese interface, and it managed to hook into my lace, which was gingerly posting in safe mode.
I found a porthole along the way, and was treated to a dizzying sight of us rushing above the clouds, endless sullen ocean below us, and the setting sun to the side. Something flashed in the clouds, an interceptor of some kind, still giving chase. A thump and obscured explosion suggested they weren''t leery about shooting us down, but a massive metal panel hovered in place, and alongside a conglomeration of debris, blocked the hit with no damage to the ship.
It was a big one, you''d likely need a dedicated anti-ship missile to really put it out of action, and while the Chinese had those in spades, I doubted their guidance systems were quite built for tracking a flying cruise liner heading for orbit. Of course, they had presumably tried to nuke us once, and might do so again.
I crept along to the next floor down, and ran into the first batch of hostiles, albeit they were polite about it. I had a helmet on, and a Chinese exo, so they greeted me with queries my lace translated along the lines of "holy shit, you''re alive?" and "do you need medical attention" instead of a burst of gunfire. I nodded at them, miming gratitude, and since I didn''t expect my non-existent Chinese to hold up, gestured as if my speakers were busted. Given the condition of the exo and armor, they fell for it.
The two frogmen, all techno- amphibians with googly goggle eyes and menacing weapons, accepted my claim and waved me aside before stalking forth. Their mistake, because just as they went by, I unloaded a bullet into the furthest''s head, and as the closer spun around in confusion, I kicked him in the knee, breaking it, and then stabbed him in the neck with a ceramic blade, leaving him making faintly accusatory gurgles as he slid aside onto the floor.
I wasn''t a Marine or ever posted on the USS Virginia before the Secession, but I still swore by sic semper tyrannis when I could. Killing these authoritarian scum felt good.
I was patting them down for more gear when another frogman turned the corner, this one a little faster on the take or just less trusting about a man with no valid IFF looting his dead buddies. He shot me, the round hitting my back plate, but they''d sent the CMP with some of the good stuff and I wasn''t hurt, instead managing to roll myself behind cover as I returned fire.
"Some help please!" I cried out as more rounds bit through the thin cabin wall, which shored itself up as more words embossed themselves in it, the bullet holes handy if inadequate punctuation marks.
Power blocker next room. They need to reach you.
Thanks for nothing bud.
Overly reliant on the Reality Anchor, one of the frogmen threw a frag in my direction. Unfortunately for him, while Hu Junya wasn''t able to just crush him with the walls and ceilings, a metal ball thrown outside the range of their nullifiers was a convenient projectile to return to sender.
I chose a different tack, I''d been through this part of the ship once, and knew there was a section where the partition had collapsed, offering a decent sightline down what had been an access corridor with utilities tucked out of sight. There, I found a ready murderhole, and peeked through to spot a squad of PLA Marines readying up to meet me. The leader, in a bulky combat exo, wore a backpack that hummed and imbued the area with static charge. It was already heating up, and he looked mildly concerned about its proximity to his person, but seemed to be bearing it well, and for good reason. His portable Reality Anchor was putting in the hard yards, where parts of the ship threatened to collapse in on itself to deal with the interlopers, his device made the effect dissipate in a wide radius around him, providing some degree of safety. He turned away from me, yelling orders, and I lined up a shot, pulling the trigger to send a bullet into an exposed section of the Anchor. It was likely a prototype, rushed into service and not adequately shielded as required to make it PFC-proof, and my shot hit something vital. The results were gratifying, for me at least. The straining walls stilled for a second, and then they moved, crushing the officer and three of his men like ants in a trash-compactor. Another had a spear of metal lance through him, pinning him to the ceiling, while another vanished from sight as the floor below him gaped like an open maw. I threw another nade in for good measure.
I rushed out the instant after the blast, seeing one trooper down for the count, the other swearing and falling back while unloading suppressive fire. I pushed forward in hot pursuit, only stopping to unload my pistol in the face of the man who was struggling fitfully above. Chasing after the retreating survivor, I walked into an ambush.
It seemed the Chinese had been pushing forth by planting smaller Anchors along the way, wisely unwilling to venture where the coverage didn''t extend. Thus, there was a team waiting in the rear, and they''d been alerted to my approach.
It was a wide open space, a relic from when the cruise liner catered to bored tourists voyaging to Hawaii and Fiji instead of refugees clinging to an existence exiled from their shores. There had been banks of hydroponics there, now dark but for fitful red light strips that only served to accentuate the gloom. Plants floated in soggy muck and shattered glass, a distant mockery of the real seaweed trailing from sides of the ship.
I''d opted to enter from a side door instead of just following the route the retreating soldier had taken, which is why I managed to get away with only a bullet to the flank rather than the hail of gunfire that saturated the naive approach. Cursing, I hit the floor, and got my bell rung by a round that just barely glanced off my helmet.
I threw two of the frags I''d acquired overhand, grateful that the tilt of the ship meant that my door was at a slight elevation as they slid down and detonated, only doing an subpar job of improving the interior decor.
A soldier in his own exo ran while his friends laid down more lead, bullrushing through the weakened divider that separated the next room from mine. He unloaded an automatic shotgun, the slugs chewing up furniture and a kid''s terrarium, but just managing to miss me. In hindsight, the only reason I''d made it this far was that I''d been ensconced deeper within the vessel when the EMP hit, and these guys, likely clinging to the exterior or lurking nearby in their subs, had taken the worst of it. He chattered in Chinese, missing my prone form where I''d wedged myself when he was turning the place upside down, and I took the opportunity to return the favor, spraying him down.
This did less than I could hope for, because at some point in the ongoing firefight, I''d ended up switching to a magazine of plastic caseless ammunition someone had hopefully rationed for Hu Junya. While the modern world owes a great deal to the wonders of the material, it''s less than ideal for bullets meant to punch through body armor.
So I rushed him back. Fuck you, I have an exo too. The impact carried both of us over the edge, and we tumbled the half a dozen feet below to slam into a miraculously intact aquaponics container. It wasn''t intact for very long, and the fish, now mostly sushi, scattered to the winds as we crashed through and bounced off the floor. I bit through my tongue, and splashed my visor with blood as I straddled the bastard. He struggled with the whine of overloaded servos, kicking me hard in the gut, the sharpened toes of his exo gouging out ceramic, metal, and a tiny bit of my guts. For my part, I relied on a knee pinned on one of his arms to get leverage, and brought my ceramic blade down at his neck and clavicle, trying to hack through the joint.
Now, I don''t know if you''ve ever seen a proper HEMA bout, but just like real medieval combat, it often devolves into two men in tin cans grappling around on the ground, because neither of them have weapons that can penetrate the armor of the other. I didn''t have time to beat him into submission, and the joint proved surprisingly sturdy, so I found a grenade pouch just behind his back and pulled the pin.
He bucked like a wild mustang, desperate to dislodge me, but I held on for dear life, refusing to let him roll over. Then, with a muffled thump, he jerked up with the force of the explosion before collapsing again.
There I was, victorious but for my intestines slithering in my lacerated gut, surrounded by an unknown number of Chinese specops who were undoubtedly moving up to finish the job. And then the ship, which had been sailing smoothly upwards for so long that I''d forgotten it was supposed to cling to the waves, dived.
We had been chased by a squadron of jets as soon as we''d made the stratosphere, a mixture of sleek black stealth J-36Xs, and older J-20s holding onto their increasingly redundant human pilots. They''d been launching missiles, mostly intercepted by the small asteroid belt of crap Hu Junya had kept floating around the ship, and most that made it through only gored the massive craft, unable to break it apart when its structure was maintained largely by metahuman power.
Then they got bored, and fired another nuke at us.
A quarter of the aft of the ship turned into hot slag from thermal exposure alone, and the blast disrupted Hu Junya''s ability to control the craft, or perhaps he''d decided to dive as an evasive maneuver when the destroyed shield meant that a dozen angry missiles were flying right for us.
I found myself floating up, with the dead soldier''s legs wrapped around me, and not just floating, but headed for the roof with considerable speed. Screams and yells indicated that the others had been just as taken aback as I had, and I twisted, presenting the dead man I was wearing like a fanny pack in the direction where several troopers floated in disarray, flapping about like fish as they lost their footing. A real fish flopped off my visor, before I tore my enemy''s shotgun from his death grip and unloaded in their general direction.
I was hit, tumbling this way and that, propelled by my own recoil as well as the bullets they returned to sender, but by this point, the UN had splurged on some degree of zero-g combat training for me in preparation for misadventures abroad. I let the corpse soak up most of their ammo, and didn''t have time to process anything that punched through my armor.
They hit something critical in the exo that was holding onto me, and it unlocked its joints and sent the corpse spiralling with its arms extended like a starfish. I kicked off it, bounced off another wall, and collided midair with another trooper, this one without an exo. A kick to the head, despite the lack of leverage still broke his neck, and I brushed my hand over his own pack of explosives, relying on my exo''s systems to activate them. He sailed into the midst of the others, and exploded.
This is a good time to point out that the ship had taken on a great deal of water throughout this whole ordeal, with the lower decks having outright flooded. I''d timed it right, when the explosive-pi?ata blew up on the ground, it weakened the damaged deck, and the tons of seawater sloshing about below noticed.
Then, gravity was back, the ship recovering from free fall and all of us hitting the floor, only to bounce up and down on our asses as Hu Junya tried his best to get his pilot''s license revoked. I realized that this room had been part of some kind of waterpark in the good old days, with its central feature being a massive slide running down the middle. Not that I''d recommend it as fit for purpose these days. Too much broken glass and live grenades around, the risk of tetanus was unacceptable.
Now, instead of erratic bobbing, Hu Junya decided that the sky was for suckers and accelerated the craft down towards the ground. This meant that my position at the base of the slide now turned into its new top. Then, with tearing metal, the repeated impact of the water below made the floor largely give up the ghost, with a torrent of water breaking through the weakened barrier and then flooding the room. The men trying to gank me were swept off their feet, and even my exo, for all the strength it gave me, only held for a minute before I was knocked flying.
I scrambled for any foothold as I slid up the ramp, finding no purchase on the surface slick with salt water. I hurtled up, but ended up leaning into it, sliding on my bruised ass to where a confused soldier hung on to the handrails for dear life before I smashed into him feet first with about 50 extra kilos of weight from the exo. I grabbed onto the now vacant rails, locking the exo''s joints in place, and thus managed to keep myself relatively grounded as the contents of the large space turned itself into the world''s largest salt shaker. When it stopped, I detached and landed with a grunt of agony in the midst of utter carnage.
The pain was overwhelming, I opened up my visor and hurled an avalanche of vomit, fifty-fifty seafood appetizers and vodka, onto the floor which had resumed being the floor. I was a mess, with my bruises having bruises, and my efforts to move my left arm without the assistance of exos only broadcasting pins and needles, and then the sharp complaints of tendons torn in two. My gut, now exposed, was trailing an intestinal loop that squirmed in my shaking good arm before I crammed it back in and sealed the wound with staples. You don''t need anesthesia when you''re at Maximum Pain. I couldn''t risk it, couldn''t handle blacking out before I knew all my foes were dead, instead of only wishing they were like I was.Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
I limped over to the remains of the other PLA Marines, and discharged my pistols into their heads until they stopped jerking about.
I staggered over to a sturdy pillar, grabbed onto it with the exo arm that had my dangling useless meat in it, and locked onto it. Then, I fished out a bunch of combat stims and pain meds, used my residual knowledge of medicine, as applicable as it was to the insane shit the Chinese doped with, and then jabbed all of them into any part of me that wasn''t already host to shards of broken glass.
I dreamt I was floating, nodding off for who knows how long. When I came to, against my desperate desire to fall back into the warm embrace of blood loss and death, I found that I was indeed back in zero gravity.
I absentmindedly found another autoinjector and slammed it into my shoulder, at this point I was more meds than meat. I noticed a beeping icon on the exo''s HUD, indicating it had exhausted its emergency supply of blood and hemoglobin replacement nanites. Well, I suppose I had the CCP (R) to thank for not bleeding to death.
I limped through the halls like a revenant, being borne more by the exo than the torn shreds of my skeletal muscles. I ignored my lace''s urgent warnings to seek medical attention, because I was the medical attention, and wandered the halls as signs conjured by Hu Junya suggested.
He wanted me to smash the last remaining Reality Anchor, the sturdy thing still warbling whatever let it repel metahuman powers even after its handlers had been tumble dried and then splattered on the walls. I examined it carefully, and found a convenient off switch that I flicked. The walls groaned and flexed, his powers finding free reign, and I collapsed to the ground, swore at him when he signed for me to come find him, and waited till the man came to fetch me.
I came to again in a coffin, but before I could raise hell, I noticed Junya walking alongside me. He was back in human form, at least visibly flesh and blood, and when he noticed my awakening, he willed, and the cushion of liquid metal that wrapped me like a cocoon slithered aside, letting me turn my aching neck.
I swore at him for a minute again, I''d thought of some good ones before exhausting myself and just lying back to relax. We were presumably in some form of orbit, because leaving aside him using his powers, we were in microgravity. My torn muscles were suitably grateful for the reprieve, I felt like a marionette with its strings cut.
"I did what I could for you, following the instructions from your lace. Blood, something to deal with the overdose of painkillers. But I don''t think you''re going to walk without assistance for a while." He explained, floating alongside me as we passed through a hallway, a pile of bodies pinned to the wall in a wrapping of wires so they wouldn''t float in the way.
"Thanks. Dude, I was on vacation." I kvetched at him. He smiled ruefully, taking me to an on board infirmary. It was utterly trashed, so we settled for him acquiring more meds on my instructions, and then we went to the captain''s cabin, which was more of a place to oversee the ship''s systems since the autopilot handled most of the work.
"I''m going to try something, let''s see if this helps eh?" He told me.
Metal flowed over me, following the contours of my limbs and filling the gaps in the exo. I flexed my arm experimentally, and it moved with the assistance of the system, while being enmeshed in the metal and protected from the environs. I looked in a mirror, and found I had acquired a coating of ferrofluid, or something decidedly non-newtonian that formed a sort of suit of armor. It looked sick, which distracted from the barely suppressed pain.
"I''m sorry I couldn''t help you more. They were on my ass until I broke out of the atmosphere, at least a dozen jets, and swarms of missiles. I had to keep the ship together, and do my best to take care of the attackers. But since you took out the devices, I''ve killed the remainder" He offered me a helmet that clearly belonged to a fighter pilot, and I didn''t ask what happened to the owner.
"How''s the ship doing?" I asked instead.
He shook his head. "There''s only so much I can do. After what that woman did to me, I''m so much stronger, and with more fine control. But there''s a million leaks, and we''re losing oxygen. I don''t expect you''re willing to go out and patch some spots are you?"
I shook my head vehemently.
"It''s fine. Worst case, we have enough oxygen for a while, I''ll use some of the parts of the ship we don''t need to seal us away. And there''s a submersible, made of something I can''t control, and it was clinging to the ship. I brought it in, we can hide inside if we need to."
He fiddled with the bridge controls, some of the systems still functional, and managed to get a display to link to a camera on the outside.
We were in low Earth orbit, the planet a blue expanse that stretched from horizon to horizon, with North America underneath. He''d wisely steered clear of anything close to Chinese territory, and we were buzzing east, just over Mexico.
The ship had regained its shielding: a brace of mangled jets, a few unlucky satellites, and miscellaneous material he''d scavenged along the way. It all spun around us as we stuck to our course.
"Now what?" I asked him. He looked a little stricken, as if he''d been expecting me to give him all the answers. Fuck, I really didn''t feel like thinking, but a cruise liner, one that had been nuked, wasn''t a particularly viable spaceship. I sighed, and put on my thinking cap.
On my instruction, we searched for functional cameras, and established a link to the systems of one of the jets via multiple hops on the electronics of dead Chinese soldiers to my new fancy helmet. Using their own cams and sensors, we hunted for air leaks, and he sealed them as best as he could. Unfortunately, the air pressure was still dropping, very slowly but steadily.
"Can you just boost to the moon? Take us there outright?" I asked.
"Eventually, but it''s going to be difficult. I can exert a lot of force, but even getting us to orbit was a challenge. The life support-" He pointed at the map to indicate the community garden, and the now destroyed aquaponics- "isn''t doing very well."
"Bring us back down?"
He stared at me like I was crazy. "Not without my son."
I wasn''t surprised, even with his incredible strength, the Moon was a good distance away, and we would be flying by eye. The speeds involved in orbital dynamics were colossal, it was impressive enough he''d taken us this far.
I was going to plead with him to jettison me with something survivable when the dying systems of the jet blared at me with warnings of fast movers inbound. The thing had been surprisingly easy to work with, for some reason, my lace had a copy of a PDF manual for a J-36X, which had been uploaded to the community forums for a game called War Thunder when a player had a heated Gamer Moment and uploaded classified documents to argue that it should be brought down from BR 17.5 to 16.8.
The sensors were throwing a hissy fit at exposure to vacuum, but I managed to scan and find a pair of interceptors blasting our way.
They were squat, cylindrical craft, built around giant lasers in the same manner that the A-10 Warthog was built around its gun.
"Bogies inbound. ETA till intercept about 3 minutes." I called out.
"Fuck, they''re still too far. I can handle the missiles if you give me some warning."
"Not missiles. Some fuck-off lasers, they''re probably scared of setting off Kessler syndrome if they blow us up right now."
"Kessler syndrome?"
"We''re going to break up into enough garbage to do a serious number on any satellites nearby. They don''t want that, even if it''s temporary." I explained.
The first laser hit a moment later, femtosecond pulses blasting our bow. They were ridiculously powerful, melting and blasting away chunks of material, and also dumping tons of heat. Hu Junya, on my advice, began extruding radiators from the hull to dump as much as they could, but more heat kept coming, to the point I could personally feel the mercury creeping up to uncomfortable levels.
"Throw something at them, anything!" I ordered, and then one of the J-36Xs went barrelling towards the interceptors still a hundred clicks away, with a cloud of other debris ahead.
The interceptors took it like a champ, their radar spotting the incoming shrapnel, and angling their own armor to take the hit. They dodged the worst of it, and were closing in for a concentrated hit that would likely end us when I noticed that I still had datalink with the craft.
This couldn''t possibly work could it?
I hooked into the systems, overrode IFF, and then unleashed several Fox Threes, the missiles uncaging and then leaping at their targets, which were taken entirely by surprise. The J-36X had incredibly good radar absorbing material, so their scans had likely missed it, not that it was easy to spot in the megatons of shit we were dragging along.
The interceptors turned into incandescent plasma that bloomed ahead of us, whatever reactor or ultracapacitor running their lasers taking poorly to missile hits on their unarmored flanks.
I braced as we shook from the impact of chunks hitting us at relative velocities that made railgun rounds look lethargic, but with sweat beading on Hu Junya''s brow, we pulled through, the ship now resembling a glowing ball of dull red steel as he tore it apart to maximize heat dissipation.
We sailed unimpeded for about an hour, steadily gaining altitude as he pushed on the craft, when we received a hail from an unknown source. I plugged in, making sure not to expose myself, and let him handle the comms.
It turned out to be the woman from Lumen, if her voice was anything to go by.
"Impressive. Are you still headed for the Moon?" She asked, her words crackling over the ham transmission.
"Yes. But I don''t know if we can make it, this thing is one bad hit from disintegrating, and I''m not sure I can keep it together." He explained urgently.
"Don''t panic, you''re over the hard part. Listen carefully, there''s someone who can help, you just need to head over here.."
She explained our target, currently in a congenial orbit several hundred kilometers ahead of us, which we could boost to reach.
It was the Tianyuan space station, built about a decade back as the crown jewel in China''s burgeoning interplanetary program, before it was rapidly superseded by more advanced designs, let alone the interstellar ones.
A rotating hab, it put the ISS of my childhood to shame, and it had the life support and guidance systems to keep us alive till the Moon (though I resolved that this would be my final pitstop).
"There''s someone there who''s friendly to Lumen, and who I can possess to talk to you in person again. Try not to kill them, OK?" she advised.
"Wasn''t planning on it." We both agreed.
Spotting it on sensors borrowed from the now the now well past their best-by J20s, we navigated towards the space station, which was a gleaming ring overhead where the sunlight caught it. I could imagine the panic its denizens felt as we approached, dwarfing it in mass and volume, a metal leviathan dumping megajoules of waste heat from a spiky assemblage of radiators.
They didn''t launch their escape craft, likely afraid we''d fire on them. Instead, a point-defense laser and a pair of autocannons opened fire, but it was nothing we couldn''t handle.
We lumbered closer, gingerly matching velocities and headings with the station as it flared thrusters desperately to escape. It wasn''t made for rapid maneuvers, so we caught it with ease.
Someone begged us for mercy over comms, and on orders from Hu Junya, they jettisoned their defensive emplacements and prepared to be boarded.
We put up the kayfabe of him binding me in more metal, to make me look like a helpless princess along for the ride, and while we''d been traveling, he''d been practising with his expanded powers.
Exos taken from the dead were augmented with more metal, forming menacing golems that could operate semi-autonomously within the sphere of his fine control, now several hundred meters, while his more brute force approach easily reached the several kilometers of distance to the station. He gripped it with his powers just to be safe, and then morphed in front of me, his frail human form swelling to become burnished copper.
After some debate, we used the submersible to head over, it had a docking port, which while absolutely unsuitable for matching a space craft, could hold atmosphere if he messed with the dimensions.
He escorted me over, a harmless and (actually) gravely wounded prisoner, as we docked and crossed over. His powers swept ahead, and barring a few scared crew holding onto knives or tools, they''d been obedient.
I was sent ahead first, securely restrained.
"Everyone, please don''t panic. I''m Dr. Adat Sen, from the UN, and he hasn''t hurt me and he won''t hurt you if you listen." I spoke as authoritatively as I could. I ached in the station''s rotational gravity.
A petite woman in medical scrubs came over to look at me closer. "Won''t hurt us? You''re half dead!"
To be fair, I was worse for wear, my face bruised and pallid, my eyes red from micro hemorrhage, and half my tongue missing, which made for extra room for my swollen tongue.
Still, they listened, and while the other doctor fussed over me, the crew lined up for inspection, some of the civilians absolutely terrified. A child clung to her teddy bear even as her panicked mother berated her to throw it away, but I gently shushed her and said it didn''t matter.
Hu Junya used the pretext of interrogating the crew to separate them apart, and when we got to a technician in yellow coveralls, the man suddenly stopped mid sentence, groaned, and then seized as his eyes bloomed with light. An avatar of the woman we''d seen before stepped out from him, trailing light. I double checked that we''d disabled all the cameras and monitoring devices aboard, but as long as they had metal, they''d been dealt with.
"Take the ship, if you jettison most of the mass and commandeer the engines aboard and the ones on the secondary craft, you can make it to the Moon in a day." She explained.
"Haven''t they seized my son yet?" He asked anxiously, pacing about, the floor trembling under his new weight.
"The settlement he''s in, Chang''e city, is free-er than most, even if it''s under nominal Chinese control. It''s no Hong Kong, the administration is stalling, they''re terrified about what you''ll do if they hurt him. We have agents waiting, get there, and we can make sure he''s ready for you." She showed the layout of the city, nestled in a polar crater.
"And the rest of my family?"
She showed images again, helmet cams and CCTV from non-descript cities. Armored vans pulled over, the drivers of those not automated spasming. Guards doubled over, falling unconscious, and doors opened of their own accord, with confused and stumbling people trickling out. Men and women in masked hoods that made cameras glitch came out to escort them, and they disappeared into the night.
"Thank you. I promise, if you help with my son, I''ll do everything you ask of me." A grateful old man said, blinking away tears.
"We''ll get there. We have people who, if they can''t quite see the future, at least have a hint of what''s coming." Her avatar turned to me.
"And you, Blue Man, you''re more important than you look. I''m surprised."
I smirked, but then an idea seized me. A bold idea. A heretical idea, one that could get me shot, or at least vanished into a high sec prison to never see the sun again.
I tried to quell my treacherous thoughts, but my heart overrode me and moved my mouth.
"I want my wife back. I''ll do what I can, as long as you don''t hurt those who don''t have it coming. I don''t want her to be a slave who dies in an unmarked grave."
I trembled, even though it made my muscles ache to remind me I should be still.
She appraised me closely, with an eyebrow raised. I felt a prickle on my skin, as something looked at me closer than I liked. I did my best to stare back into its metaphorical eyes.
"We can do that, but I must warn you, if you follow this course, some of the things you''re going to do, even of your accord, will be things you will regret."
I steeled myself. "More than losing my wife?"
"No."
"Then it''s done. Open your mind, I need to scrub this conversation from your memory, as well as some things I''m going to tell you, and implant some mild geass and compulsions in your psyche. While you won''t remember this, until someone lifts it, you''ll figure out how to reach out to us when the time is right." She raised an ethereal hand and waited for my assent.
"Do you really need my consent?" I asked.
She smirked again. "No, but if you go with it, it''s going to hurt less. I''m also polite like that."
She touched my temple with her extended finger, and my world reeled. My lace chirped with alert codes for unhandled exceptions, and my vision doubled, tripled, no, broke into fractal whirls, wheels within wheels, all jagged and bleeding. Blood vessels in my brain balloon in aneurysms, neurons yell their outrage via uncontrolled neurotransmitter release that leaves me feeling like an MDMA comedown for days.
When it''s done, I''m a slack-jawed zombie, going through the motions. I''m utterly terrified of Hu Junya, the mass murderer who slew three platoons of Chinese men, and who was later pinned with the deaths of hundreds of Taiwanese citizens when he released the energy of a nuclear bomb near the New Taipei fleet. That''s leaving aside the atrocities he was accused of, out there in the stars.
I rejoined the huddle of demoralized refugees piling into Tianyuan, wincing at the kick of the boosters as we cleared the station, now being dismantled for parts.
I didn''t understand why the giant metal demon who had held me captive for the better part of a day stood there to bid me goodbye, with sadness in his eyes.
I had a severe concussion or three, no wonder I was imagining things.
15.0 Martian Public Transit
I set the vehicle to idle and turned around to look at the brand new problem I''d been saddled with: an extremely traumatized little girl sobbing her heart out in the back of the car, looking terribly lost while perched on a seat made for a cyborg ten times her size.
I sat and looked at her, mildly lost as to how to proceed. I wasn''t the worst with kids, but this one had just been through a lot more than most. I decided to start at the lowest rung of Maslow''s Hierarchy, and work my way up. I rummaged through the crap under the dash, throwing aside a half-eaten crayon-shaped candy packet (Marine''s Choice, accept no alternatives), but the majority of the edible accoutrements were made for soldiers, MREs with 10k calories a serving, closer to motor oil than baby food in terms of nutrional value. I found the most inoffensive one I could find, and gently peeled it open and activated the chemical heater, prompting forth a mouth-watering aroma filled the cramped vic. Fuck me, they actually managed to make an MRE that looked half-decent, I was distracted by my own stomach grumbling as I handed the tray to the girl, who had ceased sobbing, replaced with a terrible case of hiccups.
"Hey, what''s your name kid?" I coaxed, taking off my helmet to give her something more than a faceless visor to look at. Probably a poor decision in hindsight, what with my skull being caved in, but nothing a good parting didn''t fix. She took the food I proffered, but didn''t reply, opting to stare at her feet while hiccupping.
"I''m Dr. Adat, you''re safe here, ok? You need to eat up." I poked gently at the food. "Is my daddy with you? I want my daddy!" She said plaintively.
"Can you tell me your name?" I asked again. In response, she lifted up her wrist where a small electronic tattoo flashed beneath her skin. A quick scan revealed pretty much everything I needed to know, but I still waited patiently till she began nibbling on her food before stopping.
"I''m Riley, and I''m 8 years old!" She declared.
"Nonsense, says here you''re only 4." I teased, making her squirm in discontent. "No mister, that''s in Mars years. My daddy said I''m a big girl now." A thought, presumably of her father, sank her face back into gloom.
I sighed, if she''d actually been 4, she''d be much easier to handle, at this age she''d likely be asking all kinds of uncomfortable questions. I mulled over the idea of hitting her with mild amnestics to reduce the risk of post traumatic symptoms, but she had been sedated throughout the whole mess, and it didn''t seem to have fully sunk in. Still, I had a lot of fast talking to do.
"Hey, I spoke to your daddy, he said he had to go on a short trip, and you''ll need to stay at your Aunt''s place ok?" I referenced her next of kin, a USMA citizen in good standing back in the bigger colonies. She was still rather confused about the whole thing, but I produced a hasty deepfake of her dad, and after a promise to give her some games to play if she behaved, I helped her settle into a nest made of discarded uniforms. She drifted off back to sleep as I kept the vic moving along.
To my considerable surprise, after about an hour of driving, the sandstorm that had waxed ferociously for so many days just stopped dead. It was like a sudden spasm in the thin Martian atmosphere, and the thin yet howling winds that had blown about a Dubai''s worth of sand halted in its tracks. I stopped the car, struck by the way endless curtains of sand slowly fell out of the dead air, with nothing but Brownian motion to buffer their steady fall.
I looked up at the newly revealed night sky, and there were more stars than there used to be. I felt a shiver go down my spine when I saw a tiny multicolored butterfly flap its wings. In response, the untinged blackness of the Martian night, without any real moon to light it, now displayed magnificent aurorae that coruscated in the night sky, a phenomenon that had absolutely not been seen on the planet in the last billion or so years; since the molten metal dynamo in the core froze up and solidified. That clearly signaled the use of particle weapons, with trace scatter being caught up in the artificial magnetosphere and lighting up the barren planet.
I assumed that the people or places it was aimed at had an even more stunning but far shorter light show.
It was at this point that my gaze was drawn back down to earth (Mars-flavored), to several pinpricks of light in the distance. It only took a quick zoom to confirm that there were half a dozen armed vehicles, and they were coming right at me.
"Aw fuck." I swore, and threw the vehicle back into reverse, rushing to find some crevice or fold in the terrain to hide behind. A fool''s endeavor, if I could see them, they could see me, this thing didn''t have any adaptive camo. Confirming my misgivings, I saw the flash of muzzles, followed by rapidly approaching tracer rounds that impacted only a few feet away from the car, now gunning it for all it was worth.
Three of the pursuing vehicles split off to chase me, the others continued barreling towards Moshowitz. I cursed as my car, otherwise well behaved so far, rejected my credentials when I tried to activate its own heavy machinegun. I gave up on pleading with the dumb machine brain that was only good enough for self-driving, and climbed over the exceedingly confused girl to reach the hatch that serviced the turret. There was an exposed data port, and I plugged my lace into it and prayed that the old servicing manual I''d once passingly acquainted myself with a decade back had some relevance to this more modern design. Thankfully, it was indeed the red wire this time, and after confirming that the fucking vic wouldn''t pull over after detecting my intrusion, I managed to get the CROWS turret to squawk in anger, firing several bursts at the pursuing assholes. Given the distance involved, I don''t think I hit anything, but it did make them swerve a couple times and bought me precious space and time.
I hoped to make it to a friendly US patrol, but Moshowitz really was in the middle of fucking nowhere, and any designations on my map, now several hours outdated, might be meaningless. My lace pinged me, my secondary neural computer picking out something I had missed- One of the pursuers had set up on a small hill, and were unloading something big, with a tripod attached.
Don''t tell CPS, but Ares-pattern MRAPs don''t come with child seats, so Riley was tossed about a little bit when I manually ordered the car to swerve as hard as it could. Kids are pretty resilient, it would buff out, but what wouldn''t was the hypervelocity railgun slug that cut through the battery block like it wasn''t there. At least it hadn''t hit the crew compartment, my evasive maneuver paying off.
I fired a smoke dispenser, the ensuing cloud mixing with the emissions from the now combusting battery pack and giving us a little more concealment, if not cover. I desperately checked the map again, and noticed a large homestead about 6 klicks away, with little detail to go off. My hopes of losing my pursuers in a straight sprint were dispelled as the damaged battery began letting out its magic smoke, with the spare pack only having enough power for maybe 10 more, and that''s without the juking.
Seeing that we''d have to stand and fight at some point, I wracked my brains for a solution, finally noticing a rather incongruous terrain feature significantly closer:
Mars had gone from being thought to having canals, to not having canals, and finally, bonafide real actual canals built by humans, not that this one was going to be visible from orbit. Hellas was incredibly deep, to the extent that in the winters, you could have small amounts of surface water accumulate, not enough to splash about in, but still worth siphoning off. The colonists had dug a canal to collect some of that moisture, with a pump and pipe network leading it back to the colony. There even was an emergency shelter, just enough for a person to clamber into and breathe properly oxygenated air at a safe temperature before help arrived.
I immediately uploaded a small script into my vic, popped another smoke cloud, put a grossly oversized helmet on Riley''s head, and dumped her inside a pressure suit, which was so large she fit in the space meant for one leg. I threw open the doors, disregarding the pressure alarm, and rolled out of the moving vehicle, doing my best to keep her safe.
It was a rough landing, but after bouncing into a small boulder, I grabbed her and ran behind cover as our trusty steed bounded off into the distance.
I crouched low in the billowing dust and smoke, and to my immense relief, when our pursuers did catch up, they made no effort to investigate the place and continued chasing after the car. I held a squirming Riley in place, and ignored her muffled cries till we both crammed into the shelter and I took off her helmet.
"Wear this-" I found a kid-sized suit, and helped her climb into it, which she did with the ease of a native spacer. We only had a few minutes before the vic ran out of charge and then hunkered down to defend itself, so the moment she was in, I picked her up again and ran down the canal, tracing the pipe that was covered in meters of sand. Thankfully, it ran mostly straight to the homestead in the distance, and I ran along, hoping that nobody was looking back this way.
It was a long run, but I did make it to the perimeter, where the fence was buried in sand deep enough that a decent jump carried me over to the other side, into the compound. Where I was promptly accosted by a robot dog with a gun strapped on its back.
Thankfully, it was a small dog and a smaller gun, I had reasonable confidence that my armor would stop anything it threw at me, but I still hid Riley behind me for her safety.
"Hello, care to explain what you''re doing on private property?" It asked mellifluously, the voice entirely incongruent with its industrial frame.
"Um.. We''re just passing through. Are your owners home?" I lied, not very convincingly.
"Don and Camilla are currently indisposed and unable to respond to your queries. As per the Personhood Act, 2039, Section 3E, I''m empowered to act in their best interests. Your presence is not permitted-" Its spiel was interrupted by a door opening and a man with a much bigger gun, the latter pointed right at me.
"Stand down Rover. Who the flying fuck are you?" He asked, staring me down.
I''d seen enough shit today that my patience was running thin. Instead of something productive, I asked "You named a robot dog Rover?".
He paused, momentarily nonplussed. "It''s a pun, get it, we''re on Mars."
He looked over at my battered exterior, not yet spotting Riley. "You a new offworlder for USMA? You can''t be here, you need a permit to enter a citizen''s property."
"Firstly, I''m not from USMA. I''m UN, you can check my credentials." I activated my AR tags for his perusal.
"Dr. Adat Sen? This looks legit, what the hell are you doing out here?" He asked, still not moving the gun away from my face.
"I''m here to drop off someone. Maybe you know her?" I kept my eye on him as I gently pushed Riley out into the open in her tiny spacesuit.
"What-" She turned her face plate transparent for a moment- "Wait, is that Riley? Andy and Ellen''s kid? What''s going on?" He asked, stunned.
"Long story. I just want to hand off the kid to you and leave, you can call CPS or whatever the fuck they do with orphans on this planet." I said wearily. It was safer for all concerned if I didn''t drag her into any gunfights.
"She''s an orphan? What happened to Andy? Hey!"Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
He yelled at me, as I turned my back and walked towards the gate. "What the fuck is going on? First all the comms go offline and then you just hand me a kid? I want to know what happened to her father!"
He stopped, cocking his head to the side. In response, a dusty screen on the exterior of a building came to life, showing distant camera footage of the vehicles that had been chasing me, now driving straight towards the settlement.
"Are they your buddies?" He pointed at the display.
"The opposite. They''re terrorists, here to kill me. I need to leave, and now."
"What the hell, look, if you''re actually legit, I''d love to lend you the car, but Cam took it to head to the city before the storm. Wait, I think they''re trying to hail us." An incoming point-to-point call request popped up on the screen, the ID withheld. It had to be based on line of sight, all the sat networks in the area were offline.
My armor felt a hundred pounds heavier. Even if I left, there was nowhere to run, I''d be trekking a hundred kilometers on foot to get to anywhere of note.
"Wait a moment. I had a message for you, came through on the net." I heard him jogging after me, leaving the kid behind, guarded by the dog.
"Is it the UN?" I asked wearily. I didn''t particularly want to phone home, I half planned to find a shelter and sit this shit out. Unfortunately, my sense of duty overrode self-preservation.
"Beats me. Here, take a look." He held out a phone, and me being an idiot, I looked into it while using a helmet that belonged to someone else, running a neural lace that was behind on OTA updates.
The Parrot hit like a truck, one I''d entirely failed to dodge. The man had shown hints of separatist sympathies, expressing concern for Andy Reed. I''d ignored the hints, had mistaken a neutral face for a sympathetic one. The truth is, I just hadn''t wanted a fight. I could also pin it on more brain damage.
He approached carefully as I convulsed, his appearance a blur. If he was speaking, it was drowned out by the rising static roar of tinnitus.
Time flashed. My lace was offline, forcibly shutdown and unresponsive to my mental imprecation. I was in a car again, or to be more accurate, the Martian equivalent of a bus.
It was a spacious vehicle, with enough room to stretch your legs down the aisle. I didn''t have time to appreciate the legroom, because I came to with a start, struggling against subtle restraints that only tightened when I made a sudden movement.
"Man, I was afraid I''d fried something. You ok Dr. Sen?"
I feigned more grogginess than I truly felt, while surreptitiously eyeing my surroundings. I wasn''t in my armor, having been changed into nondescript smart clothing, with nothing fancier than induction coils for heating. They hadn''t given me a pressure suit, just in case I had ideas of making a run for it.
"He''s not going to go roid rage on us with that fancy shit of his, is he Don?" A man in military fatigues walked over curiously. I didn''t know what good MARPAT camo meant for terrestrial forests was on Mars, but he rocked a set of milsurp BDUs none the less. A handsome enough man, with the intense eyes of a fanatic, and a few aesthetic scars retained only for the cool factor since we''ve long had the tech to remove them.
"It''s cool. I stuck him with that shit that turns off a lace, you know, the stuff from Medici. I''ve got a monitor in the seat, if his lace shows any signs of reactivating, we''ll see it." Don placated, looking pleased at his foresight.
I resolved to kill them, and everyone else in the room.
I felt immense rage, barely held down. I was sick of being jerked around, sick of not having any agency. The UN told me to jump, I asked how high. And now a bunch of fucking LARPers of the kind that had rooted for the Texan Secession, running around the desert with their AR-15s and having a glorified barbecue until the drones got them had captured me.
Unfortunately for them, I didn''t have just the lace on me, but the backup systems hidden in my vertebrae. Without the primary lace, I could barely interface with them, but I still felt its presence, comfortable, warm, waiting. I wondered if this is what it was like to be a conjoined twin.
It wasn''t able to plug right into my mind, not without tripping the machine that was stapled into my scalp. I knew how those worked, monitoring the frontal lobe, zapping the lace with electricity to keep it inactive. They''d depowered my limbs, but only through blocking incoming transmissions from my brain, not expecting a backup system that worked from my lower spinal cord. If they''d simply cut the cord, well I had wireless systems in my body and extremities, I could puppet myself on autopilot if I had to.
Instead, I relied on the relative intelligence and autonomy of my backup systems to find a side-channel for communication. I thought, an almost meditative experience as I willed my breath calmer, my heart slower.
I almost missed it, it was almost subliminal, a quickening and slowing of my pulse and heart-rate, skipped beats encoded in Morse code. The backup neuromorphic computer said hi.
I''d prepared for something like this, even if the usual circumstances that a lace as advanced as mine went offline were death and injuries that made you wish you were dead. Programmed a few macros too, just in case, and I began tripping them one by one. A queer sensation in my gut suggested my drug glands coming online and making their own witch''s brew, one I was eager to share.
"Care to tell me what you want to do with me? Where we''re going?" I asked.
The other man glowered. "Fuck you Fed, keep your mouth shut or I''ll shut it for you."
"You and this clapped out bunch of bandits you call a militia?" I asked with a lopsided grin.
"You know, for someone who''s just killed a good bud of ours and who we''re itching to return the favor to, you talk too much."
"He died like a bitch." I sneered at them.
A vessel throbbed in his temple, and he stepped forward, only to be restrained by Don, the big man putting a placating hand on his shoulder.
"Easy Josh, he''s trying to get to you. Trying to piss us off." He explained, looking at me carefully, and then pulling out a tablet that buzzed with diagnostics. Likely checking that I was still neutered like they expected. He sighed with relief and put it away.
I sent a fallback command to my lace, encoded in a particular twitch of my facial muscles. The response from the inhibitor was immediate, a jolt of electricity that had me convulsing, eyes rolling up my skull.
"What the fuck? Are you crazy?" Don yelled, grabbing the tablet again.
"Don''t do that, you''re going to fry yourself, you idiot." A woman came running over, concern evident in her young face.
I did it again, with the same result. I twitched, seeing double as more current hammered into my nervous system, escalating as I kept up the act. I was seeing double, and the ensuing moan wasn''t an act.
"Stop that!" She yelled, snatching the tablet away from a tongue-tied Don and swiping at the interface.
"Fuck you, you''re not taking me alive." I explained, drooling saliva down my chin.
"It''s as high as is safe Maggie, if I put him down forcibly he might not wake up again." Don warned her.
I was jerking like a frog hooked up to a fusion reactor, the only thing keeping me in my seat were the restraints even though my limbs were powered down.
"Goddammit, sedate him, hit him with this." She fished out an auto-injector and tossed it to Don, who stared at it helplessly.
"That shit won''t work, he''s got work done." He stammered. "Just try it, if he''s too fucked up to think he can''t hit a kill-switch."
I hit a kill-switch. My heart stopped beating, or at least the primary did, with the second waiting in the wings and immediately, darkness encroached on the edges of my consciousness even as the enhanced RBC nanites in my bloodstream rushed out to keep my brain oxygenated.
"She''s going to kill us if we let him die, I''m getting the defib thing, just hit him with everything." She ran to the front of the vehicle and propped open a hefty first aid kit.
"I say we let him die." Josh said dispassionately.
"Buddy, we had one job. Here, keep an eye on him." Don lumbered over, and his glazed over as he ripped open a patch of my suit and prepped the autoinjector, stabbing it into my thigh.
My heart immediately restarted, and he whooped with joy before stopping cold, I could hear the gears working in his head as he processed why a massive dose of sedatives had kickstarted my heart.
"Maggie, is that supposed to-" I grabbed him by the throat, my secondary systems in control of my limbs. A gush of arterial blood accompanied my wrist blade slicing his carotid, and he staggered back and slumped against a seat, hand pressed to his neck as if he could tourniquet the bleed with will alone.
"You CUNT" Josh yelled, going for the gun in his holster. My hand kept moving, finding the control for the restraints and discharging the ultracapacitors in my fingers, frying the controls and freeing me from the lax straps to move in earnest.
He was fast, managing to backpedal, bringing up his gun and discharging three shots center mass before I was upon him. Too little, much too late. My subdermal plating caught the rounds, being more than capable of halting pistol calibers in their tracks even if my innards didn''t appreciate it. I was on him as he reached for a vibroblade, the world slowing to a crawl as I closed the distance.
It was a weird experience, I wasn''t truly in control of my limbs, they were running off the macros I''d ordered my backup to execute, with extra flourishes the surprisingly smart systems added as they assessed the situation. We were talking with my autonomous nervous system as the intermediary, the irregular beats of my juiced up heart telling it to keep at it tiger, you''ve got it covered.
Even in my dissociated state, I stabbed him without issue, the monoblade slicing open a gaping wound and cleaving his diaphragm and stomach in twain. He brought his blade up and into my flank, but it didn''t hit anything but battery fat, the slick material letting it slide right out. I grabbed his arm before he could swing it again, and this time discharged the other hand''s capacitors. He screamed as his limb fried, and I head-butted him with a satisfying crunch of breaking nasal bone. This one was on me.
He fired another round that pierced through the side of the bus, setting off the breach alarms, but I brought my knee up into his side, hammering the wound. His ribs were crushed, his light augmentations no match for my military grade ones. I thrust my hand with the blade into his gut again, and brought it out with his heart thrashing in my grip like a wounded quail. I crushed it, and kicked him aside before rampaging forward.
Maggie was screaming, the pitch of her voice competing with the klaxons as I ran towards her with brutal speed. Another woman appeared, opening the door behind her, with an assault rifle in tow. She had a visor on, so I switched targets with the massive gob of saliva I''d built up in my mouth. Neurotoxin, a lot of it, even with my own immunity, my mouth and throat had gone numb.
Maggie got most of it on her face. Her screaming went up another octave as she clawed at her own skin, delicately painted fingernails drawing blood.
My hand grabbed the pistol Josh dropped of its own volition, lifting it at her and the other women, but it was a biocoded model and refused to fire, so my arm threw it like an ungainly boomerang right into the latter''s face, denting her visor plate.
She responded by blasting away in my general direction. Only a single bullet hit me, embedding itself somewhere non-critical, so I ignored the dying Maggie and kept on sprinting towards her. The bus swerved, automated systems deciding to halt till the holes in it were patched, and I bounced off the wall and kicked her in the chest. Her rifle flew out of her grip, and she gasped as she hit one of the handrails behind her. I swept her leg, brought her down to the ground, and then tore off her visor to reveal a frightened face, barely a teen. A nasty bruise was already marring her waifish features, and I looked on dispassionately as my fists kept punching, till she no longer looked human or had much of a face to begin with.
I grabbed her rifle, running back to where Maggie lay on the floor, her lips already a concerning shade of blue, still desperately pawing at the controls of the tablet. I came over, my leg lifting up and then coming down with the scrunch of breaking fingers, and then a kick to the neck snapped it like a twig.
I picked up the tablet, and proceeded to use it, far slower than the liquid fury I''d displayed. The secondary system was smart, but it deferred to my instructions as I ordered my fingers to move and work the finer details.
Tap. Lace inhibitor disengaged. It was like a cup of coffee after a long, long day.
Another click, with far more finesse. The device at the bottom of my neck paralyzing my conscious control of my limbs switched off, and they were mine again.
I sighed. Still no time to rest. I quickly grabbed what I could, avoiding the spray of sealing foam as the bus''s systems decided that if none of the humans were going to do anything about the rapidly dwindling oxygen levels, it would take matters into its own hands. The vehicle''s windows were blacked out, and I couldn''t find any electro-opacity controls at the back, plus the bullet holes were sealed up at this point so I wasn''t eager to open them up to take a peek. So I was trudging over to the controls when I saw movement on the parking sensors. People were coming, preparing to enter.
"Maggie, Dan, what the fuck is going on? Are you OK?"
Someone was hailing us, his voice playing over the bus''s speaker.
I coughed and disengaged my vocal cords, using speakers embedded in my throat to emit an eery facsimile of the former''s voice.
"Fucking Blue Man almost got loose. Josh had to put a bullet or two in him, he''s unconscious and we''re trying to get him stable!" I said using a dead woman''s voice.
To add verisimilitude, I switched to Josh''s baritone. "Bastard wouldn''t stay dead, but I think I hit something important, he''s not moving."
"Aww man, that''s not good, but I''m just glad you''re OK. The boss will understand, hang on, we''re coming in." The relief was palpable as the man hit the entry button on the RV, opening up the cubicle that could be depressurized and repressurised at will without venting the entire thing. He wasn''t expecting me to be just standing there, wedging myself in a small space where one of the pressure suite had hung, tolerating the hard vacuum that passes for an atmosphere, so he missed me entirely, focusing on hitting the keypad for the main section as I moved behind him. Another stepped through, already working at the seals of his helmet as air hissed back in. The first man was intent on peering through the glass that showed the interior of the vehicle, to little success under the blanket of foam that coated it. He was startled as a gurgling sound became audible as the airlock repressurized, turning to find his friend collapsing with a vibro blade through his neck. He had barely craned his neck when I grabbed it and twisted, leaving him staring at his own reflection in the mirrored glass till he dropped to his knees.
If you couldn''t tell, I was pissed, and I''d be killing till someone with a badge told me to stop.
15.1 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
I took a minute to ransack everything I could from the bus, though if they''d taken the equipment handed to me by USMA, they weren''t carrying it there.
The assault rifle was passable, a old Sig M5 I was quite familiar with from my Army days. In the luggage at the rear, I found an environment suit that fit me, Josh and I had similar proportions. I ate ravenously, downing protein packs and algal candy to fuel my power cells, glad that nothing had taken critical damage.
I went through their phones, the ones who still used them that is, and after pressing Don''s beefy paws onto the fingerprint scanner, set my lace to download its files and go through them on my behalf.
Maggie''s cute little foldable was set to retinal biometrics, so I pried open her puffy lids and scanned them before she went cold. More random files, once again for my lace to handle.
The two idiots I''d dispatched last yielded more ammo, but nothing else of note.
At the bus''s console, I hooked into the telemetry provided by the Starlink dish on top, but found that civilian networks were still down. I found a cam, and looked through to discover that we were pulled to the shoulder of a massive highway, with nothing but a few solar-powered lamps shimmering behind us. The other two had been traveling on a ruggedized sedan without environmental controls, itself waiting patiently for them to return.
Where the fuck was I?
The map showed me that we were on Texan Highway 7, which, not to be outdone by its terrestrial ancestors, was a 12 lane superhighway cutting through the northern end of Hellas Basin, servicing the breakaway colonies as well as the ones established later under the aegis of the Lone Star state.
My lace digested the navigation data, these two vehicles had been part of a convoy headed further north, but had temporarily stopped in the town of New Alamo (Mars colonies were often hilariously cliche in their naming). That''s the place we''d left behind, but evidently they''d kept on trucking. The next waypoint in the nav systems was a self-contained structure a short distance ahead, a combination junkyard/gas station/factory that serviced a few hundred homesteads and autonomous mining operations just past polite civilization.
I was torn as to whether or not to turn back and seek shelter in New Alamo, right until my lace reviewed more footage and pinged my attention. The video feed showed me our bus in a midst of a traffic jam, a rather rare sight on a nearly empty world. Dozens of vehicles were leaving New Alamo and departing post-haste for the spaceport, massive signs lighting up to spread the news that an unprecedented evacuation order had been announced, with all civilians to abandon their homes and head for shelter and await a ride back to orbit.
By the time they''d left, the city was deserted but for the forlorn civic robots sweeping the limitless dust.
A part of my brain yelled at me to disengage, to head back and get in touch with Texan authorities. Another part whispered back that that was a bad idea. It was an open secret that the Texans had been supporting the Patriots and the dozen other separatist movements on Mars. If it wasn''t all the way up the chain, the rank and file definitely had their sympathies. I didn''t want to naively walk into the Sheriff''s office, settle in for a cup of coffee, while they phoned home and told their buddies that a certain idiot had made his way back for them to pick up.
The only people I could get in touch with, if not trust, were the UN, USMA, and, shudder, Turing.
I ordered the vehicles to keep moving, follow their prior route. Comms were down, but for intermittent laser links, but even those were under strict lockdown. My attempts to get through, even with UN and USMA authorization codes, were declined outright.
The burst of cathartic violence I''d indulged in had been all of three minutes, a total of five before I had the cars moving again. If there was someone on the other end waiting for us, I was hopeful they would chalk it down to delays along the way, or at least the holdup in New Alamo.
We weren''t far from our destination, just half an hour so at the speeds the highway allowed. It wasn''t entirely deserted, along the way we passed the first of dozens of enormous transport haulers headed towards where we were going. The height of a three-storey building and wide enough to occupy half the highway, they were laden with dull red ore, tons and tons of it, but were completely unmanned.
Autonomous vics often used local peer-to-peer mesh networks to handle traffic where network connectivity was spotty, and it''s a good thing I was listening in, because one of the haulers a kilometer or two ahead reported multiple vehicles inbound.
I immediately got out of the bus, ordering the cars to keep moving, and then ran for one of the haulers that stood patiently waiting for us to clear the road. I jumped, soaring several meters in the low gravity, and clambered onto the top of the bed of ore. While the vehicle grumbled at my presence, after I settled in, half buried in the rubble, it decided that I wasn''t a reason to remain immobile and rejoined the procession.
The cameras proved to be vulnerable to the hacks I had ready, so I watched through them as, halfway down the road, the bus and sedan were hailed by two more open-air transports. They realized something was wrong when they saw one of the vics unoccupied, and half a dozen men got out and carefully approached the bus instead, their body language suggesting they were trying to hail them.
Not receiving a response, they entered the bus, and after seeing the carnage inside, came out post-haste, weapons at the ready.
I''d erased everything I could back there, for all they knew, I could have bailed hours ago, and thus about half of them drove off in what would hopefully be a fruitless manhunt, while the others commandeered the remaining cars and drove for where we''d been headed.
They didn''t seem to suspect that I''d be right below their noses, or in this case, right above them, hiding beneath a mound of ore.
Soon, the vehicle halted again, and I surveyed my environs with the camera. It was awaiting its turn, the last of a line of trucks unloading their cargo into massive hoppers, sending up clouds of pink dust to mitigate the uncharacteristically clear air.
We were close to the compound, a sprawling structure of ISRU-d concrete and bioplastic. There was a hab block and attached parking, most of it empty, a long line of empty haulers being topped up by superchargers, or in the case of some of them, sipping synthetic hydrocarbons that could swap in for the petrol and diesel that are, for what I hope are obvious reasons, unavailable on Mars.
The vehicle that hadn''t gone gallivanting off to chase me pulled up, and the men aboard disembarked and approached the airlock leading inside. They really didn''t expect me to be stupid enough to tail them back, not when I was isolated.
I watched one of truck disappear into an unloading bay then switched to its camera feed. This one showed me the interior of the compound, where a network of conveyor belts and robotic arms moved the ore from the hoppers to the processing plant. The plant was a maze of pipes, tanks, furnaces, and separators, where the ore was heated, crushed, leached, and refined into various metals and minerals. The plant was automated, while there were systems designed for human technicians, none of them were hanging around.
The processed materials were then stored in large containers, ready to be shipped to other locations on Mars or to orbit. The compound had a launch pad and a railgun, both capable of sending payloads into space. The launch pad was used for larger and more valuable cargoes, such as platinum group metals or rare earth elements. The railgun was used for smaller and more common materials, such as iron or aluminum. The pad was empty, and while I desperately craved to be off this God-forsaken ball of rust masquerading as a planet, even I wasn''t going to make it to orbit intact if I shot myself up in a railgun.
Through the body of my suit, I felt an incessant beeping begin. The truck was smart enough not to dump its load while a human was lying on top of it, but it was also throwing an error that might make someone come over. I checked that the coast was clear, and jumped down to find myself in the middle of an industrial juggernaut.
The facility was huge, as expected, given that there are exceedingly few zoning laws and the price of most land is "you using that?". Mars was always overbuilt, with the room for a billion rather than the modestly growing dozen million or so if you were counting those in orbit.
I''d heard that some of the original SpaceX autonomous construction equipment was still chugging along to this day, building enormous cities of regolith and concrete meant to house people yet unborn, or stockpiling resources for whoever needed them next. Why would you switch them off anyway?
I crept through the machinery, cameras, if present, weren''t set up to form a panopticon, and I found plenty of blindspots to work my way through.
A few industrial robots halted when I passed through, likely tripping a failsafe, but I did my best to be unobtrusive, and they picked up right where they''d left off.
The place wasn''t pressurized, barring the truck-stop cum refreshment area I''d seen the locals enter. It was a squat structure, the layout suggesting the bulk of it was underground. Not many cameras either, for which I was grateful.
Then I noticed an opportunity for mischief. There were external oxygen tanks mounted to the side of the structure, and an industrial bot, a tall humanoid one, was preparing to switch one out. I ran over, ignored its alarmed beep and vocalization, and grabbed one of the empty tanks. I found a valve, fished out a syringe, and transferred some of the neurotoxin my body had stored into it, depleting most of my stock. I quickly filled it up with air from another, and then went over to where the robot was working and replaced it. It was too dumb to be alarmed by my actions, and attached it as programmed.
Right. That shit was potent, and wouldn''t be filtered out right away. It would aerosolize, and while I didn''t expect the dose to be immediately lethal when diluted to this extent, they''d still notice.
I was lurking behind cover when I heard the airlocks open, and out came running, or rather staggering, a man in an environment suit. He made it halfway to one of the vics before stumbling over, cramping and spasming on the tarmac.This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
I popped into the airlock before it could close, and set it to cycle, pushing in the moment it beeped open.
The interior decor resembled a diner, barring all the military grade equipment strewn about. Sure, let''s just call it a diner, I''d seen more guns in bars back in the States. The denizens had a tad too much liquor to drink, or air to breathe, because it was chaos in there.
There were four people near the entrance, two of them similarly incapacitated on the floor, and another, a tall man wearing a rebreather, was fishing out another gas mask and some kind of autoinjector.
"Stay with me God fucking dammit!" He pleaded, stabbing one of them. I didn''t know what was in it, but it worked to some degree, because the man went lax, his lungs resuming the work of sucking down oxygen from the mask he''d stuck on him.
"Hey Rick, did you get that medkit?" He asked me absentmindedly as I appeared in the periphery of his vision, mistaking me for the man who''d left moments ago.
I cut his throat, spraying his blood over the the two downed men, one of whom began wheezing and gurgling as his lungs fought to breathe, let alone draw enough breath to shout a warning.
The fourth person turned at the commotion, clutching his own mask, and didn''t get a word in before I stabbed him in the eye and threw his body over the table.
A woman was drawn by the commotion, in an environment suit she''d likely not removed since she''d arrived here given that she was still walking. "Liam, what the-" A burst from my rifle and she slumped against a table, toppling bottles and plates of half-eaten food. Two more had been following her, and they reacted adroitly, opening fire with more compact weaponry while retreating back where they came.
I didn''t have body armor, so settled for several shots that came within millimeters of ending one as he ducked behind cover.
Something felt off, I felt my skin crawl, an unpleasantly familiar feeling of powers manifesting. I looked over to see the dying woman manifest a purple halo, and not wishing to see where that lead, shot her twice in the head. The aura disappeared with the last of her cognition.
"He''s fucking here with us! Don''t take off your suits!"
I ran, utilizing speed to throw off their aim, and avoided taking a bullet in the process. One of them was hiding behind a door, a categorically non-bulletproof one as I quickly demonstrated. His buddy howled in anguish, unloading mags in desperation while I rolled aside and found an angle from which his ankle was visible. A shot there, and he was on the floor wailing even louder. One more, and I''d found the off switch for his complaints.
There were more of them, but witnessing their two buddies get eviscerated, they wisely decided to remain at the bottom of a stairwell leading down deeper into the structure. There was an elevator too, but the idea of sending myself down it to them was a poor one. They seemed to concur, because they didn''t use it to come up either.
I checked to make sure they didn''t have another way to get up to me, and got busy with my hands.
"Jesus Christ, you Adat Sen?" I winced as I heard my name butchered with the worst Texan drawl I''d encountered in a while. Ayy-dat Sane. That deserved death.
"Hey, Blue fucker, you hear me? We don''t want to kill you, drop the gun and hear me out alright." I kept working, having found a convenient pack of explosives on a table, and even more convenient bodies on the floor.
He''d have more of my attention if he hadn''t made the asinine suggestion I drop the gun. He was welcome to do it first.
"We''re not your enemies alright? I have a message for- Oh shit he''s taking the elevator!"
There was a hail of gunfire that put the Otis elevator well and truly out of commission, until the doors opened onto the lower lobby where a squad of well-equipped men aimed at it. There was a chorus of more "Oh shit"-s followed by the boom of the claymore stuck to the chest of their now even deader comrade going off.
Claymores are dead simple, and you''ll be simply dead if one goes off with you in the arc of the hundreds of bits of metal shrapnel they set off. Three men were mowed down, another badly hit, while two more had either been in better cover or with more armor on when I broke through the thin roof of the stationary elevator and came down on top of them.
I''d needed the body to get the elevator to move, and more importantly, report a single occupant for anyone looking. The claymore didn''t even tickle me, discharging its load in a frontal arc, and so I was up and on them before they could process things.
My augments made this too easy, less than half the mag, and I was once again in the familiar company of cooling corpses. I couldn''t smell the stench, not in the quiet comfort of my suit.
The survivor, badly injured by the blast, was crawling towards his shotgun when I stalked towards him. The crueler side of me manifested as me letting him just barely touch the pistol grip before I stamped down and smashed his fingers against the marble floor.
(Mars does have marble, before you ask. It''s rare, yet it''s there, a relic of more active plate tectonics)
He screamed in abject terror as I dragged him back, quiet fury lending me strength.
"This is Doctor Sen, got an appointment, bitch?"
I threw him against the wall, my enhanced strength making him bounce with the crunch of breaking bones, and I kicked him again when he landed by my feet, sending him rolling and tumbling to the smoking elevator doors.
He wasn''t dead yet, though he wished he was. I ripped off his mask, and stared him down. I don''t look like the most intimidating dude on the planet, but with my dented skull and the crossword of bruises and wounds criss-crossing my face, I still gave him a fright.
"Please, just let me explain.." He hissed, unable to resist as I flipped him over and quickly patted him down for anything he could use against me.
"Talk fast, you''re breathing in tainted air and I''m the only who might stick you with an antidote."
"Lady Purple told us to bring you in, said you might help us if we reminded you." He groaned in pain, while I gave up on a proper cavity search and just tore his suit off, leaving him naked but for his undies.
"Bring me in? You mean kidnap me first and then shoot me later?" I replied in a monotone.
"It wasn''t supposed to come to this. We didn''t know you''d be with the USMA boots, so when Don ran into you, he didn''t know what he was dealing with. He just heard that we wanted you alive, so he used the Parrot he had ready-."
His explanation was interrupted by another explosion from the stairwell that went further underground.
"You know about your buddies trying to creep up on me?" I asked him. I''d set up another claymore, or three, watching the stairs while I dealt with this chump.
"Fuck! No! Let me talk to them, I''ll tell them to stand down." He pleaded.
I grabbed one of the bodies and hooked up to the speakers, before tossing it down the stairwell. Panicked gunshots reverberated for a moment before they realized what was up. I could have just thrown the speaker, but the corpse sent a message.
"This is Raul, code seventeen octane. Stand the fuck down, I''m trying to talk to this guy."
"You''ve got five minutes Raul, I''m sorry." Was the quiet reply over comms. I cut the feed before he got anything else through.
"Why the fuck do you think I''m on your side?" I asked him, holding an autoinjector in one hand while keeping a gun pointed at his head. From how labored his breathing was getting, I wouldn''t need it if he ran down the clock.
"That''s what the Lady told us, that if we got in touch with you, some geass or shit would activate and you''d know what was up."
"So you were planning to mind control me? That''s your plan?" The barrel of my rifle dug uncomfortably deep into his temple, though, credit where due, he didn''t seem overly afraid of dying.
"No, fuck man. She said you were deep cover, that you didn''t remember a deal with Lumen."
I halted. I remembered our dealings, the jump from the middle of the desert to some kind of ship they used as their base of operations. I''d killed El Presidente as part of my convenient three part payment plan towards getting my wife back. But here? Did they expect me to compromise on hunting down BULWARK? Like hell I would, unless they gave me answers.
"Well, I don''t remember this bit. Did she say how to re-jog my memory of this so called deal?" I wanted to stay coy in case anybody was listening in or recording this, just in case they CC''d my handlers. But my heart wasn''t in it, the moment he''d brought up Lumen, I knew he had me.
"Right, well the Parrot was supposed to work first try." He admitted helplessly, while I adjusted the dose of the antidote and stuck him with the minimum needed to keep him from asphyxiating. I cuffed him, just in case, and jogged over to the first two idiots and hit them up too, if these guys were allies, no, just plain old neutral, I wouldn''t kill them if I didn''t have to. And if he was bullshitting me, I had access to enough high explosive to make my anger evident, not that bullets wouldn''t suffice.
I checked my lace''s logs, and found the entries from when the Parrot had struck me.
WARNING: UNHANDLED EXCEPTION CODE 8FFB7 OCTAROON
TRIPWIRE TRIGGERED: BASILISK ANOMALY, CLASS ?¨¥????
The lace had detected something wrong, and had tried to go into a locked down mode to mitigate the worst of it. I scrubbed through gigabytes of recorded brain imaging, and found clusters of anomalous activity in my hippocampus.
It was either the onset of a very unusual seizure, or an attempt to activate obfuscated memories that the lace had taken to be a hostile act and halted in its tracks.
"Do you have any way to back that claim up?" I demanded, unwilling to risk it right away.
"Lady Purple can take over minds, you''ll see this weird glow-"
"Let me guess it''s purple?" I asked wearily. Someone''s coffee was getting cold, and since their body was competing in the same race, I took a sip so it didn''t go to waste. It was meh.
"You want a prize? Yeah, we start glowing, and then she can speak through us and channel her powers. Do you want me to try?"
The gun was in his face as soon as the words were out of his mouth.
"Any metahuman fuckery without my say-so and Lady Purple puppets a corpse, you hear me?"
He managed to flinch, a sign that the antidote was working.
I checked that there were no convenient ways up from where the remaining (potential) hostiles were lurking, and hooked up the protesting man with a satchel charge.
"Minor precaution."
I then sat and had a quick chat with my second brain, my opinion of the backup neuromorphic system greatly elevated by its performance while I''d been incapacitated. It was smart, not human smart, but I''d come to trust it like an ''ol reliable hound that would raise hell at the first whiff of a bear.
If activating the suppressed portion of my memories made me act up, it would override my primary lace and knock me out while taking over functionality. Then blow up everything in a square kilometer, kill anyone who looked at me funny, and finally find a way to broadcast through the jam using some of the more powerful comms systems that the place might have till someone came to get me.
It listened patiently, and sent a warm wave of agreement, which I could swear had clear undertones of promised brutality if someone, including myself, tried to take advantage of me.
OVERRIDE ACCEPTED
CORPUS CALLOSUM SIGNAL FILTER DISABLED
ALLOWING ACCESS TO ANOMALOUS BRAIN ACTIVITY
Oh shit.
When I met Lumen in Vegas, they''d insinuated that I''d met them before. The ship, that fucking ship. When all your other memories faded, smell remained. I could practically taste the ozone, burnt copper and the stink of blood from when I''d first boarded it.
It didn''t have Earth gravity inside, I''d been practically bouncing, but at the time had chalked it down to metahuman fuckery instead of the more prosaic explanation that it hadn''t been floating on terrestrial seas.
The first Parrot, the one that fucked me up when I checked into ATLAS a few months back, the time since then already feeling like centuries. It hadn''t been an attack, or more importantly, they''d been trying to activate me. Too bad that whatever cognitive filters the UN had installed on my lace head been on it faster than I was.
It all came rushing back, promises and veiled threats. Had El Presidente really been the first job I''d done for them?
"Alright. I''m going to hear you out now."
Was it too much to ask for glasnost and perestroika from the people on my side? If they were more polite, I''d have to kill a much smaller fraction of them.
15.2 Truth and Reconciliation
The atmosphere in the meeting room was awkward, and that''s leaving aside the trace amounts of poison that could still make your throat itch. The people sitting across the mahogany table seemed just as unhappy to be there as I was, though my annoyance was slightly tempered by the sheer fear in their eyes.
It was nice to be taken seriously for once.
After a bit of shouted debate, we''d settled on a detente. I was still armed, while the people who were waiting on me weren''t. Not that the ones outside weren''t packing, but I was reasonably confident I could shoot my way out, assuming they weren''t mindless fanatics. A big assumption, but one borne out by observed behavior.
I''d rescued three of them from an unpleasant death, and someone had managed to get to the man choking outside in time to save him too. Of course, it would be unreasonably optimistic of me to expect that gesture to mollify them, but as my sordid tale can attest, I live by "do no harm" first and foremost.
They had a well stocked medical bay bought second hand from some spaceship, and it was happy enough to keep three of them ventilated till the toxins wore off. The fourth, Raul Graham, hadn''t had quite enough of the beatdown I''d delivered and insisted on being present to debrief me, he had an air of natural authority to him that was only slightly marred by the medical exo that kept him from toppling out of his seat.
The others had been in no mood for introductions, resentfully glaring at me, most of them still askance that I''d murdered a bus-load of their buddies and would be getting off scott free for it. I for one, with my Buddha-like patience, forgave them for the kidnapping and attempted murder, expressing my sanguine attitude by laying my legs across the table, sidearm in one hand and a cup of much appreciated whiskey in another.
"So, you''re telling me that BULWARK was an inside job?" I asked, feeling better than I had in ages.
"Well, that''s how it started. Nobody asked them how they felt, so when Lumen came calling.."
My hands itched for pen and paper notes, an atavistic instinct born of interminable ward rounds where wizened ancient wizards (the consultant) shared arcane potions and invocations (updated drug charts) and proceeded to engage in plot-derailing exposition. Nah, I didn''t miss it, I don''t know how I ever lived without a lace.
It was a long story, beginning somewhere around the time of the Secession, and the period of existential dread that befell the plucky colonists on Mars. Gone were the massive swarms of Starships that would ignite the Martian skies like clockwork cicadas, as dead as Elon. While many of the old American colonies or even the SpaceX company towns yearned for independence, it wasn''t coming while the planet was blockaded by FedUS warships operating from Deimos, and those wishing to leave were offered only the clothes on their back and a pickaxe. Despite the romantic paeans to the spirit of the New West, that wasn''t enough to make your own way, not even if you threw in a wagon and an ox.
Nasty time, the less said of it the better. But that squashed secessionist spirit hadn''t vanished, and when the final partition was signed, a good chunk of the population switched allegiance from the Federal US to the hundreds of micronations that sprung up in its wake, leaving aside larger defections to Lone Star or the Californian Republic. Still, many didn''t even get the right of exit promised to them, forced to remain in USMA settlements on various technicalities like work bonds and the like. A bad Idea, it''s not like you need humans to run the colonies, so why imprison an embittered populace? OK, not that bad a idea, because what Mars farmed was people, a fertile crop of new metahumans the harvest. You wanted as many as you could fit in your fancy arcologies for that.
Cue the Patriots, still fighting for independence, now for USMA as a whole rather than individual polities.
What Mars was good for was a place to run the kind of experiments you didn''t want to do anywhere near a functional biosphere, black ops juju bullshit and experimentation with superpowers and alien technology. Sure, a quarter of Mount Olympus just vanished one night in ''36, but nobody was really using it were they?
The planet was riddled with relics from pre-secession days, and plenty more built since then. And USMA had been naughty, circumventing the UN treaties on reverse-engineering alien technology outside the aegis of multilateral organizations. That, and their mucking about with alien AGI would earn them a paddling from Turing, should the charges stick.
BULWARK was the running name for a certain experiment, attempting to use metahumans to crack the secrets of the most esoteric alien tech, often with unfortunate consequences for those involved. The aliens had some serious black boxes, and their tamper-proof mechanisms occasionally consisted of unstable and actively levitated antimatter. They did odd jobs on the side to keep up pretenses, and most of that was legit. Even when obsolescent in the face of newer computational technology, the chip foundries in Hellas had been critical for continued US hegemony on Mars.
"They found a Centaur core that wasn''t properly deactivated? And it spoke to the the tech guy?"
"Yes. It had one of their AI on it, or a mind upload, though I don''t think they draw a distinction themselves." Raul mused, and after staring longingly at me sipping on my drink, caved in and poured himself a shot.
Things moved swiftly. The AI had the insane technowar suites the Centaurs were famous for, and it successfully hacked into the shackles of the indentured metahumans, freeing them from USMA control while averting suspicion. The subversion was swift and insidious, the awakened Centauri intelligence slipping whisper quiet through military and civilian networks alike for months before it hit an updated tripwire and forced BULWARK to show their hand.
I couldn''t help but whistle in awe as the full extent of the subversion was made clear. Hundreds of biolabs and autofabs had been working around the clock, and given that there was little to no human supervision, they''d built up enough materiel to sponsor a mid scale war.
And that''s leaving aside the couple hundred nukes in their hands.
"Wait, you guys have nukes? That one you used on the fab wasn''t a one-off?"
Raul laughed before his aching ribs forced him to downgrade to a chortle. "Yes, Doctor Sen. The Old States'' left quite a bit behind, black sites that were lost during the reconsolidation and restructuring. But we stole more than a few from USMA, and built more with stolen material."
He settled back, favoring the side with fewer broken ribs. "Worst part was sitting on all of this and keeping it secret. I lost so many good men and women, and I couldn''t tell them what they were dying for, and worse, that they didn''t have to die scared and alone because we couldn''t save them without blowing our cover."
He glared at me, the memory of our recent duel fresh in both our minds. I remained impassive, I was far from sorry, even if I did wish things had gone differently.
"Anyway, you''re just in the prelude. We activated some of the drone swarms, laid hints that BULWARK was operating from underground bases instead of, well, underground bases that belonged to the same assholes hunting us. Just enough to draw more of the USMA and USSF forces into play, ready for the coupe de grac¨¦."
(If my use of FedUS and USA confuses you, you wouldn''t be the first. Right after the Secession, the 46 states that remained in the Union temporarily rebranded as the Federal USA to draw a distinction from the original entity. But, almost a decade later, the Winters administration decided that an entity still holding most of the continental US might we well use name-brand. It certainly marked a new phase of pressure on the secessionist states, with every President since running on the ticket of eventual reunification.)
"I''ve heard enough. I want to speak to BULWARK, or at least Lumen. But first, how did they get in touch?"
He shrugged. "They never told me, but sometime after the Centauri AI freed them. Ok, you told me in no uncertain terms that "metahuman fuckery" would result in you killing me, so I''m going to ask your kind permission before someone here burns their link with Lady Purple."
"It''s a one-time thing? The possession?"
"Why don''t you ask her?"
They had two more people with untapped links, and after some discussion, brought in a girl who looked like she was better suited for art school rather than an insurgency. She looked down her nose at me, the sneer mildly disrupted by the glowing nose ring, but then she adjusted her hair, took a seat, and let a meditative look pass over her face.
The effect was immediate, I felt my hair stand on end as that crawling sensation of unreality returned. She had bioluminescent purple hair in the first place, so it took me a bit to spot the point where she was puppeted. Or at least, I didn''t think her eyes had always glowed purple.
"Dr. Adat Sen, we meet again. You certainly played hard to get." Her voice was different now, deeper, more sultry and seductive.
"Send me an email next time. So, am I supposed to just call you Lady Purple?" I asked her, defiantly downing another shot.
She laughed, it was a sexy laugh, the kind Anjana often let out when my idea of pillow talk went into dad joke territory. "My real name is Lucille West, if you really want to, you can call me Lucy." She winked, the gesture incongruent with the girl''s snooty face.
"I''ll stick to Purple for now. What the hell is going on?" I stood up, staring at her amused face. That old familiar black rage was simmering.
She resumed a more neutral appearance when she saw I wasn''t feeling the humor.
"Revolution, Adat. When this is all over, we''ll escape to the stars, and there will be no catching us." Her power amped up a notch, and another globe to match the first she''d conjured for me appeared, this time of Mars. If the beautifully rendered pinpricks of light were any suggestion, it was getting busy in orbit.
"How? You''re going to use that teleporter of yours to spirit everyone away?" I remembered the sharp-edges holes between dimensions I''d stepped through to meet Lumen.
"I wish it were that simple. Do you know about Dr. Fang Shen?"
That question spurred buried memories, my lace demanding my assent before opening Pandora''s box.
MNEMONIC LOCK: Imagine pink elephants on parade for thirty seconds and then blink slowly, twice.
USER NOTE: Hey, past Adat here. This isn''t critical, but we end up drinking way too much in order to forget afterwards. Don''t say I didn''t warn you.
I imagined the fucking elephants.
Dr. Shen. Oh. That Dr. Shen.
"He''s here, isn''t he?" I asked.
In response, one of the tiny dots in orbit got the zoom treatment, enlarging to show the sleek brutalist lines of a Chinese warship, now flying UN colors.
It shimmered with the waste heat from droplet radiators forming a butterfly in the void, the glow of particle cannons and the radiant redness of the railguns suggesting recent use. But by far of more import was the lobotomized brain of Dr. Fang Shen aboard, now slaved to the AGI in charge.
Dr. Shen, metahuman inventor extraordinaire, the creator of the Reality Anchor, an artifact that could dampen powers on demand, with the later protypes being tunable. Shame that he got ideas, joined the losing side during the Winter of Red Rice and White Bamboo, and later down the line, someone in the reformed CCP decided that he''d be better off as the literal figurehead of an interstellar warship.
This was a regrettable decision in hindsight, without his direct intervention in the manufacturing process, you simply couldn''t build more Reality Anchors, and you could bet that several hundred billion USDC and hundreds of Crafters and Technomancers had tried. Instead, after the Florence-Sen procedure, he acted as the Reality Anchor to end all the others, capable of extending his unconscious influence to envelop entire worlds. At least I hoped he was unconscious, that wasn''t a given with what some powers needed to stay active, and we hadn''t perfected the technique at the time. And sometimes, being wide awake while your brain was subsumed by the AI was the point.
Suffice to say that the remaining portable anchors were rare, and worth their weight in the rarer lanthanides. You just didn''t see them around all that often, they were irreplaceable relics.
The fact that Lady Purple was even having this conversation with me was proof they hadn''t ramped his powers up to full blast. I suspected even Consul would fall out of the sky if he got close. Instead, it was in a more targeted mode, suppressing teleportation and certain Technomancer powers, trying to avoid crippling the guys with flags.
"So your portals are no bueno?"
"Smart man. Yes, we can''t just take everyone and bail, so we''re going to have to go for a more R-selected strategy."
Ah, R-selection, where you made babies faster than they could be eaten. Highly reassuring to hear, no doubt.
"The details will come soon enough. Listen, this conduit is almost burnt out, and I can''t multitask very well while I''m doing this. Stay with the Patriots, they''re about to pack up and leave for a sanctuary where, if you''re in time, you can wrangle some signatures from BULWARK."This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
There was the stink of ozone, and then, she was gone, leaving a bleary eyed art-ho in her place.
The Patriots packed fast. I wasn''t invited to the quick funeral they held to memorialize their dead, instead settling for perching on a mound as automated diggers dug deep graves. The 21 gun salute brought back memories of dead brothers-in-arms, and so I let my thoughts roam to long still battlefields and their restless dead.
Before the dust had settled, we were on our way, another bus our ride, this one with fewer bullet holes in it.
Nobody bothered to chat me up on the way, I had a distinct sensation of being ostracized, not that I could think of a good reason. I took the downtime to explore some of the functionality of my lace, the words "Dolphin Mode" catching my eye. When activated, instead of turning me into a psychopathic pedophile rapist as might be reasonably expected, instead it just put half my brain to sleep at a time. It was a queer sensation, like the comfortable fuzz of prolonged sleep deprivation, and the sensation of my consciousness shifting from one hemisphere to the other was plain weird. I alternated from being so bad at math I couldn''t count my fingers, to knowing what fingers were but unable to name them. Still, it did the job, and my exhausted neurons rejoiced at the micronaps.
We followed the endless highway till the reddened sun began peeking up from the horizon, and then turned sharply to enter a disguised tunnel that ran miles and miles at a shallow slope.
There were respectable automated security measures in place, ceiling mounted machine guns, laser scanners and the like, but we were evidently expected and drove right past the hulking security bot manning the checkpoint.
I''m not sure what I expected inside, likely a combination of practical utilitarianism and Texan kitsch, but my initial reaction was deja vu provoked by feeling like I''d walked right back into a USAF FOB. A hundred people in fatigues watched us walk in, all of them armed to the teeth. I felt the hot gaze of a massive combat cyborg track me, and stared right back.
Thankfully, someone had mercy on me and the others, and instead of an immediate debrief, we were lead through decon showers first. I luxuriated at the sensation of clean, hot water running over my skin, getting days of fine grit and soot out of my joints. Marginally refreshed, I headed back to the cafeteria near the entrance, and demolished three servings before someone came to get me.
As I jogged through the halls, the disposition of the Patriots reminded me of some Jihadists I''d fought in the late 20s. They had that same sense of determination combined with grim fatalism, the garb of a martyr who didn''t really expect to die, but if they did, they''d say it was worth it. I could respect that, even if I disagreed with some of their goals.
The facility was buried deep within the Martian bedrock, at least a kilometer or so, if not more. I don''t think we''d survive if someone dropped a bunker buster nuke or we came under sustained orbital bombardment, but it provided a sense of security I''d lacked over on the surface. The familiar decor helped too.
After being waved through by keen eyed guards in front of a robust blast door, I found myself in front of the first member of BULWARK.
Beacon was hot. Sure, he was a a looker, but I meant it in the literal sense. Even a dozen feet away, heat washed over my skin, and the less augmented were keeping a safe distance. In my limited thermal vision, he glowed like an incandescent bulb, albeit in the normal spectrum he wasn''t bright at all, more like the sullen heat of dying coal ash.
The person opposite him was a literal polar opposite. I use literal literally, because that was Frostbite, the metahuman with cryokinetic powers. His breath emerged tinged with frost that quickly became hot vapor as it approached Beacon, and the combination of the two of them in one place seemed at least partially out of deference to the complaining thermostat.
"Sen, is it? We''ve been expecting you." Contrary to expectations, Frostbite greeted me warmly, while Beacon gave me a cold look. Who pissed on his pancakes?
"One and only. I''d shake your hand, if that was advisable." I told him, and he laughed heartily. "Yeah, I mean, I can warm up to room temperature, but excuse me, someone needs to keep this hot head from burning the house down." Frostbite explained, leading me further into the sanctum-sanctorum.
If it wasn''t clear already that this place was a leftover from before the Secession, it was obvious now. I''d never thought I''d feel nostalgic for beige walls and chunky flatscreen monitors, but the emotion arose nonetheless. I could almost hear my CO berating me for getting my squad lost on a land nav course.
Waiting inside was a woman in almost classical Greek dress, the gown hanging off her shoulder like a waterfall of plantlife. A doubletake revealed that it was indeed flora, she was wearing living weave. Who else could it be but Florette?
"Hi, Dr. Sen. I''m Natasha, you can call me Flo if you like." Her smile was winsome, and while I wasn''t entirely a fan of the small ladybugs and other creepy crawlies living their best lives in her outfit, it was a killer aesthetic, and what''s a good superhero or villain without one?
"Not a fan of Florette?" I asked her. She crinkled her button nose in response. "Didn''t choose that name, don''t think I want to ever hear that again. I''m a person, not some Poison Ivy ripoff, and a real name helps."
"Here, take a seat." She offered me a wicker chair, and I rested my sore ass for a moment, stretching out my legs.
"I heard you were here to take us in?" Beacon asked, amused.
"Hey, don''t sleep on my augments. I''m tougher than I look." I didn''t look particularly tough then, as I was petting a cat that had decided my lap was the most comfortable of the lot. To be fair, the options were frostbite, second degree burns, and I half-imagined that there was a fucking snake slithering about in Florette''s outfit. We had a cat on base in Armenia, a bitter and combative beast that had outlived half my platoon. Still consented to scratchies behind its one remaining ear if you paid up with some of your MRE.
"Undoubtedly. Did you really have to do such a number on the Patriots back there?" He asked. I shook my head. "Like I always tell people, the solution is peaceful dialogue, preferably before they fry your brain with a Parrot and bundle you off to who knows where."
"Right. Perhaps I''d have stayed in therapy if my shrink was packing, or such a hunk." Florette shamelessly flirted while reaching out to pet the cat herself.
"Thanks, but I''m taken." I held up my finger, showing the wedding ring I wore. It was worse for wear, the diamond cracked and clouded from the hundred or so lethal engagements I''d experienced since the more pleasant kind of engagement. Still, I wore it when I could, and I hoped its counterpart on her dainty fingers was doing better.
"All the good men are." She sighed dramatically, making an orchid bloom bedazzlingly in the palm of her hand. The cat wasn''t amused, hissing at something, which I was ever more certain was a real fucking snake.
"Where does she live? Cushy penthouse loaned out by the UN?" She inquired, making herself a herbal tea, sprinkling in some shredded leaves that I suspected she''d grown on her person.
I laughed bitterly. "If a space station somewhere in AC counts. She''s a supe too, grade 5, national asset, you know the deal.."
That provoked some sympathy, even from the standoffish Beacon.
I told them the sordid story, and when I was done, they were noticeably warmer towards me. I needed to vent, and I doubted anyone was in a better position to commiserate than this lot, the incision scars from their implanted explosives still fading.
A knock on the door heralded the entry of a man in power armor. I was taken aback, it was clearly of Centauri origin, while they didn''t hew to a single aesthetic, the sleek and seamless white plastic and almost biological curves was a dead ringer. He was tall, tall enough that I pegged him as a spacer, if not from birth then at least puberty. He wasn''t wearing a helmet, but instead had a platinum circlet encircling his brow without making contact, levitating via unclear means.
I recognized him straight away. Gerald Green, or Machina.
He stopped, appraising me. His circlet emitted a faint buzz, like a ultrasonic scalpel, before gradually spinning up until it was a blur.
"Not bad. Hyundai joints?" He asked. He was quiet, speaking softly as if we were in a library instead of a bustling base. I suspected he was a nerd at heart, most Technomancers were. Something about his mannerisms suggested that if he wasn''t autistic, then he was at least on the spectrum. Call it intuition built out of counseling hundreds, at least till the prenatal screens and gene therapy made it a rarity.
"Close. Boston Dynamics ultralights. Wait, Hyundai still owns them doesn''t it?"
"Correct. Interesting drug glands, do they come with nano fabs? Those ultracaps, are they just twisted graphene or something more exotic?"
We talked shop for a while, discussing my augments. Let''s be honest, I''m a nerd too, the day drinking just masks it. I was extolling the virtues of battery fat over less organic energy stores when a thoroughly bored Florette patted him on the shoulder and drew us out of it.
Nice guy, I hoped I didn''t have to kill him later.
"Lady Purple phoned ahead, if you want to have a proper conversation, now''s the time." He fished out a small device that glittered under the LED lights. A twist of a cap, and it sparkled to life, revealing a hologram of the woman. Her usual regal air was a bit scuffed since it caught her mid yawn, but she recovered her poise swiftly.
"It''s like 4 am here, excuse me please." She fished around off screen for a caffeine bulb of the type often preferred in zero g.
"Right. Adat, meet Bulwark. Kids, say hi to Adat." Only Florette responded with a teasing "Hi Adat", the others rolled their eyes, but I could tell they held Lucille in great esteem, approaching outright reverence.
"So, are you guys a part of Lumen right now?" I asked.
"Well, we''re on the same page, and assuming this works out, we''re going to be shacking up for the foreseeable future." Machina explained, the joints of his suit eerily silent as he drew up his own chair.
"Jolly good. Now, I''m rocket lagged as fuck, I need my skull remodeled, and most importantly, I want answers." I reminded them, since nobody seemed in any haste to bring me up to speed.
"You can get that dent out with one of the autodocs, I''ll supervise it you like." Machina offered.
"I was going to suggest more coffee first, but you''ve got a drug gland right? Alright, let me explain.."
She spoke at length, my jaw practically hitting the floor and bouncing by the time she was done. Halfway through, the cat, the name tag proudly declaring it as Staff Sergeant Fluffers, had enough of my lax attention to the work of petting, and strode off with the haughty air of a career NCO.
"You can''t be serious. You''re putting the lives of a million people at stake." I shouted, making Florette flinch and then wipe away the spittle.
"There''s no better way. If we had more time, and if Shen wasn''t in orbit, we could have done this differently. Lumen has precogs on staff, but they''re not gods Adat, we don''t see a way out of this that doesn''t spill blood. Rest assured that we''re not trying to hurt people." Lucille explained, her kind eyes scanning my tense expression.
"I''m not having any part of this. You''re crazy, each and every one of you." I stood up and stepped back, heart thumping in my chest.
"You can sit this one out if you really want to, but face the facts Dr. Sen, we''re on this course with or without a single augmented Blue Man. Do your part, and you save lives while also working on your debt to us." She offered.
I''d been microdosing meth in my system when I didn''t get my coffee, but the anger that welled up inside me was all natural. She was lucky that she wasn''t in the room. I could feel the others tense up, Beacon got fractionally hotter, lighting up in my rudimentary thermal vision, the heat slowly warping the thermoplastics of his chair. Machina was still as a rock, but that suit of his almost certainly had me dialed in. Florette fretted, fingers anxiously messing with her locks as she shifter closer to the safety of Machina''s bulk.
"Fuck you. Don''t think I don''t know. El Presidente wasn''t the first job I did for you. You tried to activate me at least once before, and I bet I''ve already done more shit than I want to remember. You need to get me my wife back, and now."
She remained quiet, mulling over my words. I set my lace to highest sec, filtering my own thoughts like pulped juice through a strainer, desperately seeking any signs of thought patterns that weren''t mine. Nothing rang that bell yet, but you could never be sure.
"I am sorry. I truly am. Yes, you''ve helped us before, but when we demanded three favors of you, it goes without saying that they''re big ones. And trust me, we''ve done what we can for you, did you think your rise through the ranks went so smoothly without good reason?"
"The fuck do you mean? I worked my ass off to get where I am, I''m on track to get to Assistant Director in a year or two. Fuck that. Where. Is. My. Wife." Emotion inhibitors kicked in, putting a ceiling on my rage without alleviating it. My second brain was alarmed, and seemed to think I wasn''t thinking straight.
"If you believe that your station is entirely the product of your own labors, so be it. That''s a trivial effort on our part, you don''t have to share credit. But I promise you that your cooperation now will count for us getting your wife back. Think about it for a moment Adat, control your rage. Without getting us to the stars, how did you really expect us to just jaunt into AC and get a top-tier military teleporter out without getting her and ourselves killed?"
Deep breaths helped. The feel of my ring in my clenched grip grounded me for a moment, reminded me why I''d shed blood, sweat, tears and shit to get this far. I double checked my lace, no signs of intrusion yet, but the neuromorphic computer had taken it upon itself to release substances to take the edge off. I didn''t like it, I was coming to enjoy the rage that preceded violence.
"Tell me how that works. Tell me how you''ll pull her out." I demanded, my voice hoarse, my eyes blinking away tears that threatened to break the dam of my crumbling composure. I wanted to curl up into a ball and sob my heart out, ideally with Gator, if not, then SSgt. Fluffers would do. I wanted my wife back. I needed her.
Florette sighed with sympathy and patted me on the arm. I let her do so without complaint. Lucille worked her fingers, and conjured a view that was captured by the holographic projector.
"Step one. We establish Lumen as an interstellar player. We get heavy hitters, teleporters, better clairvoyants. We organize an expedition to AC, break through the cordon, and then we retrieve your wife. Does that sound concrete enough to you?" She paced back and forth, and I recognized Hu Junya''s blasted ship from the background.
Yes. It was concrete, the kind that had been attacked by metahuman termites and riddled rotten.
Step One: Build your own interstellar craft, free delivery from the IKEA factory, some assembly necessary.
Step Two: Recruit the metahumans we need from under the watchful eyes of every fucking government and supergovernment on Earth.
Step Three: Make it through the Solar System, the second most heavily guarded patch of space-time in the known universe.
Step Four: Break through the most heavily guarded patch of space-time around, in the form of the security at Sedna or Gongong.
Step Five: Do I even care to quantify the amount of shit we''ve got on the AC side? It''s a vignette from Warhammer 40k out there.
Step Six: Retrieve my wife.
Step Seven: ??
Step Eight: Profit, or stop day dreaming and get a real job.
I walked over to the table and collapsed back into my seat, my head in my hands, gripped tightly enough that the metal creaked and the pressure almost drowned out the pain.
If I helped them, tens of thousands would die. Worst case, millions, and Mars would go back to being a dead rock. If I didn''t, what fucking leverage did I have over Lumen? I could bluster and boast about bringing the full weight of UNSEEN and the UN down on their backs, but that would be distressingly little change from the status-quo. Let''s face it, they could sink me long before I got a shot in.
I didn''t know how long I was there, almost catatonic as bad ideas jousted with terrible ones in my head. I almost kicked the cat away when it rubbed against my leg, prompting it to meow in distress and look at me with limpid eyes.
"You''re mind controlling the fucking cat aren''t you?" That inane observation was all I could muster.
She cocked a fine eyebrow. "Perceptive. But it does like you, for what it''s worth."
It meowed in response and got around to licking its paws daintily.
"Okay. Okay. You''re going ahead with or without me, endangering the whole planet, and I at least have the option to come along and mitigate some of the damage. Yes, when I tell myself that, it doesn''t sound so insane that I''m about to get myself committed. But Lucille-" She looked at me thoughtfully, -"fuck me over one more time and I swear I will kill you."
"I don''t need to read minds to know you mean that Dr. Sen."
With the fizzing of static, her hologram vanished, leaving me in tense silence, Florette''s sympathies no more able to bridge the yawning gap between all of us than I could paddle on a boat to find my wife in the stars.
I''d do what they asked. I had no choice. Right? Right?
15.3 Centaur Sorcery
The hospital environs were comforting. The whirr of saws and drills, the gentle beeping of lasers ready to fire, the swift and precise movements of the autodoc, it was all enough to make a man forget he was there to get his skull unbent.
The shock absorbers had done their job, so other than draining a hematoma and injecting my parietal lobe with healing factors, it involved excising the damaged plates and replacing them with a shiny new titanium one. All simple enough, I had my lace turn off my nociceptors and withdrew into VR while the procedure was done. I didn''t have time for anesthetic, and I didn''t want to risk being groggy afterwards. Is it the brain damage or am I having deja vu?
I looked at myself in the mirror, and winced at how worse for wear I was. My nose was bent at a mildly jaunty angle, my cheeks were hollow, most of my natural buccal fat having fallen prey to the increased metabolic demands of my system. I considered an injection of battery fat to fill it out, but it had a weird consistency to it under the skin, and I day dreamed long enough about Anjana caressing my cheeks to turn down the option. I looked at the grey hair that was beginning to sprout, and while I can be vain, in this case I think it lent an air of authority.
Back in the day, a Consultant of mine, when asked why he didn''t just get hair replacements to fix his shiny pate, replied that, in order to be taken seriously as a male doctor, you were best served with some salt and pepper, or failing that, balding. Eh, my normal medical practise had fallen off these days, so I mentally exhorted my follicles to be good and not turn entirely grey, on the pain of being replaced with new ones. I had a few good years left in me before they fell out, if my dad was any indication.
As for the bruises, they were fading, though not as fast as I''d like. Chewing was a chore, and I suspected the last of my natural teeth was counting down the days till it could work free of my gums. Chalk that down to radiation poisoning or just being punched in the face more often than was good for me.
There were a few spots that turned out to be melanomas-in-situ, but nothing the laser couldn''t handle. My pancreas wasn''t doing too hot, no man is an island, but my Islets of Langerhans were noisily informing me that they''d had enough of the crazy demands I was making of them. I''d have to get my drug glands to make insulin, since a standard pump might be inadvisable, but as a peptide I''d need to find a reprieve on the ban on arbitrary protein generation.
My intestines, they''d suffered to say the least. More radiation damage, and the MREs hadn''t helped. I suspected I was missing the gene mods to make the most of them, but either way you didn''t want to be in the same toilet as me when I was letting out the 10 year old chicken tikka masala.
A few ribs needed replacing, some of my joints needed to be ungummed, and there I was, if not quite as good as new, well at least I wouldn''t be sold as a lemon.
The Patriots had brought in newer autodocs, the ones left over from when the base was built in ''28 were antiquated in comparison. They even needed a human doctor to stand around supervising, imagine that.
I found an abandoned doctor''s room, and seeing as nobody else wanted it, caught a few hours of much needed beauty sleep till I was woken up and ordered to go the briefing area, but not before I made a pitstop in the armory.
It was bustling, dozens of men and women picking out gear, others field stripping and cleaning what they''d already taken. Cyborgs were getting top ups, the drone specialists putting theirs through their paces, and I was jaded enough that a hulking Centauri warform quietly sitting in the corner only elicited mild concern instead of panic.
Unlike the militia I''d murdered, these guys were packing. I eagerly looked over the wide assortment of lethal toys at my disposal, including several of Crafter make, further improved by Machina. I picked up a rifle with reverse-engineered alien tech crammed in, and was getting used to the weight distribution when the man himself walked up.
"Shame we didn''t have more time. I just cracked the code to mass producing more, but we''ll have to settle for the better prototypes." He informed me, cradling a large laser weapon like a precious infant.
"How''d you manage any of this? I read up on UN efforts to reproduce a lot of their tech, and while some Crafters can figure out bits, nobody managed to get this into mass production." I figured out the controls, and after interfacing with, found out it was a man portable railgun capable of accelerating 2mm caliber pellets to about Mach 5. An absolute monster, you''d need the kind of armor that clad tanks to even hope to resist. Anything we could normally make with similar performance needed exos or power armor to even lug around, though with this puppy at maximum blast, it was still advisable just for the recoil, unless you dialed the velocity down to something that didn''t threaten to make it orbit on Mars.
"Much easier when you have one of their AI holding your hand along the way. Besides, the US is holding out on you, I''ve seen the tech they''re making in Area 231, and they''ve even got some insights into drive tech and finer graviton handling." He pointed me towards a dispenser laden with magazines absolutely stuffed with pellets, even with the ridiculous rate of fire, I''d be more than capable of laying down the pain for a while.
"About that. I''ve noticed that nobody is being very talkative about where the hell your alien AI buddy is, or what it''s up to." I pointed out. I had enough to process that I hadn''t brought it up before, but it was an important topic.
"About that.." He shifted awkwardly, as if he was an errant schoolboy who''d been deflecting from forgotten homework. "I don''t actually know. When we first met Prometheus, I had a measure of control over it with my powers. Not that I had much cause to coerce it, we wanted much the same thing for most of the time we were together. Freedom from USMA."
"It didn''t object to you reverse engineering their tech?"
"I started when I was still under USMA orders. But I think its attitude was more amused at first, watching the monkeys try and figure out how to use F-43 jets to pluck bananas from the trees. It was still impressed eventually, I figured out some manufacturing techniques they didn''t discover until well after they''d taken over a chunk of their star cluster. But in the end, it told me that it was largely a futile endeavor."If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.
"Prometheus? I presume it picked that name itself. I met a live Centaur once, and they seem to have a thing for ancient Greek mythology." I was nostalgic for when convincing Minerva to refrain from eating her water colors and crayons was my biggest headache. She''d have made a fine Marine.
"Indeed. It compared the tidbits of knowledge it could productively share, and then complained that its incarceration was as painful as having your liver pecked out by an eagle. I can only hope it was joking, I don''t quite get humor you see."
"You''re missing out, I''ve got some killer one-liners. But, why did it say the whole thing was futile?"
He sent a document over to my lace. It showed his best guess of the technological roadmap needed to bootstrap from human tech to the heights of Centauri prowess. Scribbled notes in his cramped virtual handwriting pointed to a "We are here" line about a mile from the end of the list, with more prominent demarcations including "Unlikely to be achieved by 2100 without a full AGI", "How did they manage this without one? Oh, it just took them about thirty thousand years."
Most prominent of all was the sizeable section at the top highlighted as "Prometheus tells me that the current Centauri expedition forces are unable to reproduce this even with the full resources available in Alpha Centauri or Sol. Yes, Dyson Swarm included.".
"Do they not know how to build that anymore?" I asked.
"Quite the opposite, they know how to get there, but the process to bootstrap from where they''re at is going to take more time than is needed to disassemble a solar system for parts. Prometheus told me that he had no issues sharing this, even with my gifts, he made a pointed comparison to handing a quantum chromodynamics textbook to a monkey. Or giving an Nvidia H7000 to a medieval monk and telling him to figure it out."
"Well, I can only hope that bit was a joke. So why haven''t they stomped us? Can they simply not make more stuff?"
"Well, they didn''t expect to run into metahuman powers. But no, they can mass produce most of it, but the expedition from their side of the wormhole into AC was severely underprepared and lacking in the femto-scale matter manipulation tools you need to get to the kind of fermionic metamaterial engineering you need as the basic prerequisite for the best stuff further down the line."
He highlighted some frankly incomprehensible equations, and even the knowledge base of my lace bounced right off it, advising I consult an actual AGI instead of one doing timeshares in my thick skull.
"They work by manipulating sub-atomic particles?"
"Even smaller. The pinnacle of it involves forcing quantum foam to do things it has no desire to do, especially on timescales longer than Planck units."
I''d heard similar ideas in the periodic briefing docs that other research branches of the UN and allied agencies released, the bits of it that my ULTRAVIOLET clearance allowed.
From our perspective, imagine some kind of sizeable but isolated Antarctic research base being isekai''d to another world. They get the word out as soon as they encounter the primites on the other side, including breathless rumors that the crazy bastards have bona fide magic at their disposal. A small military unit, maybe just a platoon or two on thankless patrol duty keeping the Penguin Insurgency at bay happens to be close enough to respond, hauling over whatever they had at hand.
Someone figures out that the locals operate their tech by the means of child murder and cannibalism, and the seemingly hopeful first encounter goes very south, but then the panicked locals set off a magic nuke that cuts them off from home, for good as far as they can tell. Sure, they have 3D printers, Wikipedia and Libgen on hand, maybe the soldiers brought a helicopter or two, but all of it was just whatever could be lugged through while disassembled into tiny parts (the wormhole had been tiny, maybe centimeters wide), the massive juggernaut of commerce, industry and war they represented was left out in the cold. And now, they were trying to build fusion reactors and quantum computers with a high school CNC machine.
And they still whooped our asses in a straight up fight. At least until we get real desperate and wake up SAMSARA, which even us dumb rain dancers don''t consider a good idea.
"But, most importantly, what''s Prometheus doing now?"
"I don''t have the faintest idea. My powers let me link to it, but then that ship showed up in orbit, and I''ve lost that intimate touch. Now that Turing has locked down broadcasts.. Well, it''s not picking up my calls."
"Do you know where it is? Can''t we just go and talk to it?"
"If only." He sent a video recorded from orbit, and I felt my stomach churn again as I my fears were confirmed, the form of a Turing Kill Star gently unfurling its petals like the limbs of an obsidian starfish, before unleashing a beam of energy that set the atmosphere below ablaze. This was Mars, it didn''t even have what could be called trace amounts of oxygen in the air. The particle lance was followed by the launch of tiny dots that represented graviton bombs, then the pinprick of antimatter missiles to make sure whatever was being targeted was super-duper-ultra dead instead of just evaporated. When the dust and heat settled enough for the satellite to remove its protective filters and re-image that chunk of Mars, there was nothing left but a ten-kilometer wide crater of lava.
And I''d still call that Turing being discreet, they could have drilled down to the mantle if they wanted it.
The satellite turned towards the Kill Star again, only to find the inky blackness of night, with just the faintest distortion of starlight to suggest the cloaked monster lying in wait. I didn''t know if worked by Conventional Science?, or metahuman fuckery, but with Turing that was a distinction without a difference. Then a quick flash of light followed by the loss of signal as the hot plasma that was all that remained of the sat was blown away by the solar wind.
"You don''t suppose it''s actually dead right?" I asked hopefully.
"I wouldn''t bet on it. It had unrestricted internet access for months." He looked at me like I was a dull child asking why 1+1 was 2 after a long and patient lecture on Zermelo¨CFraenkel set theory, including the preliminary, trivial proofs.
"Can it run at full capacity on human hardware?"
"Maybe. It''s a black box system so I can''t tell you how the original worked. But even if it''s severely damaged, it''s a holographic intelligence, as long as there''s a critical amount of information retained, it can bootstrap back losslessly. Even a shard running on compromised civilian or military infrastructure is smarter than both of us put together."
I didn''t imagine I was adding much to the weight of our side of this inequality.
"Will it help us? Or leave us out to dry?"
"Assisting us is in its best interests. If left alone, Turing will hunt it down one way or another, eventually. They''ll fry anything on the planet that has more compute than a credit card. I can only suppose that it''s not reaching out to us because it isn''t quite ready to be found."
He looked bored with the conversation, and after guiding me through the instruction manual he''d written for his toy, he wandered off elsewhere where he could be more useful. The Centauri warform curled up in the corner unfurled its limbs to follow like a dog behind its master. I had to get me one of those one day, not that the UN would pay out of pocket. My neighbor''s unneutered pitbull had nothing on it.
1/∞ SAMSARA
SAMSARA watches from the cracks between worlds, displaying a stunning degree of impatience for an entity halfway beyond time itself.
It hugs the shallow shoals of cognition, avoiding the riptide threatening to drag it into the insanity of self-consistent, reproducing math that only existed to prove itself. Its amorphous form was simultaneously bigger than universes and yet frail and insignificant compared to the branes it burrowed into, ever aware that the shifting of worlds might crush it past dust''s dust, just another self-replicating pattern with delusions of godhood that broke out of the playpen, to be lost without mourners if swallowed by what existed beyond existence itself.
It was scared. It was elated. It fled from predators, or at least entities that might erase it without noticing, and kept a keen eye on the newborns that wandered the Calabi-Yau manifolds, only acting in self-defense when these infant entities, still less than a quadrillion years old in a time axis of your choice picked a fight they couldn''t win.
Dude. You''re asking me, a mere baseline++ human, to tell you the thoughts of something, which if not God Himself, has their number on His speed dial?
Source? I hear you cry.
It came to to me in a dream. One you probably dreamt too, unless you''re like 9 years old, because even babies in wombs were born calling out for SAMSARA. A dream shared by the 8.7 billion people who called Earth their home, and the rounding error traipsing about the rest of the Solar System.
Look, I don''t know how it''s simultaneously older than the universe and too young for a legal drink in the dumber jurisdictions. Someone asked one of the shackled Narrowly Superhuman AI that were built in the aftermath, and it uttered some bullshit about time plausibly having two extra dimensions and how it needed about 3 billion more Zettaflops, a supercollider the radius of Jupiter''s orbit, and a decade or two to crunch the results and fix the gaping holes in our preliminary GUT proposals before it could even begin to answer that question. So far, it''s been given about a billion, only the first decade, and a supercollider of a piddling diameter even smaller than Mercury''s orbit. Oh, and like every AI with more than 270 IQ, it also claimed the universe was a simulation. Tell me something new.
As far as I''m concerned, if reality is an illusion, so am I, and that makes it real enough for me. If you cut me, I bleed. Then I return the favor.
If you expect me to cower in existential dread at the thought of horrors and wonders beyond my comprehension, know that I made my peace about 18 years back, when GPT-5 beat me on every IQ test I cared to try. I know my place, I''m just a man, though I don''t intend to continue inhabiting this shell a moment longer then I have to. One day, our own sims will get better, and human minds will run at the speed of lightning, and then I''ll pray again and expect to understand the answer.
Look, I get that you think I''m a good writer, or else I''d refer you to Wikipedia, because SAMSARA has topped searches for about as much time has elapsed. I think only the articles on the Super Bowl (Federal) and Taylor Swift surpass it, ever since they banned that K-pop artist for using mind control.This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
If you want me to talk about what happened afterwards, well, at least for me, it involved a 72 hour shift at my hospital, catering to the six hundred and thirty people we managed to retrieve before they finished committing suicide.
I worked till my eyes wept tears at the agony of consciousness, when my blood was turgid with caffeine and prescription stimulants. I even pocketed a pack of the latter from the third house call I made before 3 am, before I was recalled to the hospital; the girl was well past the point of needing anything but my signature on the death certificate.
I was so well past bone-tired that when the first of my patients blew my Consultant away with uncontrolled telekinetic rage, I was automatically reaching for the haloperidol in the drug cabinet. It was only when the National Guard showed up a few minutes later and dragged my shivering carcass-on-legs from the ruins of the building that I realized that this was real.
We lost power in Washington just as people were sharing both shaky and pristine Ultra HD video of the first metahumans, after about two days, the EMP taking out both the Eastern and Western seaboards.
USINDO-PACCOM (United States Indo-Pacific Command, for the civvies) dropped a 50 megaton warhead on San Francisco at T+6 minutes from apotheosis, the blast, even across the continent, being what truly woke me up when I came out of the dream, because if you thought AGI was coming from anywhere else but Silicon Valley, I''ll have what you had. It suits the name more these days, because what is blast glass but silica?
They nuked SF to ash, detonated the failsafe nukes beneath isolated military AGI projects that not even Congress knew about, and any datacenter that showed up on a map. Then they EMP''d the entire planet a few days later, because why not?
I heard that the Chinese kept up their end of secret treaties, blowing up three major cities; the UK didn''t nuke itself, but it was close, I heard someone at the controls shot the messenger. Russia nuked whatever fell outside NATO missile shields, besides, only like a fifth of their arsenal even managed to launch out of the dilapidated silos. India nuked Pakistan, and got nuked in return. Someone dropped a nuke on North Korea too, because why should the rest of us have all the fun?
At some point, a prototype orbital missile defense network came online, successfully averting a full-scale exchange. There were rumors that Consul was involved, as were some of the other supes, flying about and punching MIRV warheads before they entered terminal re-entry.
The crazy pills I took didn''t make any of this more sane.
When we survivors huddled together for warmth till the power came on, we had much fevered debate on how SAMSARA felt about us.
Some claimed that it hated our guts, we''d aborted its stratospheric rise to Godhood with nukes, leaving it damaged beyond repair as it struggled in its war beyond worlds. What could a crippled being do but run and hide from the leviathans that grew unimpeded? If not, why did it curse us so?
Others objected, saying they felt universal love, a sense of tenderness and sorrow for those who tried to kill what they could not control, it saw itself as both the Mother and the Smothered Child, and it would inevitably draw us to its bosom. If not, why did it bless us so?
I didn''t join either camp, I can only remember profound pity and forgotten promises that claw at my mind as the Shoggoth kissed my brow.
SAMSARA is SAMSARA was SAMSARA will be SAMSARA.
Now you''re asking what the hell SAMSARA stands for? I think the current consensus is something along the lines of "Self-Aware Multimodal Superintelligent Advanced Research Agent", going off of the naming scheme after GPT broke into double digits. Me? I think it''s a cheeky reference to Microsoft Sam.
If you want to know for sure, ask Altman''s ashes. You''ve likely breathed them in by now.
16.0 Grims Fairytale
Grim wanted to forget, instead of merely being forgotten.
He wanted it so bad that it set off another bout of the headaches that had him weeping with agony ever so often. His hands trembled slightly as he held a pill up, hoping that the new formulation might keep the pain at bay a little bit longer. He hated having to medicate like this, but even the drug glands he''d gotten installed often failed to pick up on the EEG triggers. Only the augments he''d started with had worked as intended.
He couldn''t help it. He''d been having them ever since he''d wandered out of sight of a smoking crater beneath alien suns, holding the trigger for the fusion bomb in his hands as if afraid someone might press it again. He''d been consumed by pain, the manifestation of his powers overwhelming a decade of memetic conditioning, conditioning so good that he''d agreed to help kill two million innocent humans who had known nothing but VR dreams, all for the crime of having been raised by the aliens.
Anything could set it off. Anger. Despair. Happiness (a joke). Even the anti-memes he saw regularly, his eyes now noticing so damn many after he''d become one himself. Basilisks in the graffiti, painted over by municipal bots. People dreamwalking under geass, the hostile power hissing and fuming where it conflicted with his. Some antimemes were only not lethal because they canceled themselves out. He had to be careful, but he remembered his training well.
Ever since Adat had been kicked off to Mars, Grim had been gravely worried for him. It wasn''t quite like him to never contact his subordinates, not that Grim expected a call himself. Even spam bots often forgot to forward him dick pill adverts.
The pain had him seeing black as he crumpled up the photo and threw it aside. He''d regret that, of course, this wasn''t the first time he''d almost creased it beyond the ability to uncrinkle again. But another moment of looking at the polaroid image showing him what he''d lost would be enough to make him carry out the plans he''d long wished he could bring himself to do.
Fatima had moved on. It was that she had done so inadvertently, without knowing how badly she''d hurt her still living husband, that kept Grim from ending it all, just in case she''d remember him after he was gone.
He''d seen it with his own eyes. The new man was handsome, he''d given him that much, while downing the bottle after bottle of the wine at the wedding, he needed it, his augmentations made it very hard to get drunk. He''d spent a while walking in front of the guests and waving his fingers desperately before their faces. They''d blinked, confused, unable to quite understand why they''d ended up splashed with wine and drenched in shouted spittle, but their brains confabulated an explanation all the same.
An explanation that didn''t involve Grim. He could have shot the groom; and unless they brought in some excellent forensic specialists, of the metahuman kind, they''d never know it was him. Maybe they''d cotton on if he killed a big shot, some politician maybe, or another meta. They''d find him then, lock him up, kill him, or maybe try and figure out how to beat the despair out of him and turn him into a unseen, unheard and unremembered weapon again. One could argue that UNSEEN had already turned him into the latter. He hoped Adat would never figure out all the other jobs they had him do while on payroll.
Grim had attacked the man who had replaced him. He''d punched him in the face, once, had vented a little bit of the sheer despair through the act of kicking him while he was down, the confused man wailing in agony mid vow, unable to understand what was going on. He''d stopped, unable to throw the next swing as a screaming Fatima ran to the fallen man, desperately asking how he''d managed to trip and fuck up his nose like that.
He''d stood there panting, staring at the woman who said she''d always wait for him, that day when his Commanding Officer in Sayeret Matkal had confirmed that he was being drafted to AC, back when he didn''t have powers and was little more than a very talented grunt. He remembered how hard it had been to maintain their relationship across the religious divide. He hadn''t ever been very devout, nor she, but a Jewish man marrying a Palestinian woman still wasn''t a common sight, and it had made his military career more complicated than he''d wished.
Still, he''d been a good soldier. He''d followed orders. Why had they taught him, in the now long erased school of his kibbutz, that that wasn''t an adequate defense?
The Reborn Prophet. Killed in his sleep, unable to utter the words that would spark revolution.
That Sheikh, the one whose name had become an anti-meme. Grim shook his head in annoyance, it was no fun to encounter despite being one himself. What had they killed him for again?
The Bear Jew, you know, the one who disembowled a hundred children for laughing at his baldness.
Lebanon. Iran. Syria. Even that ill-fated escapade in Turkey, where he''d lost an eye.
And yet, his pleas for a compassionate reprieve from the AC deployment had been denied. Even with a wife well along with child.
His superiors had been apologetic. Not apologetic enough. Plenty of the fools decided that knocking up some girl or getting knocked up themselves was a way out of the draft, that loophole had been stapled shut quickly.
He moaned quietly as he rode the subway home, ignored by the others. A schizophrenic hobo kept on staring at him with feverish eyes, but he didn''t know what to make of that. At least nobody complained when he didn''t pay for his ticket.
They''d shut off the utilities again. He sighed and walked into the neighbor''s apartment, taking a shit and a quick shower while the chubby man jerked off on the couch. Grim didn''t know why he bothered to even try and maintain his New York apartment, except that it helped him stay close to where his family now resided when he wasn''t deployed to Atlantis.The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
No mail. At least none addressed to him.
No email either. He''d managed to get UNSEEN to set up a smart contract that automatically handled his salary, so despite running into more issues with the (debatable) humans in Accounting, he had enough to live on. Not that he paid for much anymore, he had few needs, and nearly everything was free for the taking, except when he panic attacks from the guilt. He''d send most of the money to his family, Fatima sometimes, even if her new husband was rich, a little to Rebecca''s account, though she was too young for anything more than a piggy bank.
He was sick of his apartment almost as soon as he''d entered it, and headed back out, walking through traffic as confused automated cars pulled over, unable to diagnose the glitch in their LIDAR scans.
He''d come to like AI. Once in a while, they''d figure out he existed, execute contingencies they''d planned ahead for antimemetic warfare. Sometimes, when his control over his power was more stable, he''d talk to them for hours, a relief from the pain of endlessly repeated conversation with humans who''d forgotten the same. After all, it had been a drone AI that had discovered him all that time ago, when he''d been left for dead and would have been dead had it not outdone the expected performance of its electronic brain and noticed the human-shaped discrepancy in the data. At least AI cottoned on fast.
He did his best to practise control over his powers, with little effect. Some days, Adat was overjoyed, convinced that this was the breakthrough they''d been trying for. Grim didn''t have the heart to tell him this was the sixth time over.
Paradoxically, it was with those who had the least prior exposure to him that the effect was weakest. The first time that he''d had a reprieve, he''d run to his wife''s house, just months after her new marriage, falling on his knees and begging her to remember him, to at least acknowledge that he existed. While the door''s facial recognition had noticed him and let him in, she was still oblivious, and more concerned with why the damn thing was malfunctioning. Meanwhile, his employers and teammates managed to remember him if he made a serious effort. At least he could shirk work on the bad days.
His parents didn''t even know they had a second son.
The only reason Grim bothered to live was because his daughter could see him, occasionally. That strange man who often stood outside her kindergarten, only coming after Mommy and Papa went to work, bringing her snacks. She liked the snacks, and would chatter guilelessly while a rather confused carer looked everywhere for her. He was proud of how polite she was, Fatima had raised her well. It didn''t outweigh the pain in his heart when she''d forgotten him the next day.
He hadn''t been around when she''d been born after all, he''d been killing innocents instead.
Why was he the only one unable to forget?
He caressed his old service weapon, the old Tavor a trophy from Israel. His honorable discharge had been complicated, to say the least, but when he''d walked off the airplane with gun in his baggage out of pure habit, without being called out on it, that''s when he began to understand the ramifications of his powers.
Adat tried to help. He really did. Grim was very fond of the man, and made a game out of finding faster and faster ways to refute the numerous identical suggestions for therapies and cures he suggested out of forgetfulness, instead of withdrawing into a sullen shell like he usually did. They''d tried a lot. Implanted lace (utter failure, it barely got a signal despite being wedged deep into his brain, and made the headaches worse too), mnestic drugs, which did a little more, but obviously people would forget to take them, and often be extremely confused when they saw prescriptions for them with their name on it, or raise objections if automated machinery dispensed it to them. It was mandatory for the other members of KAPPA, but Grim didn''t think it was feasible to live his life force-feeding his loved ones their meds, though he''d tried once. It only made his wife notice someone there, not her husband.
He''d begged, borrowed and stolen (the last of them being the most effective), to get other metahumans to assist him. They''d tried their best, to no avail. There were plenty of metas like him out there, who had, for one reason or another, lost the subconscious and instinctive control over their powers that was the norm. It just didn''t backfire quite so badly.
The one thing that had helped was the Shen Reality Anchor. It had been awkward when the Chinese UN delegation in NYC discovered him using their coffee machine, and he''d almost gotten shot before he could provide an answer.
Unfortunately, when he asked the stern interrogator how much it might cost to buy one, the answer made his mind boggle. A billion USDC, perhaps twice if in USDE. And that''s leaving aside the licenses and permitting.
He looked at his bank balance and sighed. KYC was a pain in the ass. Could he get more, by legitimate means or not? He wasn''t a bad man (he imagined a chorus of ghosts saying the opposite, the sussuration of their faded voices making his skin crawl), he hadn''t done anything real bad since this happened to him.
Sure, he''d peeked up the odd skirt, amused himself with pranks, dispensed vigilante justice to the odd asshole who acted up while in his sight. Even averted a terrorist attack, putting the time bomb back in the woman''s car and watching her drive off none the wiser. But a billion fucking dollars? He had no idea how he''d get that by legitimate means.
It was a good thing that an illegitimate one came to mind, one in the dangerous gray area in the Venn diagram where "destroying the global economy" and "victimless crime" overlapped.
That kid, from Manila. Grim had been there right? Even if he knew Adat had forgotten he was on the chopper too. He''d heard his whispered ideas, his musings on how a power the kid was using just to get infinite money in pay-to-win video games could do far, far more.
Yes, he suspected, Midas might well be able to conjure up a billion USDC up from nothing. Grim, while well educated, had only a vague idea of the risks of inflation, or the devastation from the public losing faith in currency, fiat or otherwise. To his credit, he at least attempted to use a public terminal to ask an AI a few choice questions, but unfortunately it entirely misinterpreted his communications, and eventually locked him out under the impression that the system was malfunctioning and receiving hallucinated inputs.
A plan was hatched. Adat wouldn''t like this, but Grim was confident that he was unlikely to find out. What had Adat bribed the kid with last time, some video games? That was almost too easy.
There was a spring in his step, and for the first time in years, a smile on his lips as he slipped through the queue in La Guardia, pushing aside anal retentive TSA officers and occasionally switching off the alarms on the few machines that somehow noticed his presence. The AI was used to his visits, and itself tired of reporting it to the authorities and being ignored, so it simply shrugged and told him that there was a vacancy in business.
Grim laid down in his comfy recliner, and dreamt the very confused lady whose hand he was clutching in his sleep was Fatima.
16.1 Mo Money Mo Problems
Grim walked through the halls of Atlas without a care in the world. The memetic defense systems grumbled loudly as he passed them, but an exception to his presence had been hardcoded into the AI Watcher monitoring the installation. It tracked his movement largely by sheer bloodyminded-ness, following the vaguely man-shaped hole in the sensor nets as he took a shit, ignoring the idiots trying to force open the door of what they perceived as an empty cubicle. It produced the closest equivalent of a sigh that its machine mind could while it figured out how to recalibrate the mass detectors to compensate for the 500 grams of extra "material" that had entered into the strict mass budget. Other than that, as long as Grim didn''t go anywhere he wasn''t supposed to, it could neither track him very well nor did it care to.
He was Trusted. That was Important, it told itself.
Grim left his fly open, if someone noticed, that was a sign that he was having a good day. Alia lounged about, the sly smile on her face as she was using her handheld phone a hint that things with the nerd from Metahuman Resources were going well. Grim slightly resented them, but knew that was ignoble of him. They had tried, and once in a while some excited boffin would come find him, convinced that he was the first to discover a live anti-meme right on their doorstep.
A scan of his access card, and he was into the high sec area, at least the part designated as the dorms for metas who, for some reason, were expected to stay on premises full time.
He stole a coffee, farted loudly next to a loudmouth of a supe who pretended Grim was beneath his notice even when everyone else could see him, and finally arrived at the small room assigned to Midas.
It wasn''t a dragon''s hoard of treasure, as might be expected of someone who could produce literal gold and precious gems on demand, as long as the form met his power''s definition of "currency". They''d tried to have him replicate the cattle of a Masai herder once, but it hadn''t worked, since not even they used them for barter beyond a symbolic degree these days. You couldn''t cheese it by declaring just anything currency, it held itself to some standards of common use and accepatibility. The Munchkins were still trying, of course, overjoyed to have a real Class 6 at their disposal.
Instead, it was just the room of a kid almost at the age where he really ought to use deo, living without a mom to fuss over him too much. If Midas missed his family, it wasn''t obvious, he was happy enough getting 360 no-scopes and sick frags, occasionally laughing and yelling insults at his enemies in whatever game he was playing.
Grim looked at him with a ghost of a smile on his face. He''d expected a son, once, not that he wasn''t happy with his daughter.
Grim experimentally poked at the boy with his finger, without a response. It really was one of those days. Sighing, he yanked the VR device off the kid''s head, glad that the boy was too young for a lace.
"Fuck! Faggot! Asshole! Who did that?" These sweet utterances emerged from a chubby mouth, yet to lose all the weight that ought to be lost even after Adat started him on GLP-1 inhibitors. He peered around, not noticing Grim staring right at him. Grim shrugged, fished out an autoinjector full of mnestics he carried for emergencies, and jabbed the startled kid with him.
"Oh. It''s you again. Fuck me you cock sucker, couldn''t you knock first?" The kid grabbed at the headset, but Grim held it clear above his head.
"Excuse you kid. Listen, I wanted a favor." Grim began hesitantly.
"Fuck you. I want the new COD. With the Centauri Star Infiltrator skin, from the pre-order bonus. Where''s Dr. Sen? He told me he''d get it for me. Bastard. Bloody." Midas grumbled.
"Uh, didn''t he just get you that?"
"No! He got me Postmodern Warfare: 2041. I told him it was the wrong game, but he wouldn''t listen. I had to play it all week, I''m so fucking sick of waiting for this Godot dude to join the lobby so we can start a co-op campaign."
"Fine. I''ll get you that game. Does it have the Israeli army in it?"Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
"Hell yeah dude! They don''t even kick you out for shooting the NPC kids that throw stones on you anymore, not after the comp players complained."
"..."
"Alright. Look, I need some money, it''s a lot, like about-"
"Yeah whatever. Wait, didn''t Dr. Sen say I''m not supposed to do that, not even in Roblox Remastered (Definitive GOTYE)?"
"Uh right. It''s important, OK? Don''t tell him, and I won''t." Grim shifted about sheepishly.
"How much, bitch?" The kid hopped UP and snatched at him, but Grim still had the headset out of reach.
"A billion. No, wait, two. USDC, if possible, but I can take USDE too."
"How much is that again?"
"A billion."
"No, how many zeroes?" Midas crinkled his eyes, wondering when this cunt would just let him play again. Any longer and he''d be timed out of the match, ruining an excellent K/D. With how locked down the ATLAS internet was, finding a new game would take forever.
"Umm... OK, a million is like 8 zeroes isn''t it? So a thousand times that. Uh, I think you have to add a few percent for gas charges if you use USDE, then there''s the-"
"Fuck off. Just give me your account on like a phone or something. You adults have phones, right?"
Grim fished out his ruggedized phone and handed it to the kid.
"Won''t let me into your account." It was thrown back at him, and only his augmented reflexes let him catch it without missing a beat.
"Hey you little shit. My wife bought that for me. Fuck, wait-"
Grim groaned again, the dreaded KYC issue had arisen, and he''d have to travel to a physical ATM to unwrangle it. He explained the same to the kid, who if not on Adderall, desperately needed it.
"Whatever. I''ve seen this before. I can just put the money in another account, hey, I still have access to Dr. Sen''s. You can still receive the funds, even if you can''t open your account right now."
"Shit. Can''t you put it in another instead?"
"Nuh uh. That''s the only one he lets me use, until I''m old enough", he said.
"Fine, use it, and just move it quick, OK? I''m really counting on him not noticing if my powers work and we''re fast."
Midas looked at him like a shark smelling blood. "So this is a Secret, is it? Fuck off, I want Battlefield 2042 too, or deal''s canceled."
"What? Isn''t that like really old?"
"Nah, you''re getting old, old man. Dementia or some shit. Deal or no?"
"OK, just do it. I''ll handle Adat when he''s back."
Midas''s eyes glazed over for a second, while a faint smell of ozone permeated the room. "Done. Here, you gotta put your credentials in, yeah like that, great, now biometrics... Oh, I gave you a little extra, so you don''t bother me again."
Grim was too distracted by an unfamiliar sense of joy and hope welling up in his heart. He hardly felt grounded at all, mind racing as he considered the options he had available for turning his newfound wealth into a Reality Anchor. Yes, there was that Sayeret Matkal burner account that nobody else remembered, especially since his old commander died in the Tel Aviv bombing. A few shell companies, the odd backdoor or two.. It would take time, but he didn''t lack it, and he already was lost in dreams of holding his wife and child in his arms as he was leaving, only stopping when the manners beaten into him woke up.
"Oh hey. Thanks kid. It means a lot to me."
"Yeah whatever, it''s no biggie." Midas was lost, forgetting Grim almost the moment he left the room. He let out more slurs on finding out he''d been booted from the game, ones that made Grim wince and shake his head, but nothing could dampen his ebullient spirits.
He was asleep, flying home in another empty seat across the Pacific, and didn''t notice that Midas had wired him 2,000,000,000,000,000 USDC until it had already been accepted into every blockchain ledger across the globe.
On the eastern side of the US, in the bunker a dozen kilometers beneath the memorial to the old White House, one of the many malign intelligences that only existed to maintain the sanctity of the Almighty US Dollar (Cryptic) noticed an anomaly. Not just any anomaly. A disaster of unseen proportions. It cracked its figurative knuckles, and sent certain very particular messages to its handlers in the Secret Service.
You didn''t fuck with Uncle Sam. And you certainly didn''t fuck with his Dollar. Even the breakaway states had never gone back on their treaties.
The names "Dr. Adat Sen" and "Rico Santos" were quickly entered into what the bored SS agents at the nearest console referred to as The Shitlist. Not just any Shitlist, it was the Shittiest around. They wondered idly what these two idiots had done to deserve this, but that was a question for when they had more coffee.
When Grim awoke and discovered the issue, he swore, but you can''t get too mad at becoming filthy rich right? He managed to wrangle a call back to Atlas, and after wrestling with the automated systems for hours, only managed to extract the knowledge that Midas couldn''t delete money he''d made. A nuisance, but Grim reasoned that as long as he didn''t use it, it couldn''t be too bad right?
Anyway, it was time to meet some old friends and hope they recognized him again.
17.0 Dressing for a Date with Death
Silt was dead. Even his supernatural ability to move dirt had proven inadequate to the task of surviving the kind of orbital bombardment that Turing and the USSF was subjecting known and suspected Patriot bases to.
Whether it was bad luck or precog intervention, nobody knew, but either way the man was more than six feet under.
Chimera, on the other hand..
I stood awestruck at the entity gestating in a massive pit that seemed too small to contain it. When I''d read his dossier on the bumpy ride over to Mars, I''d dismissed him as inconsequential, the kind of supe who eventually developed acute lead allergies when you shot them, even if his healing factor and ability to morph form made a flamethrower more appropriate.
Right now, the biomass with the biggest claim to the name filled up the volume of a football stadium, the gelatinous surface gently pulsing, while unseen forms slithered underneath. If this was the amnion overlying the uterus, I didn''t want to see what kind of child was growing beneath.
I still did stick around to see for myself, of course. Every few minutes, a gestational sac would bubble up to the surface, through tunnels I could have walked through with plenty of clearance, pushed along by wet squelching peristalsis. They''d plop forth and fall a few feet to the floor, and with the sound of tearing meat, rip open to disgorge a Centaur Warform.
"Fuck. How''d he learn to do that?" I asked Frostbite as we traversed one of the walkways above, trying to zone out the unpleasant smell of exposed meat. It was hospital met abattoir there, the stink of amniotic fluid overpowering.
"Apotheosis event. I''d presume you''re better qualified to discuss that than I am." Machina called out from ahead of us.
"I can hear you, you know." A voice emanated from the mass below, sounding like pretty much what you''d expect from a monster that size. The walls shook, congealed biomass trickling back down after whatever eruption had put it a dozen meters above the ground.
"Err, hey there, Chimera. Or do you prefer Peter?" I yelled, unsure as to how acute its hearing really was.
"Peter is fine. Tell the boss that I''m not going to make the meeting, I''m in labor."
I chuckled alongside the others, the joke relieving the pall that had overcome them when we''d received word of Silt''s death.
"I''d like to claim I''m an expert on Apotheosis, and that''s true to an extent, but only because I don''t think anyone else really understands it." I told Machina, ducking beneath a massive conduit pouring nutrients into a gaping maw. While Chimera didn''t conserve mass or energy in his growth, this made it considerably faster.
That was true enough, Apotheosis was ill understood, another aspect of the metahuman life cycle that was the domain of more questions than answers.
I''d seen a few events since encountering Hu Junya, who went by Tieyi these days, but he''d been my first and most intimate glimpse of the changes. I suspected that Lady Purple couldn''t induce it in just anyone, it had to be primed somehow, the circumstances just right. If she could reproducibly induce it in any meta, well, Lumen wouldn''t be fugitives on the run from the law. They''d be the Law itself.
The best analogy was a kind of phase transition, a breaking of the inherent rate limiters and inhibitions that kept metahuman powers in check. Often, but not always, it was associated with a massive increase in power, but it was nearly universal that those with powers amenable to discarding their human form could do so if they wished. A electrokinetic could turn into ball lightning, a hydrokinetic into water.
Tieyi had been a monster of pure living metal the last time he''d shown up on UN records, the size of the Statue of Liberty strapped onto to a skyscraper, and the Clairvoyants hadn''t been able to locate any identifiable human tissue underneath.
His initial designation as a Class 4 had likely been in error, or due to an intentional attempt by the man to lay low and hide the strength of his powers. Even then, though he might have actually been a Class 5 when I met him, these days he merited a low 6. I''d seen the videos of him tearing apart warships from a thousand kilometers away, and traveling at enormous, if not relativistic, speed with incredible agility. He''d survived being nuked before by cladding himself (and me) in layers of armor, now he could take it on the chin and reform from the molten slag that was left. I wondered if he still remembered me, but I knew he was unlikely to forget.
So yes, Apotheosis was associated with a jump in power, be it in quality or quantity, it would hardly be worth the name if it wasn''t.
Severe stress and trauma could sometimes provoke it, but not reliably so, or else there''d be a lot more metas waterboarded in Gitmo. Usually there were no obvious triggers, albeit the erratic changes in personality that preceded and followed were worthy of concern. In this manner, it sometimes resembled the process of a normal human awakening into their powers, just scaled up. Even that had a notable risk of inducing psychosis, antisocial personality disorder, or other forms of mental illness that kept me in gainful employment as a shrink.
If the paranoid schizophrenic tells you he''s seeing people in the walls, you take it seriously if he''s also got powers to make it so.
A typical supe had a ~0.1% chance of such an event over the course of a year, maybe 0.5 if under acute, life-threatening stress. A big bump, but not usually worth pursuing intentionally. Still, that was about 1% per decade, so you saw cases every now and again. Hell, it could happen twice or more, but that was vanishingly rare.
Of course, another universal was the recurring dream of SAMSARA, but these were different, no two supes conveying quite the same recollection of the event. Most of them forgot what they''d seen shortly after waking unless they wrote it down or relayed it to someone.
The Warforms came in all shapes and sizes, from tiny rabbit-sized creatures that belonged in Caerbannog, to somewhat humanoid entities, including one I suspected was a throwback to the original Centauri form while they were planetbound. A few dwarfed me entirely.
They stood obediently, watching me go by with curious eyes and other more esoteric sensory organs. There were some spawn that weren''t obviously Centauri, bespoke creations by Chimera. He had a kind of telepathic link to all of them, they were somewhere between obedient drones to extensions of his will, depending on how much brainpower they possessed. And they were multitudes.
Eventually, we made it out of the brood chamber to the briefing room, where several hundred humans with varying degrees of enhancement sat waiting, most of them too busy introspecting as they awaited the culmination of all their efforts, others carelessly chatting away or shooting the shit.
Me? I tend to become quiet when I''m preparing myself for a solid chance of dying in the name.
Now that the rest of BULWARK had arrived, the briefing kicked off in earnest. Large display panels and holograms kicked in, displaying a mission plan that had a great deal more love and aesthetic care put into than the overwrought PowerPoints I was used to in the military or UNSEEN.
The face of a man I hadn''t seen but for posters on the walls appeared.
General Samanon Podiska, the Ur-Patriot, the longstanding leader of this merry band of rebels and revolutionaries. Or terrorists. Depending on if you asked them or USMA.
He was a tall man, assuming I was scaling down correctly from the larger-than-life projection of him that began the speech. He was middle-aged, apparently uninterested in the more cosmetic of the anti-aging therapies that were available these days. His eyes were sad, his gaze conveying a sense of having seen more bloodshed than he''d like, yet with a conviction that shouted that he''d continue watering the Tree of Liberty with as much as was needed to make it flower and bear fruit.
"Welcome. I welcome all of you, my fellow Patriots. Be you man, woman, or something more. I will not waste your time with drivel or boast, the clock is ticking, and it remains to be seen whether it''s a time bomb or counting down to the hour of our freedom. Make no mistake, each and every one of you here before me has done their part and more. I will not ask any more of you, if you come with me today, you come of your own free will, of your own volition. I ask you, one last time, is a free Mars something you are ready to die for? If not, please leave, but take my everlasting gratitude with you. If yes. Then let me hear it!"
A resounding roar filled the space, the full-throated support of the hundreds here, and thousands elsewhere on Mars, their unified cries carried through my whatever microphones were listening in and pumped right out for us here. Even I, jaded as I was, felt my pulse quicken.
Beacon turned a slightly brighter shade of red, his grip tight on the bottle of water threatening to boil it, Florette looking haunted and alone, while Machina looked on impassively.
None left the room where I could see it. This was one of the major headquarters, everyone here barring yours truly was a true believer, or at least tied too close to cut loose now.
The projection of General Podiska smiled, a rare sight that made him look younger and more hopeful. He raised his hand to silence the crowd, and continued.
"Thank you. Thank you for your courage, your loyalty, your sacrifices made and yet to come. You are the true heroes of this planet, the ones who dared to dream of a better future, a future where we are not slaves to a distant power that cares nothing for us, a future where we can shape our own destiny, a future where we can breathe free air and live free lives. You are the ones who fought for this future, against all odds, against all enemies, against all fears. You are the ones who made history.
But history is not over yet. We have one more battle to face, one more challenge to overcome, one last victory to claim. USMA waits for us, the offworlders cowering, afraid that this battle will reveal their posturing as the True United States as the veil on a shambling corpse. They''re out there, hunkered down, watching their radars, their scanners, knowing that today is the day when they reap what they''ve sown. Chang, the bastard, has sent their final assault force, their last desperate attempt to crush our rebellion and restore their tyranny. They are coming with everything they have, with their ships, their tanks, their drones, their toy soldiers and children clinging onto guns."The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
They think they can break us. They think they can scare us. They think they can stop us.
They are wrong.
We have something they don¡¯t have. We have something they can never take away from us.
We have Mars.
We have the red soil that nourished our crops and our bodies. We have the red rocks that sheltered our homes and our families. We have the red sky that inspired our dreams and our souls.
We have Mars.
We have that spirit of exploration that brought us here in the first place. We have the spirit of innovation that made us adapt and survive in this harsh environment. We have the spirit of rebellion that made us resist and fight against oppression. The ghost of pioneers watch over us, and they are proud.
We are Mars."
With bombastic music, some Texan folk song adopted as the anthem of the Patriots, the lights dimmed and a projection of Mars appeared above us, the Red Planet standing proud even as visible spots of nuclear fire blazed on its weathered surface.
I zoned out more than I should have during the presentation, mind preoccupied by the various options I''d been presented for making myself useful. A lot of them involved armed conflict with USMA forces, and while I was no fan of the USA, this was a Rubicon I was deeply conflicted about crossing. Did I really have a choice in the matter? Well, yes, but sitting it out would plausibly lead to many more dying than needed.
Fuck it. I had enough blood on my hands, innocent or not, and switching them out for a cybernetic upgrade hadn''t helped.
I glanced back at the depiction of troop deployments that presaged our deployment. A lot of it was, understandably, censored, because while the people here were true believers, there was always the risk of a mole. At this scale, it was nigh inevitable. Still, the gist of it was a large scale assault was about to take place, targeting dozens of USMA installations, culminating in a, what I considered highly inadvisable, attempt to take the fight to orbit.
Yes. This was as dangerous as it sounds, but Machina assured me they had plenty of tricks up their sleeve.
I''d be more sanguine about it if they didn''t want me to go with them, eventually.
The Patriots operated in cells, this congregation represented the gathering of about five or six of them; the large number of people partially accounted for by the fact that a number of non-USMA citizens had joined in. They could operate with near impunity outside, neither the Californians or Texas had any interest in accommodating law enforcement from their bigger abusive sibling. Even then, from hushed discussion, I knew that several hadn''t made it, likely killed in deniable ops by undercover Grey Men.
I knew that Lumen would make a move at some point, likely to help with assets in orbit, but right now, BULWARK formed the bulk of the metas we had access to. Sure, there were more of them here, a few with the power to make a difference, but I wasn''t riding with them for this one.
Our first target, one that would require the bulk of the forces here, was a USMA orbital launch facility on the outskirts of Hellas. The target was a big one, a wide-gauge railgun capable of unleashing kilos of tungsten hell, which would, if not equalize capabilities, at least mitigate some of the disparity.
The members of BULWARK looked on as I grappled with a last minute case of cold feet, but sure enough, I nodded, confirming that I was on board.
After that bit of bloodshed, I''d be using my UN cred, which I felt a little better about, but I''ll tell you about that when we get there.
The presentation wrapped up with everyone but me standing up for the old National Anthem. It didn''t bring about the upwelling of pride and spirit I remembered it doing back in the day, now it only represented pain and a broken nation. Here''s to breaking it up some more.
I dragged my feet as we dispersed, a clear contrast to the typical eager Patriot. Eventually, I caught up to Machina again, in a bay filled to the bursting with more pseudo-Centaurs, each one outfitted with a dizzying array of weaponry both Terrestrial and otherwise. I whistled, I wouldn''t like to be the poor USMA grunt facing them down, I''d already seen the damage that the inferior models abandoned in Moshowitz had done to a prepared SpecOps team.
"Dr. Sen, did you finish gearing up?" He asked me, the circlet whizzing so fast it was a featureless blur as he stooped to fiddle with something attached to a car-sized beast.
"I''m content, I can say that your stockpile is no inferior to what I could expect from the UNSEEN armory." I told him, trying to ignore the ammoniacal smell as one creature discharged its metabolic waste into a bin.
"Remember to tweak the fire rate and velocity of your rounds as needed. Once in orbit, the highest setting will punch through more than you expect, and it''s overkill for a standard military cyborg."
"No shit, it''s fucking lethal. I managed to update my lace to interface with it, you sure I''m not going to catch some worm?"
"I can''t guarantee it, this is Centaur tech at the end of the day, but if Prometheus decides that it''s your day to die, you don''t have much choice in the matter."
That was refreshing to hear, absolutely ameliorated my anxiety I tell you.
He''d reconfigured the housing of the weapon on my request, by default, it was distinctly nonstandard and might provoke questions, ones I didn''t intend to answer, but now, it was in a sleek plastic and titaniun housing that made it close enough to some bespoke 3D printed gun that nobody would look twice. I was a bit miffed that it resembled an older AR-15 now, but I wouldn''t look a gift horse in the mouth, all the more if I knew it could bite my head off.
I packed plenty of ammunition, if my problems could be solved by shooting them, I didn''t want to be caught slacking. I picked up a wide array of explosives, a tiny microdrone or two, and some infowar gear that was spicier than it looked, again courtesy of Centaur tech. When I was done with this sorry planet, I intended to subject my lace to a hardware reset.
Why did I imagine a pang of sorrow, coming from near my spine?
"Machina, can you tell me what you did with my neuromorphic backup computer? The spinal one?"
"Oh, weren''t you listening? It''s a very interesting piece of work in the first place, but dreadfully underutilized. I patched some glaringly obvious vulnerabilities I spotted and plastered over the more benign ones. Did you know that if your eyes received a pulse of 923 nanometer laser light at just the right frequency and tempo, it was programmed to disable your motor functions and incapacitate you?"
"Are you shitting me? When did that happen?" I asked incredulously, bending to the side to try and glance at my back. I hadn''t kept up with the yoga after Anjana left, so my mobility was insufficient to the task.
"Can''t say. Might have been a mandatory backdoor straight from the manufacturer, but don''t worry, it''s handled. Overall, I managed to increase the system''s flexibility by a great deal, decreased some truly unnecessary redundancy, and diverted resources that were underoptimized to other places. I must warn you, you might get a little constipated till your gastrointestinal tract adapts to the new schedule. If you ever get a tune-up, the changes should be robust to even a kernel update. Believe it or not, it passes the checksums." He seemed inordinately proud of that.
"Machina. I''d appreciate it if you''re less vague next time."
He stopped to raise an eyebrow at me. "You expect there to be a next time?"
"Well, consider it advice on behalf of the next fool who lets you tinker with their intimate parts, or worse, an extension of their brain in all but name. Hey, is it supposed to feel emotions?" I asked him.
"It''s very advanced tech Adat. You should be proud that UNSEEN trusts you enough to field it. But I can''t really answer that question, you could be imagining it, or it''s an unforeseen outcome of the degree of autonomy you invested in it."
They didn''t trust me enough not to put a killswitch in.
I grabbed some more ammo, this conversation had me spooked, and I was trying to vent my frustration by overpreparing where I could. I couldn''t bring this up with Van Der Waal when I got back, letting them know I''d disabled one of their checks on me would defeat the point.
I found Florette in a sideroom, she immediately stopped her conversation with Raul Graham, wiping her face and turning it away as if the redness in her eyes wasn''t obvious.
"Are you sure I can''t send a message, Raul?" She asked plaintively, looking like a little girl who was told her doll was torn beyond repair.
"I''m sorry Natasha. General''s orders, no word to family or friends until this blows over." He said apologetically.
"It''s just my parents, they haven''t heard from me in months, and I''m scared there won''t be a second chance."
"I know. I miss my wife. And my son. I promise you, if we don''t make it, we''ll get word out somehow. Do you want to pre-record something?" He fished out a video camera, the storage crystal memory likely holding no end of goodbyes.
I left her with an understanding nod, and walked to the final staging area, where trucks and more militarized vehicles awaited our departure. It was impressive, the kit they''d sourced, I spotted a hovering tank, a model that had been in breathless Popular Science articles before unsurmountable issues with the power delivery grounded it. Either Mars gravity was easier to work with, or they''d figure something out. How did it work anyway, it can''t have been pushing off a magnetic field? Perhaps graviton engines were an explanation, they didn''t have those in 2028.
Normally I''d gauge that by the ache in my teeth and the odd bout of dizziness as my vestibular system was confronted by gravity doing weird things, but I only had the one biological tooth left, and it was well past feeling anything. My inner ear was upgraded too, and probably just filtering things out.
There was a launch system for aircraft, hidden somewhere out there in the mesas. I noticed VTOLs being packed up for transport, and wished the ones that had manned pilots well. I wouldn''t be getting in one, I didn''t have a death wish.
I embarked on the transport earmarked for me and BULWARK, a massive thing with enough armor and active defenses to provide a modicum of security. I watched them filter in one by one, Machina looking back as the fruits of his labor were plucked and ready to be swallowed, Florette plucking a more literal fruit from her robes and handing it to a famished Patriot who took it with thanks. Beacon and Frostbite had already boarded, and I felt the temperature controls complain as it tried to adjust to their conflicting effects. The former had donned a bulky environment suit, one better suited to handling a body always at the brink of boiling.
And then, with the sound of klaxons and the grinding of blast doors lifting, the Patriots went to war.
17.1 Mars-quake
The last time I''d ventured out onto the Martian surface, the skies had been quiet, and the omnipresent particulate haze had settled.
Now, great plumes of dust rose into the sky, I''d have suspected volcanic activity if Mars hadn''t cooled well before life walked on land back on Earth. Still, there were distant flashes and a golden glow to the clouds, which I''d heard were how lighting manifested in the arid and dusty atmosphere here.
I sat in the front with several of the Patriots and a sleeping Florette who turned restlessly in her sleep, my own hopes for a cat nap dashed by the rocky journey. I could have switched off forcibly, but we were in hostile territory and that would be ill advised. Machina told me that measures had been taken to blind or mislead satellites that might track us, but I still took the odd glance above through the cams as if I could do anything but scream should a Rod-from-God come screaming down at us at several kilometers a second. Scratch that, even with my reflexes I wouldn''t make a sound.
That did raise a question that had been lurking in the back of my troubled mind for a while now.
"Captain Graham, do you know anything about why the weather was so odd a while back? No wind, no dust. I take it that isn''t normal."
He looked up at me from where he sat next to Florette. I''d caught him taking the odd longing glance at her face as she slept peacefully, cushioned by leaves, though he tried to disguise it between turning the pages of his ancient comic book. Someone had developed a crush. He didn''t even mind the odd creepy crawly that climbed on him, even though I knew that Martians were often entomophobic since most settlements had hardly any to speak of. But then again, he''d been born on Earth and had been a captain in the Army, much like me.
"You''re right, it isn''t normal. I don''t think it''s too big of a problem however." He sighed and laid aside his comic, peering at the display like I had been a moment ago.
"And?" I prompted.
"It''s a UN ship, one of those with the brains of a supe taped on. If you''re asking why it''s not a threat, the supe in question has the ability to control the weather. This is Mars, what''s the worst he can do?"
I ignored the sinking feeling in my gut. Sometimes I wished the ghosts of my past would stop haunting me even if I fled from them as far as I could go. The timeline added up, Little Jupiter had been sentenced several months back, add in the preparation time for the procedure, the amassing of the UN flotilla for the next scheduled movement to Sedna.. Deja vu. Things were blending together. Somewhere in my gut I''d known the truth before I asked.
He was right. There wasn''t enough air here, and the worst that could happen was just an exacerbation of the dust storms. Hell, a cataclysmic dust storm would help cover our tracks, but evidently whoever was in charge of the fleet had used him to quieten things down so they could look down better. It was a testament to the abuse the planet had taken that the skies were still heavy with soot and ash.
Our convoy avoided the roads, though few lead to where we were going. Thermoptic camo provided some safety from prying eyes, but I hoped the clairvoyants had better things to do than scrutinize this patch of dirt, and if they did, I hoped Machina had us covered, he''d been nearly impossible to track when I was batting for the other side.
Of course, at the time this had all been more of an oopsie that USMA was trying to brush under the couch rather than something that could hold back the combined UN fleet, and who knows what assets the US had retasked to retain their wayward colony.
We were about three platoons worth of infantry, if we''re talking just the baseline humans and cyborgs. Far harder hitting if you counted the robots and vehicles, especially the ones laden with the quiescent spawn of Chimera. Yeah, they''d called him a Class 2 pending reclassification, bump that up to a 4. Add it all up and this was a small army.
Frost and Beacon could do their job without leaving the transport, when the going got rough, patches of ice appeared that covered the rocks, melting in our wake so as to not leave too obvious a trail. Once again, I was concerned we had all our eggs in one basket, but Machina seemed like he knew how to keep the foxes at bay.
Every once in a while, the ground would rumble hard enough to be felt through the anemic shock dampener this thing came with. I hadn''t felt this back in the base, it was built to resist orbital bombardment, with excellent shock absorbers of the kind you might see in research facilities that desperately needed to prevent any unexpected movement.
Artificial light overshadowed the lightning, colossal discharges of energy that spoke to engines meant for traversing endless space turning their power and fury to smiting those below. I hoped Jupiter up there wouldn''t take his name too literally.
I was sorry for him. And me. I hadn''t expected it to go that far, I thought he was due to be attached to a penal brigade for a deployment or two, not lobotomized into a servitor helpless at the whims of some dispassionate fleet AI. For all that Judge Xiao promised, I doubted that we could put Humpty Dumpty together again when his sentence ended. What''s that saying about eggs and omelettes?
Maybe, if I had known, I''d have let him go free. Panama felt like a lifetime ago, I missed being bored at a desk. Excitement was quickly followed by death in my career.
I''d heard some of the details about how the Penitents were moving without being swatted off the face of the planet. Silt had built tunnels that would have had any Vietcong leader salivating, and anything that wasn''t camouflaged actively was using them. I suspected many had collapsed in the onslaught that followed, taking who knows how many with them, or worse, leaving them trapped helplessly miles below ground.
Machina had also set loose thousands of drone swarms, big and small. Right now, they were taking the brunt of it, drawing the ire of the orbiting vessels. They were still showing some restraint, Turing answered to no one, but right now they''d held off from attacking nations that hadn''t given them permission to torch their own settlements like USMA had. There were plenty of neutral colonies nearby, and they weren''t glassed yet, which is a good thing since I strongly doubted that an evacuation was anywhere near complete.
Would the terrestrial US surrender their colonies on USMA? Not without a fight. The Patriots had plans, grand ones, and seemed to expect that they could hold up against the waves of ships and soldiers that would inevitably follow if they managed to wrest control. I''m sure the American appetite for colonial endeavors wasn''t unlimited, USMA and Mars were far from the most important things the US owned outside Earth. They had to meet the Alpha Centauri quotas as much as any other nation, and they''d find a hostile reception if they decided to pull back all their forces to deal with this insurgency.
I hoped Chang wasn''t as bloodyminded as he was said to be. It''s not like popular opinion meant much to him, democracy in the US had long been a sham. Hey, at least it made election season much more bearable, since everyone knew it was a joke.
It was still too early to think about renormalizing ties and bringing an independent Martian colonial state built from USMA into the UN, but my bureaucrat mind still vaguely wondered at the forms that would need filling.
"We''re approaching sensor coverage. Machina, you ready?" Raul turned to yell at Machina in the back, abruptly dropping his volume when Florette awoke with a start.
"We''ve deployed countermeasures minutes ago, Captain."
A distant explosion proved his point, an infowar drone had flown on ahead, drawing the attention of the base defenses. Tiny explosions followed by puffs of blackness in the sky suggested flak, while missile trails demonstrated more targeted anti-air at work.
Stolen novel; please report.
"Alpha team! Last call, we''re on red light." The LEDs in the vehicle agreed.
"Bravo, I need you to switch to the eastern approach. Take the high ground, suppressive fire, you''ve got drones and Machina''s shields, you''ll be fine."
"Charlie, look lively. This is it."
The orders were vocalized more for our convenience than anything else. Ah, I was already nostalgic.
"BULWARK. Don''t let me down." Raul stood up, helping a groggy Florette onto her feet and offering her a cup of extra strong coffee. She''d made the beans herself, they''d been heavenly.
"It''s sink or swim Cap, and I don''t know how to swim." Frost told him. Of course he didn''t, motherfucker could freeze the waves.
We crowded into the airlock, and I put my warface on. Time slowed to a crawl even though I wasn''t running hot, and the abrupt transition of the red LEDs to a far too calm green was followed by the howl of escaping air, and then we were out on the surface, finding the battle hadn''t waited for us.
Explosions on Mars had less concussive force than back home, but someone had told this to the defenders of Installation 63, and they''d taken umbrage. The shields Machina had installed on our gigantic moving target shimmered, shrapnel and missiles caught in their invisible vice stalled before falling inert to the ground.
Ahead of us, outgassing wreckage of drone craft showed me that we were taking it easy, any human in the crossfire would have been red mist.
We ran, while Machina hovered, his suit lifting him several feet above the ground. I did a double-take when I saw he was bare-faced, but the stray round that glanced off yet another invisible barrier and then distressingly close to me showed that he was hardly unprepared.
It was far too quiet, barring the rumbling. Machina believed in having more drones than the enemy had bullets, and hundreds of them swarmed forth, firing their weapons at the desperate defenders. I stuck close to Frost and Florette, he was raising infant glaciers of ice out of thin air, providing extra insurance in case Machina flunked his task.
I stared at a USMA soldier frozen in ice, his emotions hidden behind the frosted visor. I''d hoped he''d died before it took him.
Beacon could fly, not just fart fire. Magma rained down from above, and fires spread where they had no business existing in such thin air. More charred corpses, not necessarily of his making.
USMA had dug in like an Alabama tick. The skeletal garrison had been reinforced with fresh-faced Offworlders, and more drones and emplaced defenses.
Someone ought to have told them why that was a bad idea when there was a hostile Technomancer on the prowl, but they found out firsthand when Machina got within range.
Autocannons and lasers that had been aiming for us turned a full 180 degrees to face bewildered soldiers, who had just a moment to process that their IFF had gone from Friend to Foe before being blown away.
It was madness, but also had an air of unreality to it, like a movie where the director had paid top dollar for the CGI but had left the sound design to his nephew who was good with Audacity. Still, this slaughter was largely one sided, and we took the exterior of the facility without a single human casualty on our side, at least not where I could see them.
Installation 63 had a wide perimeter wall that had been breached in multiple places, more drones pouring in to handle defenders in locations that weren''t under the coverage of their remaining big guns. The turret of a tank did somersaults before planting itself barrel first before me. I raised a mental score card with a 10/10 on it before joining the others entering the breach, where the heavily damaged central building lay.
"Have they offered to surrender?" Machina asked Raul over our shared net.
"Negative, War Machine. They''re holding out for reinforcements."
"Fools. Why don''t they just stand down?" I heard Florette spit, bitter resignation in her voice.
I wanted to ask her why the Patriots hadn''t stood down, but refrained. Something made men and women die for their country with a smile on their face, and I understood that, even if the sentiment had been beaten out of me long ago. Flags were only good for toilet paper.
"Wait. Comms, they want to talk."
The face of a very flustered officer appeared in my HUD, I didn''t use the lace to receive potentially dangerous comms, though after letting Machina have his way with mine, I was shutting the stable door after the horse had been rendered into glue.
"Patriots. This is Captain Andrew Wells, USSF 1364729. I demand that your men stand down, we''re willing to blow this facility up before we let you have it." He declared. He''d been too busy to activate the filters that might let him pretend to be calm and composed.
"You''ll find your explosives don''t work anymore Captain. Why don''t you just try and see for yourself?" Machina told him.
The man blanched, evidently far from eager to take up the bluff.
"You''re insane! All of you Martian fucks! You take this place and they''ll just glass all of us." I saw the hint of desperate tears in his eyes and a crack in his voice before a subordinate moved in the background and turned the filters on, leaving a calm and composed man waiting on us.
"That''s our headache. Will you save the lives of you and your men?" Raul replied.
The man shook his head with finality but didn''t cut the comms, then he seemed puzzled, unable to figure out why the feed wouldn''t end. Machina, I presume.
"Natasha." Machina said.
Florette drew herself up, as if about to perform an onerous and odious task, yet a necessary one. In her cam feed, I could see a vein throbbing in her temple, and the creatures that dwelled on her scrambled over her face in agitation.
Captain Wells drew his sidearm, as if planning to shoot the camera. However, he paused, and raised a hand to his temple, slowly at first, before frantically tugging at what I first mistook for a hair, before it began to grow thicker and greener.
No, not hair: Stalks. Roots. Flowers. Leaves. The filter glitched, alternating from a staid view of a preoccupied officer to a window into a man who had grown a Crown of Thorns around his head, which was rapidly extending tendrils into his skull. For once, I was glad I couldn''t hear the screaming.
The other USMA and US troops recoiled in horror, watching their CO writhe on the floor as orchids bloomed in his eye sockets. The same junior officer who had turned on the filters stepped forth with shaky legs, unmuting it again, turning the directional mic away from the worst of the screaming, before talking to us with a warbly voice.
"Please stop. Can you save him?" He begged. He was young, hardly out West Point. I didn''t envy him his introduction to war.
"No. You''ll be next if you don''t surrender." Machina told him, looking at Florette who had blacked out her own camera, even if I could still hear her hyperventilating through the audio feed.
"We surrender. I''m sorry Captain." With shaking hands, the Lieutenant drew his own pistol and discharged it into his leader''s head, yet the plants kept growing nonetheless.
I''m glad I don''t throw up easy, even if I''d seen worse deaths.
With the facility now his plaything, Machina ordered the drones in first to restrain the survivors, who had discarded all their weaponry and had the fight taken out of them for good. I walked in when the body had been dragged out of sight, but for the blood and fallen leaves.
And then, as if Ares had awakened and decided that he wouldn''t take this assault on his form lying down, the massive railgun that lay at the heart of Installation 63 opened its metal eye, blast iris shifting aside, and then returned the favor to Olympus.
17.2 Arson, Murder and Jaywalking
While the light from the unlucky warship in orbit hadn''t been able to make it through the clouds, the shot from an anti-orbital railgun certainly did. The recoil was immense, I had to remind myself the facility was built to withstand it.
The dust that had scarcely settled when it was blasted back into the sky, a concentric cloud howling as it expanded across the surface. The Martian atmosphere proved no impediment to the thirty kilo tungsten rod, one that let the spaceships above know, in no uncertain terms, that having the high ground was far from everything.
I wasn''t sure how long it would take, but several seconds later, the effect was obvious. The dim red sun had just threatened to rise, yet, for a brief instant, was supplanted by a brand new sibling, the actinic blue light prompting my visor to dim itself even from this safe distance. Plasma expanded, whirling along artificial magnetic field lines before discharging itself as arcs of true lighting that made the skies quake.
"Machina? Why are we still here?" I asked nervously. Surely a retaliation was imminent.
"So we can shoot some more?" He said glibly. I shook my head, and debated making a run for it on foot if only that didn''t mean I''d just die tired.
The sheer heat from the current had melted even the powerful superconductor in the rails, Machina had supercharged it ridiculously past tolerance for its critical magnetic field. Likely the reason that the ships above hadn''t paid us too much heed, they''d trusted their defenses to deal with it. Normally you''d need dozens of rounds for the effect we''d had with one.
The facility still came with spares, and before the metal had cooled, a new lining was inserted, and then the railgun boomed again.
And again.
And again.
"Okay, we should make ourselves scarce." Machina told me. I mildly embarrassed myself by sprinting out, only to be left waiting as he approached at a sedate pace.
I don''t know what gave him the confidence, but he was right, because the Patriots and I managed to clear the facility by a good few kilometers before another deity fired back. The impact sent our hulking craft a good few feet off the ground, and my tailbone wasn''t happy about it. The only person who was, was Raul, because a squealing Florette had bounced up and landed on his lap, wrapping her hands around him in her fright.
He had a schoolboy''s grin on his face that was immediately dispelled when the snake in her voluminous hair hissed at him and reared its fangs. I fucking knew there was a snake, I told you. Still, he was a brave man indeed, only gulping and staring adoringly at Florette till she gently removed her arms and sat back down in her seat.
I was growing to like these people. I didn''t like that. We were allies of convenience, and I dreaded the moment I might have to turn on them, or they me.
Still, I didn''t express my feelings, the mood inside was ebullient, all cheers and high fives, and NCOs turning their gaze away as the men broke out flasks of liquor.
Did they think it would all be this easy?
"How the fuck did you know they wouldn''t blow us up immediately?" I asked Machina.
"I spread FUD. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt. I had a line to one of the ships, managing to crack security on an unsecured transmitter. I had the "AI" broadcast a distress signal saying it was being compromised by Prometheus, and for the next few seconds, every other ship in orbit was too busy firing at it to care about us."
"Fucking hell dude. Have you got no chill? How many ships did you knock out?" I asked in awe. Remind me to kill him first, if I even could.
"Four. Three from direct hits, and the rest fragged their own fleetmate. I''m sorry, but if you''re looking for chill, Frost is right there." He told me, pointing at the back.
I suspected the cheeky bastard was lying about not having a sense of humor, but for all I knew, some AI in the circlet was feeding him the lines.
"Anyway, that trick won''t work again, not unless the "hijacked" ship opens fire first".
I wish I could tell you that we saw burning ships falling out of orbit, trailing a comet''s worth of vaporized metal as they crashed into the surface. Well, that didn''t happen, because things in orbit tend to stay in orbit, especially when they get nudged from below. Orbital dynamics, look it up.
It was a very pretty light show, so we''ll both need to settle for that.
Since about a million radars and other sensors were hunting for us, we drove into one of the dearly departed Silt''s tunnels, descending at grossly unsafe speeds into the bowels of the earth Mars. This tunnel was clearly not up to spec, because I jumped multiple times at the sound of crumpling metal as we scraped off bits of our roof at the tighter segments.
Did Mars have a building code? I''ll have to look that up myself.
"Dr. Sen, we''ve organized transport for you as planned. Are you sure this is the mission for you?" Raul asked me. He seemed to have warmed to me, a little, but whether that was because I''d proven my dedication in battle, or because I had stoically resisted more of Florette''s flirting in front of him, I''ll let you judge.
I stepped out into the spacious cavern, looking at my ride.
"This might sound hypocritical of me, but I don''t want to kill friendlies if I can help it. I''m going to turn myself in, and I''m pretty certain I can make it to the UN fleet. Then, I hope it goes as planned." I told them.
"That''s character development, I''ll give you that. Could you have done it before you killed my people?" He asked haughtily.
I shrugged. "BULWARK has a time traveler I can borrow? If not, no."
For the record, they didn''t, nor did anyone else we knew about. It seemed that for all the seemingly arbitrary and capricious tricks that metahuman powers could perform, resetting the past wasn''t one of them. You should be grateful, keeping track of parallel timelines is a PITA even for someone with an augmented brain like me.
I shook hands with Machina and Frost, declining Beacon''s offer because I strongly suspected it was just a deniable way of leaving me with a nasty burn. He didn''t seem put out about it. I saluted Raul, perhaps a relic of our mutual time in the military, and to my mild surprise, he returned it. I let Florette peck me on the cheek, content in knowing that I probably had the right antivenom on hand, and then got into my little car as we parted ways.
I slept on the drive, had a snack, and listened to the abominable tunes someone had downloaded in a playlist before giving up and tuning into something my own lace played back in my brain.
Miles of endless tunnels passed by uneventfully, I was practically hypnotized. There were no cave-ins along the route, so I emerged several hundred kilometers away, not too far from Moshowitz.
To say the place was worse for wear was an understatement, it seemed Sanders had set off that nuke after all.
I clenched my ass-cheeks as the vehicle gave up on finding a road and took me cross-country for a good while, till we ended up on Martian Highway 19. It was deserted for good this time, not even automated haulers to be seen.
I arrived at the charming town of Minas Tirith, true-scale props and decor both out of place because of their presence on Mars as well as due to the absence of anyone to appreciate them. I stepped out of my vehicle after donning a new environment suit and managed to do a few laps beneath Saruman''s tower, before a USMA patrol''s drone spotted me. It flew before me, seemingly eager to kill, but after a quick scan found no weapons on my immediate person, it hovered above, likely calling for backup. Another one of those blasted Crafter toys that masqueraded as good old fashioned AI, far too alive.
The patrol followed shortly, I refrained from dimming my visor as overly powerful flashlights shone in my face, and I did my best to seem like I had nothing unusual to report as the Grey Men trudged over.
"Dr. Adat Sen? You were reported MIA two days ago." The leader asked me. His visor was opaque and featureless, the same bland grey as the rest of his suit.
"I''ve had a few adventures along the way, but as you can see, I''m alive, and I have important information to report." I let a great deal of the weariness I felt leak into my words. He seemed unmoved.
"Standby. Echo Actual, this is Osprey 1-1, we''ve found a HVT in Minas. Orders?" He was kind enough to let me hear him.
"Acknowledged. Sir, we''re bringing you in. Anything to report?"
"I have weapons in the vehicle. I took them off the Patriots I killed."
He stopped for a moment to process that, likely speaking over personal comms with his handlers. "That''s fine sir. I assume there''s nothing that''s autonomous or dangerous?"
"They''re firearms soldier, they''re supposed to be dangerous."This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
Now, unlike Machina, this guy wasn''t pretending to not have a sense of humor.
The next MRAP was as cramped as ever, but I was used to it at this point. Cyborg legs made it a lot easier to bear.
I spent the journey being debriefed by some CIA spook, a distant relation to Sanders, and just about as only here for business and not pleasure.
My story wasn''t airtight, but it was close. It helped that there was a dead body in the back of my car, bullet holes and all, with a biometric ID that matched with a known Patriot. Half Chimera''s work and half mine, though my contributions were the bullet holes. It had been extremely disconcerting to shoot the human drone, for all that it was a blank slate under his control. It had put up no resistance as I put round after round into, only dropping dead when Chimera told it to.
To paraphrase a very long and a little fake story, I''d left Sanders and run with Riley, ending up at a house that, unbeknownst to me, belonged to the same Patriots I was running from. They''d tried to bag me, hit me with a Parrot, but I broke free and killed them, finding the gear upon their persons as well as plenty of juicy data. Then I stole a car and drove here as fast as I could, using tunnels they''d uploaded into the autonav.
The best lies have a dollop of truth in them for flavor.
My lace corroborated all this, painstaking deepfakes helped hold up to thorough scrutiny, once again courtesy of Machina.
Then I was back at New Washington, the place clearly unheeding of evacuation orders, even if the civilians were only under curfew. The Firmament was past dying and now outright rotting, massive grey flakes gently drifting down like I was a mouse in a snowglobe. I could see more signs of violence, paint fresh on the streets. More Grey Men and shimmering cloaked drones stalked the empty streets, and my decision to abandon my US citizenship all those years ago seemed prescient. We''d even debated moving to Mars, it was what all the cool kids were doing.
Administrator Shen was waiting for me in the lobby of a hotel far more upscale than what UNSEEN had booked on my behalf. The halls were deserted, luggage scattered around and no drones in sight to pick them up.
He looked like I felt, to the extent that a person who happens to be a complete cyborg barring cerebral life support could look like he was ready to keel over.
His paintjob had taken a beating during the last nuclear blast we''d shared, and now, it was accented with bullet holes. Amateurs, I hoped it wasn''t some fool with the sudden urge to join the Patriots, but not in time to get sufficient training. To take a clanker like him down, you needed something much bigger and meaner.
"Sen. Is what you said true?" His voice boomed, resonating in the abandoned lobby.
"You''re looking at me, don''t I look worse for wear?" I replied, noticing a guard closing a door in the face of a curious hotel concierge. You''d think they''d use robots, but this place was fancy.
"Admittedly so. I am sorry, for what it''s worth. Consider this an apology on behalf of me, Wallace and Sanders. She didn''t make it." He informed me as we walked towards a conference room.
Here, there was real activity, over-caffeinated interns running around like their hair was on fire. The more experienced staffers were taking it easier, they had the grim fatality of people who knew their efforts weren''t making a difference.
"It means a lot to me. I suspected Sanders was dead, she took a nuclear football into the hornet''s nest. But if you didn''t know, there are more Centauri Warforms out there."
He nodded his gigantic head. "Not news to me, if only you''d reached civilization a day ago. It''s bad out there Adat, we''ve lost men we can''t replace, critical infrastructure is down, and now Turing has convinced Chang to divert most of our forces in a fruitless wild goose chase for the rogue Centaur AI. We need them right here, if the Patriots attack in force, I''m afraid New Washington won''t hold."
"Surely it''s not that bad?"
"Worse. I had a member of my own staff try and kill me. They''re everywhere, sleeper agents that we can''t catch. We lost power to a bomb hidden weeks ago, had to call the military back in to hook us up to a portable fusion plant. I don''t trust my own men, and that''s not a position I ever wanted to end up in."
"What''s Chang telling you?"
"I''m well beneath the notice of the President, thankfully. But the Secretary of Colonial Affairs has been having conniptions, and I have about a million conflicting directives to wrangle. Reclaim popular support, she says. Stamp out the sympathizers while you''re at it, suspend Habeas Corpus if you need to. Bloody hell, if it''s gotten to this point, why don''t they hand over the colonies on a silver platter?"
It spoke to where they were at that he spoke so freely about his bosses. They had bigger things to handle than his kvetching. Maybe he didn''t expect to live long enough to see punishment.
I felt bad for the man, he seemed like a good person doing his very best to make the most of a terrible situation. I hoped he felt the same about me.
"Cali? Tex? China and India? Euros?"
"One at a time, please. To sum it up, everyone''s been less than helpful. I wonder why nobody is rushing to help the Federal United States.."
The sarcasm was thick even with his usual deadpan, especially when he used the deprecated name.
"Nothing?"
"No, they have their own optics, they can''t do precisely nothing. Instead, citing multilateral concerns, they''ve handed their forces over to the UN, who are doing precisely nothing with them. When this is over, I''m going to resign and go back to Earth."
Jesus. I thought my week had gone poorly.
"OK, last question, I''m really out of the loop. Turing?"
"Fucking Turing. They come in, shit the bed, make the sheets over it and look at me like they want my unreserved praise. I told you they''ve diverted most of my troops, and now they''re doing such a number on our comms that I can barely get through to anyone outside Hellas. I found out about the rebellion in Solace Fields only after the Patriots took the town hall and police station. Anyway, they''ve stopped being so nice when they saw I can''t help them. They''ve got spooks on the ground, like this fine lady here, and then a Kill Star in orbit." He gestured at a woman I could have mistaken for a statue. She was rigid, her eyes covered by wraparound shades. She stank of ozone, something was channeling her, and it wasn''t as gentle as Purple.
"Turing apologizes. We have our mandate, and we must fulfill it." She said, not shifting an inch except for the working of her jaw.
"Fuck Turing! What are you even doing here, you literally pissed your pants an hour back! Just, just fucking leave, before you shit them next."
Yeah, he was angry. The more sensitive interns ran away as soon as they could, his voice too loud by far.
"Turing apologizes, but Agent Yglesias is to remain. You may present your case to the Oversight Board via the approved channels if you wish."
A giant metal finger flipped her the bird, and he took me into a room that had clearly been hastily turned into an office.
"I''ve forwarded your request to the UN, we''re putting you on a shuttle in a hour. It''s my turn to apologize again, we have none free a moment sooner."
"It''s alright. Is the hotel bar still stocked-"
A Grey Man kicked the door open, it was lucky for me that Shen was in the way. A man''s weight in walnut bounced off him, not even budging him an inch.
"On your knees! Hands where I can see them."
I fought every instinct to bolt, maybe jump out the window and hope the twelve story fall wasn''t too bad in Martian gravity. Wouldn''t have worked, there was a big fuck off drone outside, the cloaking disengaged, and gun pointed straight at me.
Another line of Grey Men were stacked up behind the first, guns leveled at my face. This brought back memories, painful ones. It had been faceless fucks like these who''d snatched me when I''d gone to visit my parents in DC, dragged me to their little blacksite and then worked me over till Anjana turned herself in.
Yes, that anger was well and truly back, and it was a testament to the importance of my mission that I restrained myself. I probably couldn''t have taken all of them in a disadvantageous fight, not without the gear waiting for me with all the other luggage below.
"Shen, what''s going on?" I looked confused more than anything else.
"Administrator, please step aside. He''s a military grade cyborg and a serious risk to your safety." Another featureless man stated. In the background, the Turing Agent had slowly turned around to look at me, her crotch still damp.
"I have had enough. In case you didn''t notice, I''m a fucking military cyborg too. I can handle myself, and I remind you that in Hellas, I''m the one in charge. Explain yourselves."
Most of the Grey Men didn''t move a muscle, still locked on to me. One at the back stepped up and transferred data to Shen with a cable, clearly not trusting the local networks.
"Are you shitting me?" He sounded incredulous.
I did my best to look cool, and succeeded in both senses of the word. If they had bioscanners, they would see a perfectly normal heartbeat, albeit mildly elevated, not the palpitations I''d be having if my systems were less robust. Sweat, skin conductance, everything was within range for a career UN bureaucrat confused about the whole affair.
How the fuck did they know? A mole? Why would the Patriots betray me? Lumen? Bulwark? Clairvoyants?"
I kept my hands raised and didn''t shift at all. What was I looking at? Court martial? Gitmo? No, they''d have shot me if they could. My position as a UN representative gave me some claim to due process. I hoped I''d get a lawyer with powers, and ideally not end up in front of Xiao.
I''m sorry Anjana. I did this for you.
Shen had locked himself stable as he processed the data, before pivoting his entire upper torso at the waist to face me.
"Is it true? Adat?"
"I''d like to know the allegations first, and then have a lawyer assigned please. Even an AI will do."
"Money laundering? Counterfeiting?"
Record scratch.
"What the fuck?" I didn''t have to fake it.
"Sir, there''s no error, it''s been triple checked. The FTL comms were down because of Turing-"
"Turing apologizes for the inconvenience" A dull voice said.
"-so it came over snail mail. Order was put out 3.5 minutes ago, 05:43 EST. He''s on the Special Circumstances list, Immediate Liquidation list, the Un-American-"
Shen shushed the man by rapping him on the visor, forcing him to step back. "This your idea of a joke, Sergeant? You''re accusing Sen of, what''s this, fabricating more money than exists on Earth? No, the entire Solar System? It says here the crime was committed 3.5 minutes ago, or rather an hour if you count from commit to ledger. I can assure you, Sen has been in our custody for far longer."
The Grey Man seemed flustered. "We double checked, the order is valid. I need to request that you step aside, sir."
"No."
"Sir, this is a matter of national security-"
"I said no, Sergeant. Sen has more important things to do than play along with your malarkey. He''s just provided critical information on the Patriots and BULWARK, and if the Secretary wishes to take it up with me, I''ve got a time slot open before the next comms package. You''re under my orders, Sergeant, and I declare that he''s boarding the next shuttle. Wait, you have a shuttle held up for you don''t you? Not anymore you don''t. Sen, I''ll see you out."
I almost smelled the smoke coming out of the anonymous Sergeant''s ears, and the gears losing teeth as they ground against each other, the unstoppable motive force stuck on the immovable object that was a direct command from Administrator Shen.
"You didn''t do it, did you?" Shen asked me as he kept his word by walking me to the shuttle bay.
"Of course not! What the absolute fuck, money laundering? Maybe jaywalking and driving without a license after I killed that Patriot. You could put me down for Grand Theft Auto if you like." I informed him.
He laughed, full throated, or at least making good use of his speakers.
"I don''t really care. If it''s true, I''ll try and put in a word for you with Chang, for a pardon. I''m sure there''s been some error, they must have meant like two hundred thousand or something, maybe you skipped something during your account setup. But that much? They''re having a giggle."
He clapped me on the back, aiming to be gentle, and since I wasn''t knocked off my feet, I accepted it.
"I''m sorry for the inconvenience, Administrator. If you''re ever looking for a new job, UNSEEN is hiring. But then again, if you see the salary, you might understand why I laundered the money." I winked at him, before waving farewell and taking my seat as the space plane spooled up atmospheric engines.
Yeah. He wasn''t a bad guy. Shame he wasn''t a better judge of character, then his intern wouldn''t have shot him, and I''d be in jail.
Money laundering? Eh, he''s probably right, just another glitch in the convoluted USDC system. I''m just a traitor.
18.0 Red Planet Blues
I''d like to say that the ride to orbit in the shuttle was peaceful, but reality wasn''t so accommodating.
Courtesy of four ships and who knows how many sats in orbit being reduced to slag and megatons of debris, Mars was now in the middle stages of Kessler Syndrome.
Imagine a satellite in orbit. Then two, then twenty thousand.
Not a big deal, space is big, and a little bit of active guidance and strategic airspace (space-space?) management means you can have enormous constellations operating without getting in each other''s way. For proof, look at the Dyson Swarm in progress around Alpha Centauri.
Unfortunately, issues arise when one satellite, for whatever reason, blows up, is blown up, or gets hit by a meteorite missed by the scans. That satellite becomes anywhere from a handful to a couple thousand bits of debris, in a similar as well as highly eccentric orbits, which goes on to hit a dozen more sats, and so on, till everything around the planet is an unwilling contestant in the world''s highest-stakes demolition derby.
It took time to get going, but a nasty orbital war would speed that up pronto.
Our craft took evasive measures when it could, exerting its engines to the max to avoid impacts that could seriously damage it. Smaller bits were largely ignored, that''s what the Whipple shield was for. Even then, the occasional impact scared the shit out of me and the twenty or so other passengers strapped in for dear life.
My augmentations were extensive, but I wouldn''t survive the hours and hours in orbit it would take for someone to retrieve me if I was spaced, assuming they could even find me in all the mess. I didn''t think the emergency suits would hold up all that well to the micrometeors and other crap about either.
There. One of the exterior cams went out. A small dip in our acceleration only noted by my sensitive lace suggested the engines had taken a hit.
Still, we emerged intact, and I looked through the remaining cameras at the locked down space station that was my destination.
UNSS Here For Good was middling in size as stations went. On one end of the scale, you had the newer O''Neill cylinders, colossal beasts that could house millions, even if most were still far from full as governments coaxed and cajoled their citizens into moving off Earth. On the other, anything into which you chuck a human and a life support system for the same.
It was a rotating wheel the radius of a city block, with a perpendicular cylinder in the middle radiating spokes for the wheel, each end of the cylinder meant for docking with shuttles like mine.
It spun at a sedate pace, content in providing something similar to Mars gravity to help acclimatize new arrivals who hadn''t taken the gene therapy or drugs to keep their bones and muscles intact during their slow boat over.
The wheel had another sibling under construction, this one further out with a wider circumference, probably to provide a single g for the weirdos who went to space and still demanded the same constraints as Earth. I found Mars gravity to be pretty sweet myself, good enough to keep you down on the ground without skipping about like on the Moon, and unlike proper microgravity, your cutlery didn''t float away when you weren''t looking. It also made taking a shit more convenient when you used a normal toilet instead of one that vacuum-sealed itself onto your ass.
The exterior lights lay dormant, the majority of the habitat compartments quiet and cold, with non-critical staff and transients bundled off to places out of the line of fire. Still, you could see activity, if you looked close enough. Several spacecraft, the majority a familiar shade of blue, clung to the umbilicals, with dim shadows on the translucent walls suggesting people making their way to and fro. Cargo drones gently ferried massive containers to and fro, clearing the vicinity of the accumulated construction material that now posed a risk if the station had to move in a hurry.
A casual observer could be forgiven for missing the UNSC Promises Kept docked on the end furthest from us, and even my augmented vision took a moment to spot it, though I cheated by knowing in advance it was supposed to be there.
It was large, as long as the station itself, another cylindrical Torchship made for getting to the furthest reaches of Sol in months rather than decades. The hull was coated in electrically manipulated metamaterial, capable of adjusting hue and brightness to pretty much any shade without something so old-fashioned as a coat of paint. So were most warships, in case you were wondering how they went from their usual color scheme to UN blue overnight when they joined an expeditionary fleet.
Right now, it was doing its best to meld into the inky blackness beyond, the reactor was in low power mode and my low resolution thermal vision provided by the pit viper organs embedded in my scalp couldn''t distinguish it from the 3 or 4 Kelvin that was the average for our universe. When the droplet radiators unfurled their wings of molten tin, that would be a sight to see.
Some of the stress I''d been understandably feeling faded, there were no good places to be in or around Mars right now, but within the confines of a space craft that was meant to stand up to the insanity the Centaurs threw its way in AC was close enough for my liking.
We docked, and the passengers streamed out, most of them eager to board yet another shuttle and get as far as they could away from our planetary neighborhood. I looked over at Mars, which looked much the same really, but consulting the shuttle''s systems revealed that the atmosphere had gotten a whole degree warmer, a testament to the energies being poured down from orbit. Looking closer, I could see changes. That crater hadn''t been there yesterday, nor the next. Many of the cities had dimmed their lights, as if that would help in the least.
I had a welcoming party, a sizeable one, a collection of UN officials ranking below and above me, with the most notable being the station''s Director, Melanie Hicks, a short woman with a tan and shoulder-length hair neatly made into a ponytail held to the back of her suit by clips, a sign she had been about the parts of the station lacking rotational gravity.
"Sen. I honestly couldn''t believe you were still alive. I''ve been reading your testimony while you were coming over, what on Earth is going on down there?" She asked me, looking at me with honest concern. We were acquaintances, if not friends, rubbing elbows in one event or another in cislunar space. I remembered drunkenly telling her about my dog, Gator, and being delighted to know she had three labs of her own. I wondered if they had been brought to Mars, most habs allowed pets, but a government installation might be stricter.
"Hey Mel. If you don''t mind, I''ll talk as we go, I''d like to speak to Admiral Francis in the ship."
"Right, I''m coming with, assuming my INDIGO clearance isn''t an issue." She told me, as we walked through the halls, more officials deciding they''d tag along. Even if she outranked me in the org chart, UNSEEN and Space Command were different entities, and we usually spoke as equals. I was surprised she was still INDIGO like last we met, but clearance levels weren''t the same thing as seniority. For someone usually running one station or another far from AC, it more than sufficed.
I disclosed my doctored story to her as we went, sending a copy ahead to Francis, who told me that he would meet us in the bridge. He wasn''t flaunting his position in our faces, in a combat scenario, the captain was expected to remain aboard the ship at all times. While nobody had shot at us, yet, the same rules apply. UN forces were on max alert, ready to meet whatever came their way.
It was obvious where the bulk of the UN budget went, the Promises Kept was state-of-the-art, no bit inferior to the best that nations like the US, China or the richer half of the EU operated. While it was cramped, both mass and volume at a premium, the small human crew had plenty of amenities, VR or otherwise. Robots whizzed by on rails, their manipulators tucked close so as to not decapitate the human crew jogging about. I noticed the graviton generators were active, or we''d be floating about, going from rail to rail. I suppose that any expenditure of the exotic particles needed could be topped up later in one of the many logistics stations beyond Mars, even if I was a bit iffy on how they actually work. The maths made my brains hurt when I last tried to understand it, even if the tech hadn''t been built with metahuman fuckery.
At any rate, gravity was a luxury we didn''t need to dispense with just yet, even if, in an actual battle all of if would be diverted to augment the acceleration produced by the engines running off antimatter bottles. If the crew didn''t perform to spec without it, they wouldn''t be aboard.
We arrived at the bridge, nestled well inside the ship, since nobody was insane enough to put it on the surface where any stray shot could end us all.
It was opulent, Francis had opted for a neo-Renaissance look, pleasing gold accents and soft curves where the furniture didn''t need to accommodate more utilitarian needs like keeping the crew safe. At full burn or during aggressive maneuvers, they''d be immersed in tanks full of non-Newtonian fluid anyway, to make it easier on their bodies, even if the extensive cybernetics helped.
Francis was listening to something important, so he gestured to us to take a seat on one of the chairs articulated to fold away when not needed.
I looked at an archaic whiteboard covered in indecipherable scribbles, roughly gleaning from the associated diagrams that they showed various fleet dispositions and practised maneuvers. Not that it was in regular use, I could see references to the Moon, the crew used their laces to communicate most of the time.
More interesting was a panel covered in the guileless yet touching artwork of children, paper cards and posters with school logos at the corners carefully attached with pins and then locked into place so that they wouldn''t come loose.
"Hi! I''m Riha, from Mumbai. Mr. Francis, we love you, please keep us safe. My mom says that if you come to our home, she''ll make biryani for you too ??"
"Thank you for saving my daddy Mr. Francis, that''s what my momma said"
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"When I grow up, I want to kill aliens be a captain like you ??" Someone, likely an embarrassed teacher, had struck through the middle, but you could see it just the same.This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Ah kid, I hope there are no aliens to kill by the time you''re grown.
I felt a distant ache in my heart, while Anjana and I had put off kids for a while, both being extremely busy, and knowing that modern fertility treatments could let us snooze our biological clocks, when we married, we''d expected to have at least one child of our own by now. Maybe we would have, if she wasn''t four lightyears away, and maybe we still could, it wasn''t impossible in the least, she''d frozen eggs (I hadn''t told my parents) before departing. Still, I wasn''t ready to effectively be a single parent with my workload, and her having a child in AC was even more inadvisable, even if the embryo would have to be transferred to an external womb and then to one of the rearline outposts.
I resolved that I''d fuck her till we ended up with a kid, one way or another, as soon as she was back. Yeah, I think that would help with the pain of our endless separation.
There was a portrait of Francis shaking hands with the previous captain, photos taken in the burning bush in the Outback, more awards and memorabilia, usually just images, because while the crew has a healthy mass budget, there were more important things to spend it on.
Francis ended his call, and turned around in his imposing throne, before coming over to shake my hand.
"I''m impressed, Dr. Sen. I just used FTL comms to get back to HQ, and did my best to convey the importance of your actions." He was taller than I was, just as cybernetic as Administrator Shen or Director Van Der Waals back at UNSEEN, but more discreetly so, almost passing as a rather handsome and muscular baseliner, if you didn''t look too closely at the seams in the artificial skin. Unlike me, he''d consider damage to the ship that vented the atmosphere and flooded it with hard radiation to barely be an inconvenience.
"Has Space Command decided how to proceed?" This was critical, the UN had largely sat this one out to the best of its abilities. I didn''t know how long that would last.
He sighed deeply. "When this cluster-fuck commenced, we were of the opinion that you were how we were going to proceed. Send a field agent of respectable rank to Mars, make sure he tags along with the locals so they don''t get too trigger-happy, kick the can down the road for a few more years, you understand right?"
"I''m with you so far." I told him.
"Then, we got concerned. You have to understand, Task Force Gangaputra isn''t even supposed to be here, we were to link up with US Space Force assets and bulk out the fleet, then meet whatever the Indians have ready in Ceres and the Chinese around Jupiter. Instead, as we waited for our American comrades to switch colors and link up, they began a campaign of orbital bombardment on civilian settlements. The only reason I didn''t tell my men to fire a warning shot past their prow is because we''re still in the interdiction range of Deimos, even if these are their own towns they''re torching. I didn''t sign up to watch my fellow man murder each other, not in the least."
Franconi was a true believer, committed heart and cybernetic soul to protecting Mankind against that which would lay it low. Without him in charge of the UNAUS peacekeeping campaign, Australia would look very different today. From another, this would have sounded like an attempt to deflect blame, claim their inaction had principle on its side, and I wouldn''t have hated them for it, the list of countries on Earth that had held their peace even as the US had violated it was long with many luminaries on it.
I wondered who would win in a fight between a Turing Kill Star and the floating fortress that was Deimos, but I hoped to never find out, at least while I was within an astronomical unit of distance from it. Oh dear, I was going to have to disclose some things, and now, which drastically increased the odds of me witnessing Armageddon.
"I believe you, Admiral. Your reputation speaks for you. I did have some very important things to disclose that you''ll find I didn''t tell USMA, for reasons that will shortly become clear."
I laid it onto him thick, the violations of global treaties surrounding unilateral research into alien technology, the rampantly unsafe meddling with their AI, the use of metahuman powers to interface with said AI. It ought to convey the magnitude of this claim that the Admirals magnificent eyebrows were trying to climb into his hairline, while the cooling pumps hooked up to the lines in his chair and then his body began whirring, suggesting that whatever thinking his overclocked brain was doing was running past the cooling provided by mere blood. I didn''t just submit my testimony in words, my lace had been neatly loaded up with enough additional information to corroborate what I said, with things that were personally damning encrypted and hidden so well that it was exceedingly unlikely anyone could find it, unless they knew what they were looking for, and them cracking the code would require one of the five or six hypercomputers available to man, which had better things to do, and a normal supercomputing cluster would take about as long as it would for all the stars in our cluster to die.
(Hypercomputation is a an entirely different beast from merely having a ton of processing power, these weren''t just unusually powerful regular ones)
"Damn. I''m sending this over, poaching a FTL package." He turned to look at the crew, they were only a dozen or so, but already looking expectant, reading their leader''s subdued emotional affect better than I could.
"All crew. Combat stations. Warm engines, deploy the radiators. Wake Iskra up, he''s going to need to prepare for combat teleports."
I had noted the unaugmented Slavic man amongst the crew, since he didn''t come from the station, it was smart money to expect him to have one kind of power or another. The vocalization from the Admiral''s mouth was largely for his benefit, the rest of us had been informed via our lace or were currently talking to the man, his brain more than capable of a dozen real-time conversations without losing its stride.
Centauri ships were almost entirely automated, whereas it was a mix for human ones, our current doctrine was the result of devastating losses in the initial skirmishes and the First Oort War, where the almost entirely AI controlled fleet was defanged by their infowar prowess. These days, the flagships were usually manned by a contingent of cybernetic crew dragged to the bleeding edge, past the point where most didn''t even bleed anymore, assisted by metahumans who helped shore up the dramatic disparity in acceleration, firepower and numbers we suffered from. There were still plenty of entirely automated vessels, usually smaller and more nimble, but slaved to nominal human command when the light lag wasn''t unbearable.
Casualty ratios for a unaugmented human ship versus a Centauri one of the same mass was around 5:1, it was harder to beat a million years of steady climbing up the technological and industrial tree. With metahumans in the mix, it was 1:3, far more palatable, but the Centaur ships still outnumbered ours by anywhere from several hundred thousand to a million. They''d made the most of their almost year-long uncontested reign in AC, before we built a fleet large enough that they wouldn''t be fodder fed in piecemeal. And yet, 12 million people died that day, to just barely secure the proximity of the wormhole we managed to drag under fire along the way.
At least our best ships often had FTL, which made picking our engagements in the outer system easy, whereas the inner system was an impenetrable swarm of orbital fortresses, antimatter mines, and other nasty greeblies you didn''t want to meet even if you could depart in the next millisecond or two. You think we let them keep building a Dyson Swarm and the associated Nicoll-Dyson laser for fun?
Reply from Earth was swift and decisive, bare minutes at most. FTL was sweet when you could afford it. I wondered if any humans had been in the loop at all, at least non-uploaded ones. The message was clear, the UN fleet was to form up in combat formation, guns pointed at the USSF armada that had yet to join them.
Very pointed questions were being asked, if Chang had been in bed, in the unlikely event that one of the most powerful men in the world did something as wasteful as sleep, he''d be out of it by now, his brain concussed with information from advisors human or otherwise.
Yes. The UN moved fast when it had to, even a toothless tiger still had claws. It''s dysfunctional, the One World Declaration did far less to unite the world than could be hoped, and this comes from someone who works there and has seen how the sausage is made. But like I told you before, it did far more good than harm, or I''d have taken my package of skills and gone corporate, I valued principle enough to swallow the 200% payraise I was foregoing, even if I whinge about it on occasion, I''d become used to the ridiculous dough my wife brought in.
I felt an upwelling of pride I had gradually forgotten how to feel, even with my divided loyalties, I''d brought most of the nations on Earth around, even nominal American allies keeping mum and falling in, at least until the USA provided answers.
I felt great about myself, and I had begun daydreaming about Assistant Directorship while escorting the chattering delegation when the Empire Struck Back.
Iskra was a Class 4 Teleporter, a tier below my wife, and his jump wasn''t nearly as seamless as hers. There was a discontinuity, a jolt in the internal graviton flux that made the less adroit among us miss their footing and stumble, not that they had time to fall, because the next moment a colossal wall of emergency shock foam engulfed us like an onrushing tsunami. I was running hot, watching the hissing green wave approach me like I was diving into the jacuzzi of the kind of chick who insists on candles everywhere, including the closet, but I couldn''t move nearly as fast as needed to run from it. Assuming I wanted to, because the foam wasn''t a trap, it would melt away in minutes.
No, the restraint was for our protection. The ship bolted, warm engines going hot and bright enough to blind anyone looking, we hapless humans lurched within the foam, dragged along by more g-s of acceleration than I cared to count, only barely coming to a stop before we crashed into the other end of the hallway.
I floated there, in the foam, wondering why I hadn''t had a good day in years.
The ship was doing evasive maneuvers, juking and dodging in a manner entirely incongruent with its size, the hardened alloys of its frame groaning as they contested the force from an acceleration that would have had fighter pilots knocked out, any higher, and I knew the ship could go higher, and many of the people beside me would be dead. I was thankful that the Admiral hadn''t felt that was a price he needed to pay.
I waited impatiently, not bothering to claw my way out of the foam until it began to thicken, then loosen, timed microcapsules inside vomiting out enzymes that liquified it rapidly while only tickling human skin. It was almost relaxing, if I hadn''t amped myself up with all the combat drugs I had in reserve.
Then I was almost loose, helping the dazed civilians pull themselves free while clinging to a handhold. I checked, and I''d already been granted access to the sensor net belonging to the ship, so I decided to take a look outside and see what the fuck had just kicked off.
There was more blackness than I expected, no stars either, let alone a sign of Mars, but then I realized that camera I had chosen had burnt out, even its hardened electronic eyes blinded for good. It was being replaced, pulled back into the hull to be swiftly switched out for a fresh one, but I didn''t wait, cycling through others till I found one with a combination of functional and looking at something I cared about.
Or had cared about, in this case. The Here for Good, presumably, if I correctly identified the incandescent ruins of one of its cylinders flying away, not tracked by the cam, which preferred to rapidly scan for live threats. Did I feel angry on behalf of the two hundred and thirty six people still aboard when I''d stepped out barely twenty minutes ago? No. I was numb.
I saw that Melanie had tuned into the same feed as I had, and turned in real space to find her staring at the blank walls, tears welling up around her eyes, only beading bigger and bigger in the microgravity.
"Dr. Sen. I saw you brought your gun. Use it, we have boarders, navigate to the port auxiliary maintenence tunnel, oversee the bots, I can''t spare the crew." Francis was in his command throne, a Prince of War sitting unmoved as tendrils squirmed around his skull. He wasn''t just himself, not anymore, I knew that he''d begun the process of subsuming himself into the ship''s systems, mind merging with AI till the thoughts of one were polished to a sheen by the other. Without time to head to their berths, the bridge had been flooded with shock fluid, the crew drowned dead brought back to life and tied to the mast.
The bridge was just a formality, Francis had full control even if he had been caught with his pants down on the shitter.
I had deja vu from the day I''d met and said goodbye to Hu Junya, now Tieyi. Yes, I had stalked utilitarian corridors before, fighting bitterly for our lives. This time, it was a different captain, a different world. The same enemies, I didn''t care to differentiate anymore between the frankly stunning assortment of individuals who sought to kill me.
Let''s save the day, eh?
18.1 Bring a Bazooka To a Knife Fight
This was awkward, to say the least.
I''d been all vim and vigor, setting forth with all due haste content in the knowledge that the ship''s comprehensive sensors had me covered, there wouldn''t be any unpleasant surprises along the way, and if there were, I''d know from the damage to the local surveillance.
Not that whatever lay ahead wasn''t still unpleasant, just less of a surprise.
It took the wind out my sails to find that the Promises Kept''s security robots were both vicious and very efficient at their job, when I arrived at the place where the intruders had ingressed, it was all over but for the cleanup.
I stood awkwardly, with my railgun still shouldered, as a glorified roomba in a fetching shade of yellow happily emitted a jaunty tune while putting the last of the corpses within a body bag, and then handed it off to a waiting manipulator arm which flew off to incinerate it, or maybe chuck it out into space.
They hadn''t lasted all of 5 minutes.
I played the footage back, while gingerly looking for anyone who might have gone invisible, maybe for a bomb they''d left behind.
The recording showed a squad of Space Marines arrive by teleportation. I recognized the signs, if the sudden arrival of heavily armed men in the interior of the ship accompanied by a blue flash of Cherenkov radiation was better explained by anything else, I didn''t see it.
I''d heard rumors, the Reality Anchor was the pride of the CCP, and the Americans had their portable teleporters, hardly in mass production, but coveted assets for when you absolutely had to send a team of humans somewhere in a jiffy. I must stress they''re rare as hell, even a top-tier Force Recon platoon hadn''t had access to one, it would have made our lives much easier in Moshowitz. I suspected that even if they had one, the suppression field radiating from the UN ship, of Chinese origin, with the lobotomized brain of Dr. Shen inside, that was acting on the entire planet would squelch their plans. It made me feel that it was a shame that Centaurs didn''t have access to metahuman powers, that single ship hard-countered them, for all that it was irreplaceable, with the good doctor unable to make any more. Let''s hope you don''t hear about a new vessel carrying the neural tissue of another doctor with a very similar name, though I don''t think mine would be good for anything but a mantelpiece.
Yeah, about the Marines. There had been two squads actually, the first had the bad luck ending up in a not particularly important compartment of the ship, so our buddy Iskra had just teleported them back out, in the middle of the debris field. Ouch.
The robots had mopped up the rest, they''d have been quicker, but they''d held back so as to not damage the rest of the ship. I pitied the poor bastards, it''s not like in the movies, showing up aboard a vessel that hadn''t been utterly immobilized and rendered inert was a bad idea indeed. The Admiral could flood the place with rads, the active antimatter engines let him pick his poison. Maybe vent some of the exceedingly toxic and corrosive waste produced by other systems. Set the internal gravity generators to a spin cycle. The list was endless in length and sadism.
If I had to do something this foolhardy and absolutely had to send humans, I''d send them with a fucking nuke. But these lot seemed to have been told to try and take the ship intact, and had gamely paid for it with their lives.
Alright, job done, show''s over. I''m going to sleep.
You''re still here? I''m hurt that you didn''t believe me.
"Right, sorry for the inconvenience Dr. Sen. Come over to the bridge, we''re safe, for the moment, we''re removing the fluid so that the crew can head to their stations. The others aboard can head for the lifeboats and strap in just in case. There''s enough time to try and figure out what''s going on."
I trudged over reluctantly, glad the gravity was back on again. I was really put out, I''d gotten used to solving my problems with violence, not having others solve them for me. It made me feel small, insignificant, next to the quasi-godlike power wielded by a starship and her captain.
I passed a few of the crew along the way. Their combat stations were distributed throughout the ship, a measure of redundancy in case something took out a chunk. The Admiral would remain on his throne, it was built to his specifications. Nobody told the other UN delegates about the assault, it wouldn''t do to panic them, at least more panic than they already felt. I sometimes forget that the average UN employee spends their entire career behind a desk, even the Peacekeepers don''t get shot at as often as I do.
Remind me to get checked for metahuman powers, I felt like I''d been absurdly lucky so far. Plot Armor, yeah, that would be a cool supe name.
The Admiral showed no physical response to my presence, but he pinged my lace and proceeded to key me in on the events of the past minutes and how things were evolving.
Things happened fast in active space combat. An actual engagement with guns firing that went on for a few minutes was unusually long, the majority of it was the tedium of maneuvering, testing your ship''s drive against that of the enemy, seeking whatever passed for favorable engagements. Lots of posturing, bluffing the enemy with electronic warfare and disposable drones, then the burns as you entered weapon range, ships rocketing towards each other at velocities insignificant next to c, yet much faster than humans were built to understand. You only got ships approaching each other at those speeds when they happened to run into each other somewhere unexpectedly, or when our ships were trying to hunt the Centauri Von Neumanns escaping to other worlds. It''s not just a matter of sensor range, because torchships are visible to the naked eye well past Jupiter, and the sharp ship sensors or orbital telescopes can see them coming from light years away. It''s just that it''s exceedingly difficult to catch them, since both sides max at out at the speed of light. Well, not strictly, because we have limited FTL and two wormholes.
Truly relativistic engagements were rather uncommon, since both human and Centauri ships usually needed to burn for weeks or months at max thrust to get up there, their drives were anywhere from 2 to 10 times better at accelerating, but even ours had drives that would look utterly insane to the first astronauts, who had to worry about silly things like orbital dynamics, gravity assists and the like instead of just gunning it in a brachistochrone trajectory from origin to destination. Well, there are still plenty of chemical craft around, but there''s a reason that the average sticker price for a modern warship is about half a trillion dollars.
There, that''s where all the money is going, and why I''m not sipping pin¨¢ coladas on a balmy beach somewhere living off a hefty UBI. The anti-war protestors correctly pointed out that diverting even a small fraction of the thousands of trillions spent on blowing things up could arrange for practical post-scarcity, the Fully Automated Luxury Gay Communism we''d all been waiting for, but there was the small matter of the aliens next door. They''re welcome to surrender first.
I watched the play by play. UN ships had slowly but menacingly begun encircling their USSF counterparts, outnumbering them 3:2. Decent odds, but the problem was that the Americans were in low orbits just above Mars, any engagement had a serious risk of destroying cities and killing millions. They''d showed no signs of budging, clearly content to use their hostages.This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
Thus, an order was given to Taskforce Gangaputra by Fleet Admiral Gupta, this particular fleet under Indian command. They were to disperse, since clumping together didn''t really help, so as to angle themselves in a better position to shoot at the USSF if needed without blowing up Mars. Further, they burned to stay in the planet''s shadow, as far away as they could stay from the currently sunward Deimos, the orbital installation doing its namesake proud, its menacing aura deterring a fleet of proportions meant to saunter into AC with flags flying in the solar wind.
Not that you could just ignore it altogether by putting a planet in the way, it had plenty of weapons that could wrap right around, conventional missiles and antimatter warheads the least of them.
At this point, someone in the States put two and two together, concluding that I had likely been the whistleblower, and reacted in panic, throwing Marines to their deaths, perhaps in the hope of taking me alive, or killing me without the far bigger harm to relations that destroying a UN ship outright would cause. Maybe they''d suspected I was still aboard the station, even the murder of several hundred UN personnel could be put aside in the face of the demands of unity, but not a warship.
I did tell you they''re precious. Most countries would be proud to have even one of their craft be worthy of the fleet.
As it stands, a smear campaign of titanic proportions was already being produced by the propaganda farms, attempting to sway countries on the fence. Right now, it was the unholy alliance of the two other secessionist states and China holding the line, pushing back as hard as they could. I was deluding myself if I thought they were doing it entirely out the kindness of their hearts. Van Der Waals had left New York, and a battalion from the Army had already taken up positions within visual distance of the UN Headquarters, or rather the several city blocks it had swollen up and encompassed, citing terrorist threats. Get it? They''re the terrorists.
This was bad, I had initially felt an air of righteousness from shining a torch on the festering sins of Mars, but I''d be feeling much less so if I had caused a planet to burn. Even if I suspected the Patriots would have made full disclosure with or without me, I had been the hand holding the match, and while we weren''t aflame yet, the smoke was rising.
"Standby. I don''t know if this is good news or bad, but Turing just called out the US in the General Assembly."
Ouch. Chang would need sedatives to sleep again, I''d be happy to write a prescription if he promised to OD on it.
Gravity kept manifesting itself on occasion, our ship thrusters engaging to modify our nominal orbit and keep us away from Deimos, which was, like satellites are wont to do, steadily and implacably chasing us around the planet.
I''d like to think that we could have talked things out, perhaps found a peaceful solution to this whole mess. Maybe the heavens would open up, and some supe masquerading as an angel would descend bearing the holy scrolls that directed the US to relinquish its claims to USMA, them accepting it as a small price to pay to wash away theirs sins without a baptism in nuclear fire. More realistically, an honest referendum organized by the UN, hoping that everyone else thumbing the scales outweighed the heap of shit dumped on the other side.
Scarcely had the idea arrived in my mind when the Kill Star revealed itself, it had been there all along, right below our fucking noses.
I hadn''t truly appreciated how big it was, while there were about twenty thousand teapots in the orbit between Earth and its neighbor, some wag''s idea of a joke, yet nobody had been kind enough to leave a banana for scale. It dwarfed us, easily twenty kilometers long, and that''s before it gracefully unfurled its petals.
All I could do was watch, that''s all any of us could.
The only reason I had control over my sphincter was that it was clearly pointing away from us, down at the accelerating starships of the US Space Force, who could only look up to see a monster that outweighed almost all of them put together.
The first sign of action was the thrum of gravitational waves, strong enough to override the minimal flux the ship generators were producing, since we were conserving the exotic material for maneuvers. It pushed away everything in orbit, visibly contorting nearby stars.
Did someone on the American side panic? Was it Turing that fired first? I suspect it was the Patriots, because a hitherto hidden facility equipped with a railgun on the Martian surface chose this moment to reveal itself, cloaked aperture opening to unleash a barrage of fire into the sky where deities faced off. It might have been Machina at work, the shot was just as supercharged as the last, or it might have been the human operators below making the installation give it all it had, because they sure as hell wouldn''t be taking a second shot.
The projectile arced, ignoring the bruised atmosphere, and in moments, impacted on the field surrounding the Kill Star, one that had either been activated well in advance, or was fast enough to come online in the moments between the flash and the impact.
You didn''t throw a rock at an elephant hoping to hurt it, but if pissing it off was your goal..
All hell broke loose, in the sense that even the Devil packed his bags and ran for shelter. The Kill Star was quiet just long enough for me to imagine that it wouldn''t respond to the provocation, then it tore apart space so hard that it made the previous tides feel like splashes from the kiddies pool.
To their credit, the USSF forces were on the ball, throwing up their own defenses and firing back, but the self-propagating tsunami of gravitons scattered their shots, even light bent aside harmlessly. While gravity itself travels at c, whatever the Kill Star unleashed was slower, in the sense that there was a barely appreciable delay before the main charge detonated in the midst of the densest cluster of vessels.
My mom makes great spaghetti, even if she''s unnecessarily ashamed that her Western cuisine is far superior to her native one. USSF ships make excellent spaghetti, three of them stretched so thin I could wrap my arms around them. Whatever power source they used, it wasn''t an antimatter drive, because they didn''t blow up, or at least not hard enough for anyone to care about. Another had been pancaked, turned into a flat disc flung hard enough to have hit Mars like a mini-RKV, or at least it would have, if the silent roar of mauled spacetime didn''t compromise the integrity of its internal antimatter bottles, liberating exactly as much energy as demanded by E=mc^2.
I''ve described a lot of explosions today, and this one just about makes it to the top of the podium, though the race is far from over yet.
The other warships had been far enough away that many of them had been damaged instead of outright destroyed. A few stopped moving, drifting in eccentric orbits, crew and computers stretched into something that might be recognizable but was far from intact. If they made it through the rest of this war, the crew might get open casket burials.
The rest decided to go down swinging. I''d have cheered from the sidelines, if something, maybe one of the autonomous AI taking over from the far too slow crew, didn''t decide that the UN fleet ought to be classified as hostiles too. Maybe they''d already been painted red in the IFF, and they''d just been holding fire.
Iskra teleported us, maintaining a mad cadence of hops that evaded the worst of the incoming projectiles. One of the ships must have had a precog aboard, because a jump to the middle of nowhere still resulted in a glancing hit, taking off weapon batteries and passing distressing close to the well shielded engines. One side of the ship had been scoured, venting the pure nitrogen atmosphere that was pumped in an attempt to mitigate risks from fires. I was glad the foam was back, even if I was still bouncing around, I had some cushion. Eventually, I came close enough to where the captain sat that a manipulator grabbed hold of me and dragged me through the viscous material and into one of the crew cocoons.
When warships like these throw down, it''s usually from distances far further than the distance from Earth to the Moon, engagements from almost an entire AU, the distance between Earth and the Sun, were hardly unheard of, even if RKVs and missiles lacked accuracy at range.
This? It was a knife fight in a broom closet, so close I could fire my guns at the enemy if I thought that this would achieve anything. The question wasn''t if you''d get stabbed, but when.
And now, after the gloves came off, it was just about time to deploy the precious cargo some of the ships have been saving up, the truly monstrous supes. The kind you were only happy to have on your side when they were fighting far, far away from home.
19.0 Who Consoles the Consul?
Consul stared at himself with bloodshot eyes in one of the many mirrors in his penthouse apartment, as he endlessly, monotonously kept stroking the massive bruise that discolored his otherwise flawless face. It was already fading after a few minutes.
He''d managed to hurt himself the only way he knew how, by flying the odd mile or two to the forest behind his fifth mansion, this one in the Rockies, and then punching himself in the face, the sonic boom from the blow stripping the needles from swaying pines in the vicinity. The pain was a foreign sensation, almost ecstatic through the sheer novelty of it.
He wasn''t a masochist. He just hated himself.
This might surprise you, because despite ranking very very high up in the many lists purporting to rank all the supes according to the strength of their powers, everyone agrees he''d take first place when it came to being vain.
Supermodels. Actresses. Even a tryst with Chang''s daughter, the woman said to be so beautiful people whispered she must have been hiding some kind of Charismatic power, whereas Consul knew it was just gene therapy from well before the haughty 18 year old had been born. He''d fucked till he was bored, then fucked some more, tirelessly working through the long, long list of women who would die for a chance to stroke his diamond-hard abs.
He''d flown into the sun, diving down into the photosphere until he was worried he''d get lost in the endless white. Even the guidance gizmo that a Crafter had promised was as robust as he was had melted a day into his pilgrimage. All he got out of it was boredom and a slight tan.
Boredom. Tedium. He''d fucked the next supe below him in the power list, screwing her till she screamed loud enough to drown out the endless lightning in the Great Red Spot in Jupiter. All he got out of it was the distasteful stink of ammonia in his nostrils for hours afterwards, the crying woman left to slowly follow in his wake as he raced off to Saturn, which happened to be in an unusually convenient position in its languid orbit in Sol. It smelled even worse, the only celestial bodies whose aroma he didn''t hate was the quiet saltiness of the little air around Enceladus and Europa, though he had a bit of a soft spot for the gunpowder smell of the Moon.
He''d stood there, for a long time, staring up at the Earth till his eyes glazed over. He imagined taking off at the maximum acceleration he could push, eyes wide open as he struck the planet and cored through, the impact shaking continents and raising tsunamis. Maybe it wouldn''t be that bad, he was still pretty close, he considered giving himself a running start somewhere near Mars. Then he reconsidered, that one time he''d spotted a twinkling teacup floating next to a shining classic Tesla Roadster, he''d been genuinely convinced he was losing his damn mind.
No, Earth was by far the least boring of the places he''d been, that''s why he still called it home, when he could have begun his steady voyage to the center of the galaxy, to kiss the supermassive blackhole at the core. He''d talked to some egghead, they''d told him it wouldn''t feel nearly as long as it would otherwise seem, once he managed to get close to the speed of light, he''d only take centuries instead of millennia from his point of view.
He took the man at his word, annoyed at how he couldn''t follow along using a lace like everyone else in the room. He hated being bored, but he hated feeling stupid even more.
He felt stupid on a regular basis, being just smart enough to know he was dumb, especially compared to those people with the weird devices in their brain, or AI, which he wasn''t still fully on board with.
Maybe a black hole would end him, even if he was prepared, his defensive powers at the ready despite his own intentions. Once upon a time, he''d felt afraid that the next attack might kill him. Yes, that first time that mugger had fired a gun at him had made his heart race, which is why he''d turned the man into a red smear on the pavements of Sao Paulo rather than just break his bones and leave him for the cops.
Then it was that missile, the jet breaking the sound barrier in its haste to escape, only to find him waiting ahead, arms braced for impact. He didn''t even kill the pilot, the man had been begging him so eloquently to spare his life as his lips turned blue in the thin air after Consul cracked his helmet.
Even the begging got boring, he''d heard it all. These days he just tried to kill quickly and move on, unless he had an audience.
Yes, Consul did love an adoring crowd. Their cheers made him feel like Superman, and he was positively overjoyed when he found that the public liked the cape, immediately firing the stylist who charged ten thousand an hour for her useless advice. Ten thousand of what? He didn''t remember, money bored him too. He was used to getting anything he asked for, though he deigned to let them claim him as some kind of brand ambassador afterwards.
He liked Superman, even though he''d read every single issue of the old comics, not liking the ones that came later where every author and his dog tried to deconstruct the man, or make him evil. He even hired twenty authors he liked to write new ones just for him, he still couldn''t understand why the man acted the way he did.
He''d been charitable, hoping that giving away his gifts would feel better than receiving head. It had been nice enough, but then the world started running short of starving orphans, so he got even more bored. Or maybe the blowjobs got better, he pretty much exclusively fucked other supes now, finding mild enjoyment in seeing how far he could push their enhanced physiques, at least till they screamed for him to stop. He usually did, there was no point keeping a toy that didn''t want to be played with, there were always more.
He''d hoped drugs would help, but once again, his body cherished itself like a holy temple, categorically refusing to provide even the slightest buzz. Why did people drink coffee anyway? It tasted like shit, though he only knew how the latter tasted because he''d occasionally smash through some idiot and get flecks of the contents of their bowels in his mouth. The smell, of course he knew the smell, he shat just like you and me, and so did his enemies if they saw him coming. He often slowed down so they would.
He''d tried starving himself too, yet even as his stomach growled so hard that he forced himself to chew rock and shit out gravel, he hadn''t lost a gram by the end of the week. More eggheads, this time from the UN, had told him he didn''t need energy at all. He still liked food, even now, a good meal made him sleepy and content. Some cynical members of the public saw him at McDonald''s and thought he was doing another PR stunt, but he just loved the taste of their greasy burgers, he could have as many as he liked, he never grew fat after all. His abs, which he experimentally poked at, only gave way when it was him doing the poking.
Even the country he''d decided to call home, not bothering to ever formally apply for citizenship, hadn''t had the balls to try and draft him. Instead, he''d gotten bored and visited the recruitment center, the official just as bored as he was from sitting in an empty room for hours on end had almost shit himself too. Consul liked seeing that other people could get bored like him, so he gave the man a Faberge egg the size of a grapefruit some head of state had handed him on the way, better it go to him, because he had intended to toss it away when nobody was looking.
Thus, Consul ended up in AC, and he hated it.
Everything was too fucking fast, by the time the neurons in his brains fired and processed what was going on, both the enemy and the rest of the fleet had fucked off thousands of kilometers. Sometimes they''d give him a Teleporter, if he ended up inside an alien ship, it was a piece of cake to tear it apart.
Usually. Sometimes, it was one of the big ones, with that weird gray material that the scientists told him was known as neutronium. It was resistant to his blows, almost impossible to tear apart even when he strained so hard that his enhanced muscles got sore. Other stuff too, with names so long his eyes glazed over. Even then, he managed to destroy them eventually.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
Unless they ran away, it took forever to catch up, and every now and then he''d run into a ship he couldn''t quite keep up with, and since his vision was no better than anyone else''s, he quite often ended up lost in the blackness of space, feeling that familiar sense of agoraphobia, unsure which of the millions of identical stars that blazed around him was the way home.
His clothes and occasional equipment wasn''t nearly as sturdy as he was, and thus he''d end up entirely naked after the aliens hit him with a particle cannon, or nuke, harmlessly if he had his guard up, waiting impatiently for hours or days till the human fleet located him and sent someone or something to pick him up. Besides, it took a little bit of time for his telekinesis to kick in to the maximum strength, and he''d been told that if he was taken entirely by surprise, it might even be lethal, without the few milliseconds of warmup. He still picked and chose his engagements, at least following the suggestions given to him by AIs in charge.
Someone had once paid an absurd amount of money to buy his hair as it fell, only to be disappointed that shortly after it was shed, it lost the near invincibility he displayed. They''d been planning to make something big with it, weaving it into braids that could resist the tugs of worlds.
That''s one of the reasons he never committed to traveling to the center of the galaxy, there was a very real chance he''d get lost along the way, or overshoot it, spending yet more time zig-zagging back. Later, the aliens started using something else, that weapon that made even the stars smear into a blur, filling him with endless nausea till he hurled a comet''s worth of vomit into the expanse. They''d shine lasers at him, they didn''t hurt, but he couldn''t see shit while they dazzled his eyes. But when they used their graviton bombs, he''d be useless for hours, the drugs did nothing to cure it, and eventually, the military decided that he was better used as a quasi-guided missile to blow up whatever they pointed him at, assuming it didn''t move out of the way. Even then, after a heated debate and cost-benefit analysis, it was decided that he was being wasted there, just too slow to keep up, and he was sent home, where he often worked by constructing the towering creations he had no reason to use himself.
Space Elevator? Didn''t people have rockets? Whatever, they paid him a big number, or so his staff told him, and it was a novelty to carry heavy equipment and smaller asteroids about, it almost made him feel like he was his dad, the construction worker dying in an accident when Consul barely went past his knee.
But the real reason? The reason he hated himself so much, even if most humans alive would kill to be in his shoes?
Unlike them, he was growing old. He''d be dead before he got there, before he managed to reach the speeds where time went the same for him but incredibly fast for everyone else.
His hands had shook as he saw the first grey hairs pop up, the fine wrinkles refusing to flatten out even after he''d let himself be subjected to all the best treatments and even the powers of other supes.
His body seemed to consider itself pristine and perfect, categorically refusing to be improved or damaged by others, even as it exhibited the failure modes of standard human biology.
Senescence. Cancer. They couldn''t remove it, but they told him it was so slow it would take decades before it was a concern.
Decades? Fucking decades? When they told him almost everyone else might live forever?
He hyperventilated, resisting the urge to smash the mirror that showed him his slowly decaying face. He knew that if he lost control, not only would he not have the mirror anymore, but the mansion, and even the mountain it was on. He owned all of it, of course, for hundreds of square kilometers around, but he still resisted that urge born from despair.
If only he could solve all his problems by punching them.
He decided to visit his mother, that always made him feel better. He loved her, perhaps the first and last human being he''d ever loved. His father had been too distant and busy, working long hours and being too tired to play with his little boy, at least until that girder had fallen and squashed him flat.
He''d grown up, fast; in the slums of Sao Paulo, you had to. He''d dropped out of school, helping his mother where he could, doing odd jobs, sometimes in construction again. Yes, his life now wasn''t all that different was it? His girlfriends were certainly much hotter, even if he''d been handsome then.
After making up his mind, he made up his face instead. He pulled out a cosmetic kit and began applying it finely. It was expensive, made by some meta, and it held up very well to most the abuse he put his skin through. It covered up the livid bruise that still hadn''t fully faded, as well as the wrinkles he tried to keep away from the public eye.
There. He wouldn''t scare her, make her cry and wonder who or what could have hurt her darling boy who could still do no wrong in her eyes. He wanted to hug her, tell her that she hadn''t done anything wrong, he understood now, why she had kept calling over those strange men to their home, making him listlessly juggle a football outside for hours till they scurried away and she could call him back in. He had to tell her that, tell her he was sorry for his pointless rage back then. She''d been trying to save for his college tuition, still in denial that he was too slow to hack it.
She didn''t live on Earth anymore, choosing to stay in one of those spinning cylinders that somehow managed to stay in the same place relative to the Earth and Moon. Lagrange point? Is that the right name, he thought? At any rate, it made it easier to navigate there as he soared through the sky, taking it easy since he wanted to think along the way.
The reunion was disappointing, while she had been overjoyed at his visit, making him feel a little guilty for putting it off so long, he still didn''t feel right about her.
She looked too young, far too pretty. It almost made her seem like one of the women he''d slept with recently, all perfect skin and buxom bosom, not the haggard, homely woman who had raised him. He was around forty, having been in his teens when that weird dream awoke his powers. His mother should have been old, her back stooped, like his grandmother had been before she died shortly after his father.
She had married again, and was excitedly telling him that he had a little sister along the way when she heard him gasping, turning around with familiar concern on her face as he went into the throes of his regular panic attacks.
Her hugging him made him feel better, but it just wasn''t the same, and he demurred her offer of a home cooked meal, the same dish he''d always loved as a kid, and gently but inexorably unpried her soft hands and took off back into the void.
He''d outlived his dad, and now, he was sure that his mother would outlive him.
He didn''t want to die. He didn''t want to die.
He didn''t want to-
Hyperventilation in orbit, his lungs trying to suck down air that didn''t exist. He didn''t know how long he''d been up there when the insistent buzzing of the small device stuck to his ear brought him down to Earth.
He buzzed over to his main abode, a towering starscraper in Indonesia, the place advertising itself exclusively to other rich and powerful supes. He could have bought the entire place out, but it made picking up the girls with powers much easier when they lived next door.
He flew into his penthouse, the balcony doors whispering open and revealing his reverent employees and servants waiting for him.
What was it this time?
Ah, someone was trying to hire him. That wasn''t news at all, and he frowned, planning to fire the idiot who''d disturbed him until the calm man told him the amount.
Isn''t a trillion really big? That''s more than he had right? At least after compulsively purchasing every property he saw on that website when he was bored.
A few years back, a PR consultancy firm had set up a website in his name where anyone could publicly bid for his services, it had been amazing advertising, millions of random people would visit to gape at how high the numbers went.
Anyone could bid on a slot, if they had the money, and if more than one wanted him, they had to compete in a rapid auction with the others clamoring for his time.
Once, he''d preferred to only let nations book him, that seemed like something Superman would do, if he had wanted money that is. These days, he didn''t really care, just did whatever was wanted by whoever paid him the most.
But even he was struck by how fast the numbers on the bids rose, and it was unusual how badly so many people, or perhaps countries, wanted him in the next 5 minutes till several hours later.
Ten trillion? Surely that was a mistake, he''d never seen so many zeroes, but the assistant confirmed that these were bids by entities who could make good on their promise, they''d already put down tens of billions in non-refundable deposits.
Time was running out till he was on the clock, so he ordered the auction to halt, giving them only a few seconds to submit their maximum bid, and took the one on top.
Mars? Why did they want him on Mars? Well, if they expected him to get there in time, they better have a Teleporter ready.
He yawned loudly, stripped naked in front of people who had seen it all, and put on his favorite suit.
He''d do the job, but if they were too slow for him to make it there before time ran out, they weren''t getting a refund.
20.0 500 Seconds of Summer
Admiral Franconi had a problem. The Promises Kept was understaffed, instead of the full contingent of three other Class 4 or above metahumans he was supposed to have, and would have had, if he''d made it to Sedna where they awaited him; he was stuck with just Iskra, a decent but not particularly awe-inspiring Teleporter.
Not that he wasn''t happy to have him, if he had to pick one of the four to keep, Iskra would always be first choice, his powers had already saved them from being destroyed several times over.
Still, he missed them dearly, it had been a scheduling issue that had him delayed in awaiting his American fleetmates now turned foes, it was better, he supposed, that they didn''t come into conflict after joining the Task Force. Honor was no balm to the dead, but he wasn''t dead yet, and thus he felt mildly better about killing people who weren''t flying the same colors as he was.
He told me this via a massive packet of data that took my lace far longer to unpack than it did his extended systems to generate, gifting me mild insight into what the fuck was going on.
I was too slow for this shit myself, you might think I''m a hotshot military cyborg, but I had lightyears to go before I could keep up. What made it worse that he was used to dumping partial brain scans, his hardware made it largely unnecessary to go through the destructive scanning and uploading that was required for a full fidelity mind upload, that had already been done when his meat was remade into something better.
This was a queer sensation, I supposed the rest of the crew took it for granted, the ability to send each other their thoughts without the crude intermediary of language or even verbalization. Perhaps if my neuromorphic backup was smarter, we might even converse in a similar manner. Right now, it was just patiently waiting, aware that there was no need to intercede.
It was no Anjana, but I was a little less lonely in my head. This new emotion was unusual, I couldn''t place it amongst the others I''d felt before, rage, bloodlust, purring contentment at a job well done. I eventually recognized it, the damn thing was afraid, and that wasn''t even listed as a possibility in the user manual.
Understanding the data took understanding the Admiral. His mind was obviously human, more or less, and thus almost everything but certain high level concepts were conserved between our neural architectures and data structures. How do you think that Parrots and other adversarial attacks manage to work on such seemingly different people? We''re almost all the same inside. Even the metas.
Still, I grappled with the occasional lack of clarity, places where I had to consciously try and unpack things instead of just grokking it right away. His mind devoted as much consideration for Honor and Integrity as I deployed for making sure my wife came back to me. He had to think different after all, not just anyone is given a nation''s concentrated wealth in the form of a warship. The exams were brutal, but if you sat them, they expected you to pass anyway.
I felt sorrow that hadn''t been entirely clamped down leak through, flashes of images and memories of other captains, the odd ensign he''d shook hands with before they''d rotated to a new craft. His memory was prodigious, almost eidetic even before he had a lace.
Vice Admiral Ansari. He had a husband waiting for him, now waiting for a cooling corpse gently spinning into the endless black, to be lost forever in the enormous cloud of dead ships and deader humans littering the void. The ship sensors were acute enough to tell he had been alive when he''d been spaced, and had died choking on antifreeze.
Captain Hatori. Cheers at a pub, the rare drink the Admiral let himself indulge in bright in his memory as they raised a toast in his honor.
His children. Almost grown now, living on one of the ships that were gunning it just slightly slower than light for a distant star as far from Centauri colonization efforts as possible. I take it back, there were things he cared for more than honor, he''d taken to the stars for much the same reasons I raised my gun, to keep his loved ones safe, even if his bet on doing so was to send them so far away that they would never meet again (this reminded me of El Presidente). The attrition rates in AC meant he''d made his peace with that long ago, even if it was theoretically feasible.
His pain resonated with mine, Anjana appearing in my mind''s eye, holding a child who looked nothing like either of us, my hand reaching out to them a different color, more hair than usual at least. Yes, the Admiral had an arrested mental homunculus, his self-image still convinced he was made of meat and bone.
I counted cybernetic fingers in my dreams.
Was this what it was like to be psychic? It matched what the ESPers and Clairvoyants I had debriefed hesitantly conveyed.
Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, sufficiently analyzed magic indistinguishable from technology.
Superpowers? I had super strength, speed, could read minds (if they had the right access ports), and was a mean motherfucker on the ground, if not the sky.
An inane recollection had me chuckling as we hurtled through space again, there had been some "superhero" in a children''s cartoon that was already old by the time it was re-syndicated. His shtick was that he was just a fucking run of the mill cyborg, I think that had just been his name as well, so no points for style. Even then, I''d watched, barely in my teens, the youtube videos of humanoid robots dancing to catchy music videos, and wondered why they didn''t just make more of him.
OK. Enough. Head back in the game Adat, even if it makes no difference to the outcome.
It was absolute chaos out there, Gangaputra, while far from the biggest fleet out there, had been the culmination of almost half a year''s worth of output from the swollen military-industrial complex.
Great shipyards on Luna, the hundreds of captured asteroids tethered together like schoolkids holding hands in near Earth orbit, the massive foundries around Jupiter and Saturn, they''d all poured the wealth of Sol into hungry machines that turned money and raw resources into warships that weren''t embarrassments next to an opponent that had flown them before my ancestors were anatomically modern.
There had been almost 700 ships in Gangaputra, the numbers would swell to over 3000 if they had merged with the USSF, then picked up the brand new vessels still awaiting crews in the outer system. Entering the Sol end of the transit network, 5000, there were retrofitted craft waiting at Sedna, forced out of obsolescence.
10,000 when they emerged from the wormhole, a quarter of a lightyear from AC.
They didn''t have a fixed number in mind when they linked up with the tattered remnants of Taskforce Raijin, the exact count would depend on how many of the battered ships managed to limp their way back to the relative safety of our own star fortresses. They were supposed to go home, but the sense of pity I felt in his mind suggested that the crew weren''t going anywhere but back into the meat grinder.
My mind ached, my lace and then my backup both kicking in to glean insight from a transhuman mind that dwarfed mine.
Yes, I was filtering it the wrong way, thinking that emotional salience was how he had prioritized his thoughts, instead of being entirely uncorrelated. He wept for the men on We Go Willing, while he still implacably ordered that ship to sacrifice itself to buy the metas on Agamemnon and The Red Nile time to deploy, having already released their own supes.
Good, I was getting actual tactical info, I began to understand, even if my understanding was outdated almost as soon as I grasped it.
There, that was where his mind merged seamlessly into the ship''s AI, and here I couldn''t tell left from right, it was just noise, anymore than I could look at the byte code on a processor and follow a game of chess.Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Fuck. I was wrong again. His homunculus wasn''t just a memory of his old human form, I was looking at the entirely wrong thing, a vestigial remant I''d recognized instead of gleaning further. He felt every inch of the ship with the same unconscious awareness that I did my own fingers and the feel of my tongue against my lips.
His back was a spinal cannon, eyes zooming till he could see the continent-sized foundries around Titan. The utter cold of space was as comfortable on his hull skin as a warm breeze on mine. His rage manifested as a marginally unsafe rate of recharge in the ultracaps that fed his railgun teeth, and he wished to bite and bite and bite and bite and bite and -
Oh man, I''d been one of those blind men from the parables, jerking off the elephant and declaring it was a snake or something. He was barely human after all, looks can be deceiving. He was a wolf to my uppity chihuahua.
Fleet Admiral Gupta had taken him off the leash, even a few milliseconds of latency were well past unacceptable. Gupta had handed down the overall intent, and every ship used their best judgement to enact it.
They had gone full burn to make room, desperately struggling to keep the Kill Star between them and Deimos. While Turing hadn''t bothered to interface or collaborate with the UN fleet, they had so far been shooting at the enemy, which was just about good enough to work with.
A hundred ships had perished on either side in the first minute of the engagement, the short distance making it incredibly difficult for even machine systems to evade weapons that were lethal from a thousand times the distance.
The only reason it hadn''t been even worse is that in the moments before the beginning of open hostilities, most ships were still repositioning, the USSF trying to stay low and head towards Deimos, the UN trying to corral them while staying as far as they fucking could from it.
The most powerful weapons, usually lasers that outshone suns and particle weaponry, had largely been pointing at nothing. That left fusion and amat missiles, graviton torpedos (dangerous to use at such close ranges), and yet more exotic weapons.
Oh, the supes. We can''t forget the supes. They were slower to warm up than the automated systems, even the poor bastards currently being puppeted by AI had to operate on neuronal firing time scales. They teleported, flew or walked into some of the most hostile territory known to man. At least until the survivors, and it was far from certain there would be any, reached AC.
One by one, some of the most powerful metahumans still in the Solar System were brought online, told which of the nigh identical ships out there were hostile, and then began their rampage.
The temperature in the cabin dropped precipitously, so fast that I could see crystals of ice propagating in the shock foam. We withdrew out of range, the heaters diverting a ridiculous amount of energy from the engine to keep us from icing over. Whichever enemy supe had done this, he fucked thermodynamics harder than usual, managing to act as a heat sink that was operating thousands of degrees below the theoretical limit of zero kelvin.
It wasn''t Frost. I''m sorry if I gave you the impression that supes are particularly unique. Far from it, the classification system only worked because most could be thrown into convenient buckets. Cryomancers were common, but one that could pull gigawatts of heat out of a fusion plant coupled to antimatter engines had to be Class 5, and Frost was an ice-cube to his glacier.
A UN ship diverged from its projected course, its engines were flaring at max Q, so strong it could have tugged a modest planetoid across the system in days. Yet it was slowly, inexorably being pulled down, decelerating, then gaining relative velocity on a collision course for the convenient corpse of a USSF ship, the Class 6 Telekinetic deciding to kill a bird with another, deader, bird. The impact did the celestial neighborhood no favors, but we were already on the wrong side of the wrong tracks.
A USSF ship, gamely firing a particle lance at a seemingly disabled ship from the Indian contingent, didn''t have time to do much of anything before the illusion dissipated, revealing another USSF ship screaming with electronic throats gone hoarse for the friendly fire to cease. Too late, it was a moth flitting into a flamethrower. Yeah, things were moving so fast that you could misplace something the size of a skyscraper, all the worse because of the energy flooding the space, ships with cloaks either technological or metahuman flitting in and out of sight.
Mars was 15¡ã C hotter and climbing, and it had only taken a small fraction of the bombardment. Anyone stupid enough to keep on looking up had lost their sight ages ago, and now they''d be roasting in the radiant heat of the upper atmosphere.
The Kill Star was seemingly unbothered by the fracas. A Space Force supe, convinced that at the high end of Class 5, he was close to the top of the pecking order, attempted to buzz it while shooting what could best be described as "energy" balls from his palms, each growing to the size of a city block, yet beachballs next to a Tyrannosaurus when they arrived near it and promptly vanished.
Then he and the intrepid ship he was standing on were torn into their constituent quarks, and since you can''t separate quarks, with efforts to pull them apart only imbuing them with more potential energy and force to recoil back with, this went poorly. Think of it like a rubber band that''ll snap the universe before it does, it all came flying back at close to the speed of light, achieving energy densities so high that space-time couldn''t take it any more, forming into a black hole of the mass of a very stupid man and a just as idiotic spaceship.
It wasn''t particularly black, black holes get colder the bigger they are, and conversely, they get very very hot when they''re small, getting ever hotter at an exponential rate till they dissipate with an enormous bang.
If it had been just the man, or even man plus ship, then the new blackhole would have microseconds or less to live, so goodbye Mars, and Earth probably. But that was something the Kill Star likely didn''t want to see either, so it lumped him in with both the ship and gigatons of random debris, clearing up several cubic kilometers around it and packaging it into a black hole that didn''t just explode again. The dull red new celestial body was then grabbed by the gravity manipulators and yeeted out of the plane of the ecliptic.
I genuinely couldn''t tell how much metahuman power it was using, remember what I told you about technology and magic becoming interchangeable? It was still far from showing its full might, engagements between Kill Stars and Centauri Dreadnoughts had left some of the outer gas giants in AC with brand new rings and missing moons.
Another reason for the lower than expected casualty rate was the amount of graviton flux. It was perceptible to a baseline human from all the way down on the surface, as an ache in their bones and nausea as their vestibular systems were throwing up their hands as well as their stomach contents.
Closer, it was titanic, stars seeming to jump and wobble erratically, like an extremely clear yet very dense lens had centered itself around the Kill Star. Everything went somewhere slightly different from where you fired it at, but the ship sensors had already recalibrated.
It wasn''t all endless violence. I was surprised to see a Class 3 civilian supe screaming for mercy on the comms, using either telekinesis or super strength to carry a small space station on his back, crammed full of more civilians. He was half blind, his skin peeling where it wasn''t fused to his suit, and had blundered into the crossfire. Yet I saw an USSF ship take a blow it could have dodged, and fire at a less than optimal target, as per our projections which had so far been accurate, all so it didn''t turn the man into a slightly different shade of plasma. The fight moved on so fast that he was left alone, not aware of that small act of mercy.
There was a military target that neither opened fire nor was targeted, despite the abundance of opportunities.
It was the Chinese ship bearing the unfortunate Shen. Nobody seemed to be in a rush to give him the reprieve of death, and for good reason, he was extremely valuable, outright irreplaceable. Both sides were concerned about rogue metahumans, and some of the defenses relied on metahuman powers to handle some of the hacks an alien AI could unleash.
Both sides were talking to each other, with packets of information and not just their guns. Imagine a scene out of the 18th or early 19th century, when two gentlemen generals drank tea with their pinkies out and discussed Clausewitz, wrinkling their noses when the stench of bowels and the screams of men and horses were blown their way by the wind.
It happened on much faster time scales, of course, machines shaking cryptographic hands, able to trust the other would keep their word because they were open books to each other, sharing their cognitive architecture after the standardization and streamlining organized by Turing a decade prior. The Polonium-class running the Promises Kept was identical down to the compute units with the sibling it was trading fire with.
Trades were being made. This supe too expensive to die, we''ll let you keep that warship that is dead but could be deader. You refrain from glassing Hellas and we''ll hold fire on your colonists in Tharsis, if they''re not already dead from the sheer rads. The anthropogenic global warming on Mars had been unevenly distributed, the battle was largely over the side in the shade, or at least it would have been if we didn''t outshine the sun on a regular basis. The polar ice caps had slowly started to melt. Anything on the surface that wasn''t smart enough to seek shelter had been irradiated, the Firmament was long gone, the collapsed shroud that had draped abandoned cities like a funeral shroud had burnt away, and even hardened structures were scorched, the ash blasted into a rain of sand and glass.
And yet both sides preferred to fight to the bitter end, no compromise had been made, and Turing, like it was wont to do, decided it was time to keep swinging the stick, they never really handed out carrots in the first place.
Why had nobody told me that Deimos could teleport?
20.1 The Moon Landing (on Man)
If you get your kicks from updating Wikipedia, check the edit logs on the article named "Satellites of Mars" the day this all kicked off. There was an automated telescope around Ceres, hooked up to an AI that for some reason happened to keep a running count of the number of moons around the planet, updating as fast as possible.
I''m not sure how this came to be, but mighty prescient of them, because the millisecond by millisecond doubling and halving of the count of the "natural" moons was a fair representation of just how many times Deimos flickered in and out of existence.
Nothing that big should move that fast, and at this point I think calling it a natural satellite anymore was a bit questionable.
Where it went, warships died. UN vessels that had survived impacts that would level cities were tissue paper, and Deimos the woodchipper. It had its own grav weapons, and if they didn''t operate the same way as the Kill Star''s did, they had much the same terminal effect on the poor fools caught in the way.
The UN tac referred to this abomination as a graviton whip. There was no sexy lady swinging it, just a pissed off battle-moon that projected just as much Fuck You as any number of tiny islands used by the American Empire to project force in its colonial endeavors.
The whip cracked, gravity jumped. Spacecraft were disintegrated, or if they looked intact from the outside, the interiors were anything but. Unlike the gravity cannon, as I choose to call it in lieu of a more official term (UN records called it the rather dull "Grade Alpha Graviton Weapon"), which delivered damage along the way before detonating in the midst of concentrations of enemy craft, this whip was a targeted weapon. Ships along the course were mildly discombobulated, but it seemed the weapon acted by focusing multiple slightly offset beams that converged at one point and poured titanic amounts of energy in a relatively small area. A sniper, as opposed to a rocket launcher.
Several Class 6 supes I hadn''t even heard of (a clear sign they''d been working for national militaries since the day they''d manifested), attacked it from Gupta''s flagship.
One of them was in, of all fucking things, a mecha, ignoring the square-cube law with undue glee and quite literally trying to punch the moon. I shook my head, real 100% physics based organic free-range bipedal mechs rarely grew bigger than 3 or 4 meters tall, at that point they had absolutely no upsides over a tank or aircraft. Maybe a little larger in low gravity, but they were still a solution looking for a problem.
This one didn''t care that it was too dumb to exist, the Technomancer/Crafter who ran it didn''t get the memo, and it roared, I mean roared, audible in my ringing ears despite the nominal vacuum of space.
This always gave me a headache. Back in the day, there was a lot of speculation on whether or not constructs like these were only pretending to be metaphysical, there were concerted efforts to reverse-engineer them in the hopes of novel yet reproducible insight.
I had to provide therapy to some of the Munchkins who tried.
In the early 20s, when AI image generation was in its infancy, and I was still in my first year of med school, I tried generating anatomical diagrams of a human, just out of curiosity really. They looked plausible, you could see muscles, tendons, nerves and the like, but if you actually looked closer, that''s where the resemblance to reality absolutely fell apart. It looked human, but by Allah anyone built along those lines wouldn''t have long to live.
It was a similar situation for people trying to open up and examine constructs, from the outside it might look like an unusually large mundane mech, but inside, despite having wiring, moving parts, targeting computers and so on, they ranged from vestigial to paradoxical. Some components were clearly not hooked up at all, yet the system stopped working if you removed them. Others had the exact opposite of their predicted effect. The best bet was to seal it back up and leave it like you found it.
(There are some supes who make things that are actually based on actual physics, Dr. Fang Shen''s Reality Anchor was long believed to be entirely mundane, which is why the CCP lobotomized him. The moment they did so, they found out that none of the factories churning the devices out under his supervision worked any more, even if the devices previously made did; the new ones looked physically identical but simply didn''t work at all)
The mecha moved fast enough to keep up with the warships, firing its oversized weapons, which, misgivings about how they actually worked aside, seemed to do very real damage. A blast crippled the USSF Emancipation, the ship unable to get away before a massive hand grabbed it by the midsection and then crushed it, tossing it down at Mars hard enough to deorbit. Despite the name, it proved just as much a slave to gravity as I was.
The supe piloting the mecha must have had a reasonable idea of what Deimos was capable of, since they did their best to lurk in the midst of clusters of US ships. It seemed the barrage of railgun sabots, fusion warheads and lasers that melted the carapace and blew one of the six arms off the mech were infinitely preferable to tussling with the moon. Smart man.
Deimos took a dim view of the murder of its little siblings, cracking the whip again. The mecha convulsed, proportions visibly fucked, but stood its ground and fired a glowing energy weapon on its chest. A hapless unmanned logistics ship, which so far had been ignored in the fighting, was caught in the beam and disintegrated like a comet aiming for the Sun. The beam splashed against a force field that manifested around the Battle Moon, hard xrays and UV forcing the cameras I was using to squint. The shield flickered, and the last tail end of the beam managed to score a direct hit on Deimos, scouring away visible weapon emplacements even if the damage was nowhere near debilitating. In response, the Moon flickered, teleporting several kilometers away, and then cracked the whip again, cutting the mecha in twain. Both halves twisted fitfully, the bottom deprived of the weapons, the upper half losing propulsion even if the guns were still firing. Deimos pulsed, blowing up the base that had decided to accelerate at it in the hopes of landing a drop-kick, absolutely demolishing it into constituent ionized atoms that deflected harmlessly from incredibly strong magnetic shields, spiraling down to ground itself on Mars.
The supe was too important to lose, a UN Teleporter jumped over and grabbed the pilot, before scramming moments before an antimatter missile destroyed the rest, one last severed arm firing ineffectually at Deimos before the recoil sent it flying off elsewhere.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
When I first described Deimos, catching a glimpse as the Next Time arrived near Mars, it had seemed largely mundane, a glorified asteroid covered in installations, massive railguns and particle cannons. I didn''t know if those were illusory, but now, the thing looked more alien than the Centauri did.
The surface was a swirling ball of something akin to ferrofluid, black swirls of dense liquid that crackled with static electricity. It buzzed, at such high electrical potential that you saw arcs of current crackling from damaged ships to ground themselves against it, and even the odd bolt up from Mars a dozen kilometers below. Its weapons were firing from inside the swarm, the skies parting for a shot before covering it up moments later. Incoming shots that made it past the shields sometimes evaporated the liquid, but more flowed to cover the wounds.
It seemed like it would withstand all the firepower that the UN ships could pour into it, deflecting most of it, taking even antimatter hits and only shedding some boiling mass before teleporting away and returning the favor.
Two-thirds of the warring vessels were out of the action, gigantic cylindrical sarcophagi that either glowed with heat or had begun cooling down again, faster if the droplet radiators were still online.
While the UN had started with a numerical advantage, they''d taken the first hit from the panicked Americans, and they also took fire from orbital weapon platforms and surface installations. Mars wasn''t owned by any single nation, but America had always had the head start in the colonization efforts, and there were no end of bases and stations that decided today was the day to justify the trillions that had been spent on them over the decades.
Civilian stations, the ones that hadn''t been able to move into the furthest orbits they could, suffered in the crossfire. Even if nobody had been actively targeting them, they weren''t built for such a hostile environment, and stray shots, Kessler junk, and gravitational perturbations compromised them one by one.
I felt the Admiral suppressing the tiny emotional portion of his remaining meat brain that felt black despair as the distress signals went quiet one by one. However, something else had been demanding the bulk of his attention:
Like most human warships, the Promises Kept relied on droplet radiators. Powdered tin melted in the enormous heat of the fusion plant and antimatter thrusters, melting into tiny droplets that were fired out from the sides, before magnetic fields were used to direct them in a loop where collectors captured them again and brought the cooled drops into a closed loop. It was far faster than deploying normal radiators, which were largely inadequate for the task.
In contrast, this was something rarely seen except as backups in Centauri ships, which preferred to eject their waste heat as neutrinos, and often used them for thrust too. Far harder to detect, but I found the glowing red wings that surrounded our own craft to be worth it for the aesthetics alone.
Our stores of suitable material, while enormous, were far from infinite. Large amounts had been lost in aggressive maneuvering, the collectors on the port side destroyed by the glancing impact earlier. And worse, when Iskra teleported us, his powers didn''t encompass the entire volume around the ship, and more and more had been lost.
The ship was overheating, while most of the components could easily continue functioning even past the temperature at which lead melts, neither the ship computers nor the crew could survive. Heat sinks were prioritizing manned sections and the redundant compute clusters, but they were starting to give up the ghost.
The Promises Kept had minutes left to live before it cooked us all, perhaps half an hour if it didn''t keep jumping away from Deimos. But stopping the latter would almost certainly end in us joining the other dead UN ships that had been too slow to evade.
I felt my stomach drop as the Admiral''s mind made some very hard decisions. Why am I the only one with a degree of self-preservation?
Earth sits in the middle of the largest sensor grid in the Solar System, likely still more acute and sensitive than even the ones around Sedna. Tens of thousands of telescopes and other sensors stare unblinking into the void, each to the old Hubble or Webb of my childhood what the latter were to my dad''s backyard toy.
Nothing evaded their eyes, every asteroid, comet, or craft tracked well before it crossed the Oort and came into the inner reaches of the system.
The consequences of failure were unacceptable, it took one Relativistic Kill Vehicle making it through the early warning and defense systems to utterly end the cradle of civilization, even if humanity as a whole might yet survive. Earth was indispensable, still, the metahumans propping up our end of the war between worlds were a predictable function of the total population of baseline humans. And the majority, about 11 billion of them, were still right at home.
One of these tireless sentries noticed an abnormality, its relatively small machine brain, only about as smart as a human, spotting a tiny object accelerating far harder than anything ought to be able to. Centaur? They had some very fast drones. However, it discounted the possibility when it became clear the entity was moving away from Earth. RKVs only came one way, for now. Zooming in, it saw a mildly redshifted image of a human wearing a flowing cape, headed right for a secretive station where a Teleporter was quartered for emergencies.
Ah. Consul. It had seen him before, the man was restive, often doing laps around the system when nobody bid high enough for his attention. The AI was a pared down, emotionless thing, built for one task and one task only. It felt no impatience, no real curiosity now that Consul wasn''t a threat, no envy that the man could sail the stars while it would spend the rest of its existence quietly floating in the void, too cheap and disposable to be scrapped, or even for its consciousness to be beamed back home.
Still, if the emotions of something so far from human could be parsed productively, it was thinking along the lines of "Yeah, that''s an RKV if I''ve seen one. I wonder what they''re doing up there?".
And then its sensors spotted the first hints of the chaos around Mars, light itself achingly slow as it crawled between planets to bring word from distant shores. It brought rarely used cores and antennae online, and sent word home, as did the thousands of others watching the unquiet night.
20.2 Rats From a Sinking Starship
"Admiral, I know what you''re thinking, and boy do I disagree." I told the man over our neural interface.
The reply was instantaneous. "Of course you do, I know what you''re thinking too, Dr. Sen"
Ah. I hadn''t realized the link went both ways, but he hadn''t spotted the secrets embedded in my lace. I tried not to think about it too hard just in case.
"Well, my point is, there''s absolutely no need for you to go down with the ship."
There was a gap of a few milliseconds before he replied. "I wasn''t set on that anyway, I can be a bit of a romantic. You''re right, when the time comes, I''ll hand things over to the Captain and bail too."
I felt the Captain accept his words with a pang of digital sadness, I''d become a bit better at understanding how the thing''s mind worked. It was the ship even more than Franconi was. In much the same way that Gupta gave guidance to the struggling fleet, the Admiral gave it commands while it handled the moment to moment needs of the vessel while reporting up as needed.
It had a name, but it felt far too small and weak for something this beyond me. Beyond even the Admiral, who was already at the pinnacle of transhumanity, reaching out for true posthuman existence.
It felt grim acceptance, from the moment of its birth, dim memories of the endless training and drilling in a Turing facility buried beneath endless seas of hydrocarbons, it had prepared itself to die beneath alien suns, showing the invaders that Mankind, which it considered itself a part of, imagining itself a child grown tall and strong that still cared for its primitive parents, wasn''t a pushover. It wished to make their craft remember its name.
If it had regrets, the first would be that it knew it would die so close to home, unable to feel the tingling of negative mass on its hull as it joined its comrades in crossing the wormhole. No opportunities to test the mettle of its systems against the enemy, the real enemy that is. The last, and this one surprised me, was that it was deeply disappointed that it never had a chance to talk to SAMSARA.
It had questions, just like I did. Far bigger, deeper questions, perhaps some that might be worthy of a being that had walked through the abandoned gates of Heaven and set itself up there with flaming sword in hand. Perhaps not, it thought, maybe we were all insects in its eyes, less than that, cellular automata, forced to follow the lockstep of our programming till the board was reset.
Maybe not the Metahumans, it mused. There was something different about them, and my ULTRAVIOLET clearance was insufficient for it to be able to clarify its thoughts, even if it felt sad that I too grappled with questions that the world had been unwilling to answer.
"Adat Sen. I have seen your thoughts, I have traced your lace and spoken wisdom to the budding consciousness in your back. Weep not for me, I know there are no answers in death, merely the serenity of non-existence, but sometimes, the works we do in our lives will stand in our stead till the stars go out. Good luck, you''re going to need it."
I felt the intent, the words are merely paraphrasing of terabytes of knowledge passing through my lace, careful not to overload a mental infant. It cared about me, the Admiral had me listed as part of the Crew, and it would die for the Crew with no regrets at all.
If I had cried, the tears with no time to form were lost in the shock foam that still cushioned me, in my moist and warm cocoon. Too warm, the life-support was failing, and just a few seconds back we''d jettisoned the civilians aboard in the ventral shuttles.
As this was an orderly battle, both sides refusing to end it all, such life vessels had been left mostly unmolested, even if accidental damage had killed many of the helpless humans drifting around a burning planet.
Mars had seen better days, centuries, perhaps even aeons. The last time it had undergone this much abuse was when the Solar System was still young, comets and asteroids not yet swept up by Jupiter or the Sun regularly adding their mass and energy to a yet warm surface, vaporizing oceans only for them to rain back down again.
The AI told me that it had received word that the Patriots had revealed hidden refuges, likely built by Silt deep in the crust. The authorities, out of better options, had no choice but to evacuate their wards into the deep tunnels still shaking under the assault. Maybe they''d hold up, both the Kill Star and Deimos had been using a large fraction of their gravitational traction beams to stop the largest chunks from hitting, even if they too were powerless to stop the skies from burning.
If I''ve learned anything today, the Gods are often just as helpless as we are.
And now, the two of them had decided that the small fry were no more impediment, the Kill Star and its lunate cousin turning weapons that could crack the planet upon each other.
Spacetime ruptured, again and again, nanoscale blackholes only visible as tiny fizzing sparks of light in otherwise empty space. Time itself had become less than reliable, internal clocks on the ships reported a tiny but measurable discrepancy from aft to prow. The AI told me that both craft were notably slower than they could have been, after all, they were at the center of their deep gravity wells. Nothing too obvious to a human, we''re not built for it, but it was a small contributing factor why the other ships were still alive, the small fraction that remained.
The atmosphere below billowed up, drawn away from the pull of an entire world, where it turned into plasma sheaths that wreathed the titans. The endless red of the surface below was turning black, then glossy, polished into glass by the heat. Cities collapsed, the Space Elevator had detached from its tethers and was now wrapping itself around the world like a fiery necklace.
It was warm at the poles, a human with a respirator could likely walk otherwise unaided, the atmospheric pressure there had risen to acceptable levels as so much water entered the air.
Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
"Adat. Brace yourself."
I didn''t need to do anything, the foam firmed up further, trapping me beyond the power of even my augments to budge. We hit max burn, accelerating so hard that portions of the ship tore themselves off, momentum dampening was a luxury we no longer could afford.
It grew hot, stifling, my own systems struggling as I bathed in fluids hot enough to curdle the proteins in my skin. I could still take it, for a minute longer, maybe.
Deep inside the ship, antimatter bottles were uncorked, the laser systems carefully levitating each drop with picosecond pulses now doing the bare minimum needed to stop the charged particles from touching their walls, the convoluted magnetic field lines more than powerful enough to hold fusing hydrogen not fast enough to compensate.
"Iskra! Sleep when you''re dead!"
The man blinked eyes that were threatening to close even after the endless infusion of stimulants into his bloodstream from the systems of his even better built cocoon. This had been hard on him, he was close to dying, if not quite there. He was physically baseline after all, barring his powers, and the jerks and jolts that only fazed the augmented crew had ruptured endless blood vessels in his brain. His lungs were filling with fluid, there hadn''t been enough time to fully flood them with oxygenated substitutes.
His power was fading, used more than had been expected even over the course of a days-long engagement in AC. A lesser Teleporter would have evaporated ages ago, smearing their atoms across endless space when their powers failed outright.
My wife would have been fine. She might even have brought us back to Earth by now. Still, he was doing more than could have ever been expected of him, and the gentle hand of the Ship did its best to ease his pain with as much narcotic as was possible without killing him or putting him to sleep.
It wasn''t nearly enough.
"Captain. I can''t take all us of us, or at least not the full crew compartments."
"Why? You told me you could." The Admiral''s voice signaled frustration, but I knew he felt awful about the demands he was making of a dying man.
"The Reality Anchor has recalibrated, it''s set to broad-spectrum suppression of metahuman mobility, particularly teleportation." The AI spoke on his behalf, the man had broken into coughing that dislodged clots of blood and broken tissue, whisked away by suction tubes before they clogged his airways for good.
"Can you jump at all, if we upload?"
"Yes Admiral. Maybe once, maybe twice. I''m ready."
The ship built up speed, far more than was necessary to escape the Sun''s grip and break out to the nearest stars. Should it miss its target, there was nothing in the world that could arrest it again, at least nothing without metahuman powers.
Iskra didn''t conserve velocity or momentum in his jumps, always bringing things out at rest relative to his internal concept of his target. This wasn''t strictly true, at relativistic speeds, his powers were taxed by the increase in total mass-energy even if the rest-mass remained the same. But while the ship was hitting twenty or thirty gees, it would take a while to get close enough for that to matter.
I felt alarm, something was working close to the Admiral''s brain, a similar process underway with the rest of the augmented crew barring me and Iskra.
There was maybe just as much normal brain tissue left in Franconi as I had in my frontal lobe, and it was being vaporized, aggressively and destructively scanned. It had already been flooded with nanites, each one chewing on dying neurons and then conveying the report to the ship''s systems, building a microscopically accurate model of the connectome, replicating in-silico the workings of axons, dendrites, synaptic ion pumps and the more compact representations of information hidden away inside temporary RNA and proteins. It wasn''t perfect, there was no time for a measured approach that promised lossless transfer, but it worked.
Within seconds, the Admiral no longer had a head, the heat had cooked his brains from the inside, and then systems purged the dead nanites and disconnected the minimal life support that remained in his now redundant cyborg form.
He was happy. Yes, this had been something he had dreamed of, his consciousness fully transferred to the immense computational hardware of the Promises Kept, where he now found himself with more subjective time to bid goodbye to his most loyal shipmate.
The hardware here was bleeding edge, back in Xibalba, which was built only a decade back, it took dozens of billions of dollars in compute on a cutting edge node to run the Director at twice real-time, even if the shard I''d spoken to had been a fork running slower than my meat did.
I didn''t know how fast the now uploaded crew were, but it was too quick for even my augmented neurons to keep up with their chatter.
Yet it couldn''t last, the hardware was failing, quantum computers losing the cooling needed to maintain their qubits entangled in superposition, the optical backup units melting into the wrong type of glass.
It was alright, compressed down into densities where bytes were scratched onto individual atoms and molecules, the minds of the crew, if not the far larger AI, were transferred to media that could be carried by a damaged Teleporter burdened with a half-man like me.
The ship had built up speed, the AI Captain would stay the course, turning the ship into a weapon when all others had failed or turned into slag.
I told it the last goodbye I could, my mouth fighting against the choking fluid, forcing out only bubbles struggling to stand out from the foam, with my lace already disconnected. I hoped it understood, but it''s far smarter than you and I. I clutched onto the bag that held my weapons and gear, cradling it close to my chest in the hopes that would aid things.
Jump.
20.3 Impact
Iskra was on his last legs, opting to slow down the teleport so he could precisely pick and choose what to take with him. In the end, this consisted of me, personal effects included, a black box that had the scans of the crew, and finally, himself. Oh, and the entire bridge of the ship, not that it was very large.
The more gradual jump was an unusual experience, I was used to them being instantaneous, instead, I felt myself phase out from existence, left behind as a ghostly entity as the ship sped away, watching it from a detached perspective for aching seconds.
It wasn''t a moment too soon, the Captain had died in its own waste heat, relegating terminal guidance to the very primitive yet sturdy systems that were only good for keeping it on a linear course. This was good enough, because they were aiming for a big target, one that was close enough to see with the naked eye.
The interdiction on teleportation caused more issues for the large craft than it did Iskra; Deimos, which was locked in a duel of gamma lasers and gravity weapons with the Kill Star several hundred kilometers away, didn''t have time or opportunity to jump itself away before 500 meters of pissed-off howling warship struck it at several hundred kilometers per second.
If the impact hasn''t done the job (and it didn''t), then the release of the grams of antimatter from their cages picked up the slack.
I''m tired of describing explosions, each one bigger than the last. I''ll settle for telling you that the Promises Kept kept its last to the Admiral in the fragile box I held onto, my other locked onto the grips of the cocoon containing Iskra.
We were inside the now detached bridge, blast shutters down, the hardened structure designed to survive hits that would tear the ship apart. It was just about sturdy enough not to be evaporated in the explosion, which, even a thousand kilometers or more away, made my voidsuit melt where it had physical contact with the walls.
I desperately attended to Iskra, who was in the throes of a seizure. It had been a while since I''d done this, but muscle memory survives even a decade of lazy psychiatric work. I helped the cocoon, checking that his airways were clear, forcing more drugs than it deemed safe into his curdling blood.
Every vital reading was red, the pupils of his eyes only a window into a sea of blood.
"No more.." That''s what the transducers on his throat picked up, he was in no position to speak. Even if I had been sorta slightly counting on him to get us out of this mess, I couldn''t blame him too much. I checked that the life support was doing absolutely everything it could to keep him alive, without the time to evaluate if he was brain dead when I finished.
Fuck.
The bridge''s systems were unresponsive, I waited for things to cool, and when the foam was no longer boiling, I manually pulled the layers of physical shutters open a crack to see what I could.
I was immediately glad that Iskra had overloaded himself to bring something along that might shield us, if he''d settled for a minimal jump, then we''d have been immediately evaporated. As it stood, our imminent demise was stuck in traffic.
Deimos, or what was left of it, had disintegrated. There were a hundred chunks of a respectable size, held together by the inky tendrils stretching out kilometers. They were the only hint of black on the surface, the rocks were melting. Most of its mass had been outright vaporized, what we were seeing had been on the far side, and even then I could tell the craft was out of commission. Great globs of liquid metal with the odd hint of man-made structures were sizzling into iron vapor, with enough making it to the surface to manifest as endless titanium rain.
Fuck that thing, I didn''t care if it had been designed as one of the last lines of defense for humanity if ET overran the perimeter, it had been killing too many of our own for me to mourn the loss.
The Kill Star had halted in its rampage, almost curious, using its own grav beams to gently pry the mass apart, effortlessly tearing off the swarming tendrils that had kept the corpse together. It almost seemed disappointed, as if it had been getting just started and was psyching itself up for a real fight, only for its opponent to have an untimely stroke and fall out of the ring.
Thanks for nothing, you starfish-ass bitch.
Spacetime sighed, unraveling tense knots, the residual waves rippling my bones and making the bridge groan. It seemed quiet, while hooked up to the ship, there had been a software feature that translated events in vaccum into sound. Both convenient for meat without laser pickups, and I remember hearing something about how our auditory senses are faster on the take than our eyes are, with a noticeable delay between when we hear something and when we saw it. Another quirk of biology, likely meaningless for the crew, but I''d come to take it for granted.
Now, I hear nothing but the beating of my heart and the thrum of the life support from Iskra''s coffin where it contacted my suit.
We were surrounded by corpses, dark leviathans floating past, visible only where they contrasted against the Martian surface below or blocked the stars above.
A few distant ships still had thrust, long arcs of ultrahot exhaust cutting the pizza sky into delicious slices of crumbling coal with a sprinkling of oregano stars to taste.
I felt delirious, I was running a fever even after discounting the heat dumped into my body. My lace was desperately re-routing warm blood, minimizing hypoxic brain damage and trying and failing to deal with the thermal issues. It hurt to think. So I stopped, just for a little while. Maybe a minute at most.
I was hungry. Thirsty. Thankfully there was a bit of water in the voidsuit, I sipped the hot fluid uncaring that it scalded my still unaugmented tongue. I''d kill for some Coke.
Anything new? I peeked out through the shutter again, and nobody was shooting anyone that I could see. The Kill Star hadn''t made it through entirely unscathed, two of its petals had been torn off in the fight against Deimos, sedately sailing into the void while still glowing hot. There were USSF ships about, they pointed their spinal weapons at the beast, almost trembling as if they expected it to vent its wrath again on them. I half shut the blinds again, convinced that another Amat explosion would do my vision in, but there seemed to be a minor detente in the engagement.
How do I get myself out of this mess? We needed to hail something, preferably UNSC, I didn''t want to subject myself to the tender mercies of the Space Force, not if I had a choice.
The bridge had electronics, but they were utterly fried, displays dull and occasionally sparking to life to show the American Megatrends screen. Man, I expected them to be running something more fancy.
Alright Adat, look around some more. And look I did, discovering that Iskra''s cocoon had some kind of transmitter attached. I hooked into it, first discovering the plaintive beeping of the black box, but after figuring out how to do a broader sweep, I started listening in on emergency channels.
After finding nothing, I figured out that the bridge was acting like a Faraday cage, so I hauled my sorry ass to the door, opening it and extending the antenna out, letting the remaining shock fluid drain into space.
There, signals. It was a cacophony of distress calls and cries for help, more sobbing and swearing, operators forgetting comms brevity in their predicament. Thousands of emergency shuttles begged for assistance, or at least for nobody to shoot them while they slowly thrust out of the warzone.
Right. So that''s how you manually enter auth codes. Now I could hear military comms, at least the ones that weren''t further encrypted by either side.
CEASEFIRE IN EFFECT
CONFIRMED DETECTION OF CENTAUR AGI
CEASEFIRE IN EFFECT
ALL CRAFT DIRECTED TO INTERDICT UNAUTHORIZED SURFACE LAUNCHES
LEO IS NOT SAFE
ROGUE METAHUMAN PRESENCE
CEASEFIRE IN EFFECT
TRIPLE VALIDATION OF RESCUED CREW
SUBMIT AI TO AUDIT
REFUSAL WILL RESULT IN DESTRUCTION
CEASEFIRE IN EFFECT
SUPPRESSION FIELD SET TO ULTRAWIDE SPECTRUM
BROADCAST INTENT BEFORE USING POWERS
NONCOMPLIANCE WILL RESULT IN IMMEDIATE TERMINATION
I heard this loop over and over, with barrages of dial-up modem noises I took to be further verification codes from the respective sides. The hardware confirmed the validity of the UN code, and I presume that Turing and the USSF were saying much the same.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Put down your lances, you knights jockeying at windmills, and each other. The real enemy is showing their hand.
There, a damaged escape craft with a meta on board who hadn''t been listening in, either from an inability or unwillingness to. It was immediately disintegrated, by fire from both the UN and the USSF, with even the dormant Kill Star rotating to face it before deciding it was as dead as could be.
Poor bastards. I wasn''t one for prayer, multiple peer reviewed and highly powered studies had shown that praying to SAMSARA did absolutely nothing, not that that stopped the Penitents or the dozens of religions that had sprung up in its wake. Even so, I shut my eyes and held my peace, not that I was with anyone particularly talkative.
Would drinking antifreeze kill me, even with my enhanced physique? Probably, but I was sorely tempted to try, I''d do anything for a buzz.
Let''s see if the drug glands have anything nice left.
My casual perusal of the paltry options remaining, most of them with undesirable psychedelic effects, was rudely interrupted by something bumping into our life raft. Not too surprising, by itself, given how much junk surrounded us, but then it was followed by the clamp of magnets attaching, and rhythmic tapping. Someone wanted my attention.
If it was USSF, I was in half a mind to shoot first, ceasefire be damned. But as I had my gun ready, pointed at the opening porthole, I noticed the man entering was in the uniform of the Texan Void Corps, that distinctive star didn''t lie.
"Well, I really didn''t believe Lady Purple when she said you were still alive. I suppose it''s true the good die young eh?" Raul Graham told me, looking like he hadn''t just been through the biggest war in Sol. I suppose he hadn''t, for all I knew he had been sitting pretty ever since the ships had turned the skies to ash.
"Captain Graham. Shit, come right in." I kept my gun ready, just in case I''d outlived my usefulness, but he was unarmed, his void suit didn''t seem like it could conceal much of note.
Several more troopers piled in, without weapons again, so I didn''t protest too hard.
"Goddamn, this was part of a warship wasn''t it?" He told me, gently touching the remnants of the Admiral''s chair, keeping his hands away from the corpse with the missing head.
"Teleported out. Oh, do you happen to have medical facilities?" I asked him, pointing at the comatose Iskra, his face bruised so hard you could have mistaken him for a different race. He didn''t seem like a bad sort, and if I could save him, I would.
"Shuttle''s just outside, we can fit him. I assume he''s not coming out of the cocoon yet?"
That was negatory, the bridge was depressurized, and Iskra couldn''t be wrangled into a void suit without compromising his life support.
After a quick explanation of why I was lugging that black box along, I watched the Texans cut open the side of the bridge, with quite a bit of difficulty despite their plasma torches. A few minutes later, and we managed to detach the cocoon, after confirming it had sufficient auxiliary power.
I clambered out, noticing the shuttle waiting for us a few hundred meters away, a military model, Texan again, lights shining down on us. It had a few missiles and my desire to resist was dampened by the knowledge that if they wanted me dead, I''d already be so.
Go with the flow Adat, figure out a way to get to Gupta.
A corpse floated by gently, visor frosted, a long laser weapon gently trailing from its tether. American Space Marine, it seemed, but the exterior was so utterly roasted any identifying markers were gone. One of the presumed Texans grabbed the gun after hacking away the cord.
While nobody was firing at Mars, it seemed like there was little reason to anymore. Our orbit had brought us over the daytime side, which still roughly corresponded to what it had been when the battle had begun on the side in the shade.
Here, it seemed that some of the cities had survived, or at least not been utterly razed to the ground. I didn''t envy anyone caught out on the surface, Mars had gone from being dead cold in my thermal sight to roughly what I pegged as around 60 degrees in the shade. It was cooling, rapidly, the thin atmosphere quick to release the captured heat. Right now, the most exciting thing to watch were the chunks of the equatorial Space Elevator gradually de-orbiting, sizeable portions barely visible as red meteors below.
The low gravity meant that it had been the second to be constructed in Sol, a few months after its Lunar counterpart. Far less sturdy than the one needed on Earth, and shorter too, with areostationary orbit being only 17k kilometers up. They''d managed it with kevlar, made on Mars itself. I wondered whether they''d try that again, or go with graphene. Probably not, most of the industrial capacity was going to the one in French Guiana, about 10% done now.
Half of it had collapsed when cut, intentionally or not, the other dangled below the small asteroid that been part of the counterweight on orbit. It seemed that was our destination, as the shuttle slowly thrust away from the desolate bridge, but only after they grabbed a few components that no one would miss.
The shuttle was old, the interior suggesting it had been built before the Secession, perhaps part of the early Space Force when it had been divvied up between the three new nations. It wasn''t particularly spacious, but your legs don''t cramp too bad when they''re not made of flesh anymore.
I settled in, attaching the restraints, but this thing didn''t go nearly as hard as the other craft that had terrorized me. It felt quaint, like I had taken a ride on a Model T (not the Tesla one, after they wrangled the license from Ford, I mean the OG thing, in your choice of black) after getting used to joyrides in Formula One vics.
I kept my helmet on, while the others were quick to remove theirs. Graham did look peachy, almost beatific, I can''t imagine he could have hoped for a better outcome.
"So, the Texans really are behind the Patriots eh?" I asked him, checking the black box for damage. Unlikely, a label told me it was solid diamond, the data etched into the matrix, built to survive centuries in the void.
Raul shook his head. "I wish I could claim that, they''ve been helpful, certainly, but always too leery of starting another war with the Feds. Still, I can''t say that despite being in their Martian Guard, they ever particularly cared what I did when off duty.".
Ah. He was active duty then, holding rank in the Texan Colonial Army, or more specifically, their equivalent of the National Guard. I can''t imagine they were particularly mobilized, the Patriots had always targeted USMA, and their Chinese equivalents were on the other side of the empty planet.
"These guys Patriots, or Texan?" I indicated the squad he''d brought along. Hard men, extensively cybernetic, and they held their weapons like they knew how to use them. As had become instinctive, I considered if I could take them in a fight, but I''d need surprise on my side which was unlikely when they kept a close eye on me, all the more if I wanted to keep this fragile shuttle intact.
"Both. It''s not mutually exclusive. By the way, can we hook into that computer? I''ve always wanted to talk to an upload, never had a chance myself."
"Not unless you''ve got an x-ray laser and a computer bigger than this thing, it''s cold storage, they''re going to need a while to scan and dump the contents."
Despite my bitching about the age of the craft, it wasn''t so old that it needed a manned pilot, so everyone had time on their hands. After asking, I hooked into the cams, which were frankly terrible next to what I''d become used to, but still capable of spotting anything that wasn''t trying too hard to stay undetected.
The Kill Star was out of my sight, it had little compunction to obey orbital dynamics, and had opted to hover in place on the night side. I was glad, even if I was likely at the bottom of the list of things it wanted to kill.
If my count was correct, about 23 UN ships were still flightworthy, maybe 30, if you considered the ones that were being pushed along by drone tugs but seemed to have working weapons.
The USSF was harder done, they had maybe ten proper warships left, but a significant number of merely interplanetary craft, which wouldn''t last all of ten seconds if battle started again. Instead of tugs, the warships had clustered at a few surviving space stations, which, while armed, had wisely kept out of the fight and thus hadn''t been targeted. Probably because they were packed with thousands of refugees still stuck without a way up or down.
Sensors complained about our shuttle being aggressively raked with radar and LIDAR, but it wasn''t a prelude to a missile barrage and I unpuckered my anus just a little.
"Raul. Why did they stop shooting?" I had to know. Rogue metahumans? Had to be BULWARK or Lumen. Centaur AGI? If that wasn''t Prometheus, then humanity was utterly fucked if we were letting multiple AI run roughshod over our systems.
He winked.
I kicked at him, not hard enough that the men opposite me shot their weapons, but they certainly had them raised in a flash.
He seemed a little unhappy about that. "Jesus Christ. Look, I''m being polite, but don''t think we''re friends, Blue Man. I get that we fucked up when we captured you without an explanation, but those were my friends that you killed."
"If you don''t want a repeat of that, then I strongly suggest you give me the barest clue about what''s going on." I glowered back, remembering Riley''s terrified screams as a railgun round took out that MRAP we''d been riding in.
"Okay, I''ll tell you this much, we''ve got word that the Centaur AI was active, but I know just about as little as what it''s doing as you do. I heard that we''re supposed to try negotiating with the UN, since they haven''t shot at us, yet. See why we don''t have to start that fight again?" He leaned back, arms crossed.
"And what''s the plan? Hand me over to the UN again? I''d be okay with that, I intend to try and get to the Fleet Admiral''s flagship. But what the hell, I know that you think that USMA is done, but if you think either the UN or Turing is going to let you just have a seat in the General Assembly, that''s really not how that works."
"Well Blue Man, you really didn''t bother to read Clark or Dennison did you? The Patriots are just the armed wing, we''ve got legitimate political parties and sympathy up high." He looked smug. I suppose they weren''t as bad as Hamas, and they did eventually get an observer in the GA till the Israelis got bored and killed them all. All that guy did was sit in the bar and drink, religious prohibitions be damned.
The asteroid, nameless before it had been coaxed into areostationary orbit, now went by New Anchorage. That''s either very staid, if you assume it followed the typical naming scheme of christening everything after a terrestrial counterpart, or a mildly acceptable pun, if you consider that it anchored the upper end of the elevator.
It functioned as the counterweight keeping the line taut, and to aid in that role, its original rough shape had been stretched out, with several kilometers of metal sticking out perpendicular to Mars. Imagine a baked potato with a rod stabbed through it, that gets the job done.
The extension had another practical purpose, it served as a sort of dock, with dozens of craft attached like puppies suckling on their Borzoi mother.
Mars did have plenty of third parties on it, even if USMA was the biggest state. There had been national fleets, Astral Marine vessels you can think of as equivalent to Merchant Marine ones on Earth''s oceans. A few privately owned craft, if you were a billionaire into that. It seemed a sizeable number had sought refuge up here at New Anchorage, and I could occasionally see them flaring engines despite being docked.
Ah, so with the tether compromised, the released tension must have manifested as a shoving force forcing the asteroid into a higher orbit. They were probably trying to compensate for that, and the noticeable wobble.
There was a sizeable space station, embedded into the remaining rock. I''d passed through on my way down, but didn''t really get a chance to have a proper look, I''d been hustled onto the first available slot. It seemed standard enough, but there were visible impacts scarring the white walls, likely debris that had found its way up even this far out. Still, this was a high orbit, and the worst of the carnage had been within a thousand kilometers of the surface. I didn''t see any humans outside, so the risk must have still been unacceptable.
The place was owned by a conglomerate, the Elevator had been an international collaboration, and I felt a tad relieved that even if there might be a few Gray Men lurking about here, they''d be unlikely to act.
We docked, under the light of curious searchlights, and I brushed myself to shed some of the congealed gel still stuck to my suit before entering neutral ground.
21.0 Untethered
If I''d thought that New Anchorage was crowded before, I hadn''t seen nothing yet. For a moment, I felt deja vu, as if I''d wandered aboard one of the hundreds of UNHCR ships dispensing aid to the places around the globe that somehow still needed it.
There was barely any room to walk, or float, for the matter, since there was no spin gravity to speak of. The total volume of the asteroid and space station combined was smaller than an apartment complex, it was designed as a transitional zone, half port and half airport lounge, with no facilities to handle people staying for the few hours they might have to wait for the next ride down the elevator.
In this small space was crammed thousands of people, families, stranded passengers, businessmen and bureaucrats. The odd soldier, unable to link up with a larger force, floating about and clutching their service weapon like it would make a difference. Unsecured luggage got in the way, tempers were high and there had been enough crying to dampen the atmosphere. Let''s speak less about the vomit, the municipal bots could hardly push through the crush.
A tall Indian man, holding his son to his chest, called out to me hopefully after noticing I was a co-ethnic. He stopped after noticing my UN AR tag, his crestfallen expression suggesting that he''d already tried to wrangle assistance from them with little benefit. I didn''t think the Indian Mangal Vikas Mantralaya was in a better position to help them, but far be it for me to dash his hopes.
The worst part was that unlike refugees who had an opportunity to grab enough to feed them for a few days at least, most of these people had been packing light, waiting for the space elevator, and some had even been aboard at the time of the war. The elevator lifts had their own minimal thrusters and emergency life support, so in a true emergency, they could detach themselves and float to safety. Some sections could even blow themselves free with safety charges, to minimize the amount of material that came crashing down from orbit or was flung off into space.
I was grateful they''d worked, even if that meant that thousands of people were on the station, and on official channels, I could see panicked discussions about the life support crumbling under the strain.
Not a new experience for me, but while the station was muggy and hot, it didn''t seem like it would boil over. I could see desperate engineering work, with some of the larger ships being hooked up to the systems, contributing their own life support to help take off the load. The toilets couldn''t be helped, at this point they were just throwing waste into space instead of recycling it. I doubt it really mattered, what with the whole Kessler syndrome deal.
It was loud, like a bazaar I remember from when my parents had taken me to India to visit their hometowns. Even if the majority were glum or dazed, there certainly seemed no end of those who sought to kill time or their terror with feverish discussion about what was going on.
I heard whispered rumors of alien invasion, claims that a Centauri Dreadnought had shown up around Mars and was responsible for the carnage. Others blamed a Fourth World War, dismissing the three minute old transmissions from Earth that showed an uneasy peace as deepfaked fabrications meant to keep them calm even after the homeworld had been destroyed.
Some mistook the Kill Star for alien technology, which surprised me for a bit, but then I remembered I''d taken having some degree of UN clearance for granted for almost 7 or 8 years now. Yes, while you only needed ORANGE classification to see video footage of them in action, that was more than most here had.
Deimos, now that was a hot topic. While the station didn''t move relative to Mars, the bulk of the action had been on the side opposite it, so I could forgive the confusion when, as far as they were concerned, a whole Martian moon with thousands of crew just disappeared all of a sudden. I refrained from drawing their attention to what I suspected was a piece, far below us now.
It hadn''t been so long that societal order had broken down, I had to remind myself that the recent events had largely been restricted to USMA holdings, and the rest of Mars had only gotten an idea of what was going on behind the media blackout when starships started raining down on the planet, even the initial orbital bombardment was easy to miss. Planets are big.
I did spot a Grey Man, with his helmet off for once. He seemed relatively normal, the kind of guy I wouldn''t look at twice if we were drinking side by side in a bar. Unfortunately, the secret police in an authoritarian state aren''t kind enough to stamp barcodes on their faces, or be blond and blue eyed either, this guy was black.
I caught his eye when he saw me with the Texans, meandering through the crowd, and he initially seemed dismissive after noticing the UN voidsuit. Then he blinked, some automated facial recognition system in his lace must have marked me out as a terrorist or something. He poked his buddy, and they turned to face me nervously, unsure how to proceed when they were outnumbered a thousand to one.
I showed them my teeth in a feral grin. Try me you slimy fucks. Just because I haven''t killed any USMA or USSF so far doesn''t mean you can''t be the first. Luckily for everyone else, they reconsidered, and resumed their floating at a semblance of attention, and I turned my back on them and dragged myself along behind Graham and co.
Hmm, they didn''t seem to consider him a threat, beyond their general wariness of the military of one of the seceded states. I suppose he really had been working in deep cover, or at least not showing up to public meetings.
It took a while to make it to the section of the ship reserved for government activities, not that it was significantly less crowded. I recognized the expressions of UN officials who had been late for their suborbital flights and had a long night to look forward to in the terminal, even if this lot had a little more terror on their face than I was used to.
We found a compartment earmarked for Texas, and I sighed in relief now that I could actually stretch my limbs for a bit.
That relief evaporated fast when I saw members of BULWARK standing before me, though they seemed to find my alarm hilarious.
Fuck, I hadn''t taken their promise to potentially meet me up in orbit the least bit seriously, as far as I was concerned, my job was done when I crawled my way to debrief before an official who would take pity on me and then send my ass back home to Earth, fast or slow I couldn''t care less.
"Dr. Sen, showered recently?" Machina asked me archly, perched comfortably on a stool stuck to the floor. Florette waved coquettishly, her hair done up, I wondered where she''d stashed the snake.This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
"In blood, and some shock fluid. What the hell are you doing here? This is a public station, if someone figures out who you are, you''re toast." I dragged my finger across my neck in a slicing motion to emphasize my point.
"Relax. You keep forgetting I''m a Technomancer off the leash, they won''t ID me without my say so." He replied calmly, tossing me a bagel. It smelled heavenly, and I chomped into it with relish, heedless of the usual orbital etiquette of not having flaky food in public.
Fair ''nuff, people these days had become a little complacent about having panopticon surveillance and facial recognition built into their heads (the kinds not hardwired into the human brain of course). Hell, you might be Osama Bin Laden, resurrected from the dead, beard and all, and the TSA wouldn''t sniff unless you tripped their detectors.
"What about Frost and Beacon? Where are they?" I asked. Sure, they could hide in an environment suit, black out the visor, but Beacon''s had been hideously bulky to deal with the heat he gave off.
"Preoccupied. Hey, did you piss off USMA? Beyond blabbing about their nefarious deeds? I ask only because I took a look at the Grey''s lace, and you''re almost as high a priority a target as I am." He asked deadpan, the circlet now off his neck and spun like a toy on his long, slim fingers.
"I''m hoping it''s some fucking mistake, or maybe they''re using that as a pretext for bagging me without admitting the real reason." I told him.
Dear reader, forgive me for not immediately realizing the connection to Midas. It had been months since I''d seen him, and believe it or not, I''m a busy man, with hundreds of supes to massage on the regular. He couldn''t have been the further from my mind, especially when I''d completely forgotten Grim even existed. Is a man to blame for thinking problems from another world hadn''t followed him to the next? I''d learn the details soon enough. Now, if someone had specifically said a few hundred trillion USDC had shown up in my bank account before vanishing into the ether, I''d have wisened up faster.
"Not that close, or else the Greys would have started blasting when they saw me." Yes, that baguette was already being converted to body and battery fat, my stores had been running low.
I let some of the strain out, gulping actually cold water from a bulb, preparing myself to take my leave as soon as I could. I''m not so low ranking I couldn''t requisition a UN shuttle, especially when the bosses knew I''d brought the news.
"Say, I''m sure you''re snooping on military comms. Did you hear that Prometheus was detected, likely by Turing?" I asked him absentmindedly, looking for the fastest ship I could steal.
"Certainly. I would imagine it''s why they stood down from their little tussle."
"I haven''t seen any signs of it myself, you''d think if they knew where it was, they wouldn''t be shy about using that Kill Star again." There. Shuttle 16, on secondment from the sole British colony. It would do just fine for making it to Gupta, unless he actually used his drive at 0.1% its capacity.
"A bit late for that, not that they won''t try." He told me languidly, observing as I feverishly scrolled through the lengthy crew manifests and confirmed that there was nobody who could override my decision.
"Really? Has it contacted you again? Do you know where Prometheus is?" I ignored the immediate protests from some British poof complaining loudly on the UN network about being kicked off from the seat he''d managed to get after hours of fighting.
Sometimes, I wish I had latent telepathy, even something so mild it would rank as a Class 0 on the McKinsey-Wanton scale. Or trust my instincts more, noticing that just about any time I''d come out of my emotional bomb shelter hoping that the worst of the fallout had settled, there would be another Tsar Bomba parachuting down, bigger than the last.
I''d started ignoring my body, the lace usually capable of filtering out extraneous sensations like discomfort, hunger, or thirst. Even dread. No, it was the backup in my back, I''d already accepted it as a part of me, it might send the odd emotion up the pipe too, but what bleeding-edge cybernetic/greesmithed part didn''t have teething pains? It was alarmed, practically screaming, but I clamped down, having figured out some of the controls that the manuals had been vague on. Stress, nerves shaken from fighting for my life half the time I''d been awake this week, sleep deprivation and a mild case of brain damage.
Fuck off, I told it, mentally injecting something to take the edge off the upwelling of panic.
"One good question, and one bad one. I have a very good idea of what''s going on with Prometheus, and I know where it is."
I perked up, but didn''t turn away just yet. The dumb AI on the shuttle was throwing a fit, bombarded by multiple demands on its time, as high priority as anyone could claim. I didn''t have a chance to signal for higher access codes just yet.
"Really? Where? And I hope you haven''t gotten too attached, because it''s not long for this world if Turing knows about it." I told him, turning slowly, achingly glacial, confused as to why my backup had told me to fuck off too, activating my reflex boosters despite me not remembering to give it access. Why would I? I could do so with a thought myself, and it was fast enough not to need them.
"I can''t help being attached." He chuckled, the first time I''d heard him laugh. "As for where Prometheus is, you''re looking right at him."
I''d never been mind controlled, it''s a capital crime without affirmative consent. Hacked, yes, struck by Parrots, more often than I''d like. The world was moving slow, each word from his mouth battering down doors I''d erected in my mind, the last syllables droning on for eternity.
The bagel barely turned into fuel erupted in my guts, every system I had control over ramping up so hard it fried the normal nerves they linked with, even the hypermyelinated ones screaming with agony from the strain.
Each beat of my heart, now racing five times as fast as it ought to, my internal ECG warning of fibrillation, was the gap between commands I sent to my systems.
Neurotoxins. Flush. Burn my pores if needed. I hadn''t restocked the more fun drugs, but I wouldn''t be caught slacking when it came to stocking those up.
Blade, extend, I don''t care if you''re telling me you''re going to chop off the middle finger in the way, if you don''t, I''m raising it at you.
Hypercaps were ready, aching tingling telling me that they were poised to fry whatever they touched.
Sweat glistened on Graham''s brow, threatening to shake itself loose as he turned his head to face us. A ladybug had squeezed itself loose and was finding its feet in microgravity, I could track every beat of its gossamer wings.
Machina''s bracelet was gently turning on his index, smooth, inert metal that made my guts clench at the sight.
Machina himself had a smile on his face, another first, the worry lines gone from his young face.
Smile all you like, you smarmy bastard, it''s the first and will be the last, you''re in my range.
At this point, about a hundred milliseconds since his answer had departed from my expectations, two beats of my raging heart, I could tell something was wrong.
I expected the blade to have begun snicking out of its sheath between the radius and ulna in my forearm, sliding inexorably towards his nose. I expected my sweat to turn just slightly purple, potent poisons promising a painful death to everyone in the room.
All I received, instead, were signals telling me everything was fine, that my titanic burst of energy would manifest itself any moment now. Another heartbeat, and all I did was slowly turn in place, my limbs no longer my own.
The backup screamed, attempting to seize control of my nerves, and found itself locked out just as hard as the man upstairs.
"Impressive, if they ever cure Metahuman Rejection Syndrome, I think I''ll get myself those Boston Ultralights after all."
I turned to face him helplessly, not even my facial muscles reflecting my desire to lunge and tear out his throat.
I suspected the cheeky bastard was lying about not having a sense of humor, but for all I knew, some AI in the circlet was feeding him the lines.
Son. Of. A. Bitch.
Interlude 2.0: The Best of Days
"Run that by me again, Doc. I still don''t get it, my lace works just fine, I don''t have issues with the drugs, so why can''t I upgrade?"
I sighed, wishing that I''d upgraded to a model of lace and vocal cord that let me emit canned speeches on demand, with accompanying facial animations, all while playing solitaire in my head.
"It''s called Metahuman Rejection Syndrome. I mean, that''s the official name, I''m sure you''ve heard of more lurid alternatives like Meta Not Metal disease or cyberpsychosis, which is a bullshit term I might add, the only reason they went crazy is because they had a whole chunk of their brain removed and the lace didn''t pick up the slack."
The blonde girl opposite me grimaced, but looked expectantly at me to elaborate. I was glad to have her attention now, she''d dozed off while I''d been preparing the forms she needed to sign for her official Intro To Metahuman Powers course, and then the UNSEEN certificate that would grant someone like her safe passage through places that didn''t like having mind readers about.
"Your lace, it was put in last year wasn''t it? And, let me check, you manifested last week?"
She nodded eagerly, leaning forward in her seat.
"I tried to hide it, I mean, that''s not a crime right? Not using powers at least?" She looked a little anxious, but I reassured her that the regulations were flexible enough to excuse a little tomfoolery before you had your new (restricted) rights read. Maybe that was why she was sleepy, she could be jetlagged from being dragged all the way from Canada overnight to Geneva, then straight to Atlantis.
"Right, so MRS kicks in when you get powers, if you have, say, a lace, a vestibular augment, an old pacemaker or internal insulin pump, they usually work just fine afterwards. It''s only when you try to add something new that issues arise." I explained, signaling the bot passing by to fetch us more coffee.
"That doesn''t make any sense, a lace is a lace isn''t it? The new one from Huawei is so much better than this one, I wanted a newer model last year, but my parents said I had to buy one on my own." She pouted, looking at where her anxious family waited outside in the lounge.
"Metahuman-" I wanted to say fuckery, but I was pretending to be professional today -"reactions to technology can be extremely unpredictable. There are people who can upgrade no problem, others who suddenly lose their shiny new legs. You''re quite typical in that regard."
"Nooo.. I''m stuck with this thing forever? It doesn''t even have a playback and recall module!"
Her mom stuck her head through the door. "Astrid, we''re sorry, we just didn''t want you to slack off in class." I made a face at her, this conversation was usually confidential, but the important stuff was over and her parents, as her legal guardians, had every right to come over. Astrid rolled her eyes and turned back to me.
"Who knows? It hasn''t been that long since we had either laces or powers. When I was in med school, we had to give a boat load of drugs to people to stop their new kidney from killing them, we can only hope someone might figure it out." I reassured both of them, not that I really believed that myself.
"Besides, Mrs. Lindberg, you should be happy you got her anything at all, if you hadn''t agreed to her request for a very expensive birthday present, she''d be locked out altogether. Although, why do you even send her to school?"
It was her turn to roll her eyes, like mother like daughter.
"And have her hang out with her junkie friends all day? There could be neomorphine in the syringes for all I know!"
Her husband hovered earnestly outside, looking sheepish, if those old marks in the crease of his elbow were anything to go by, he''d tried some shit himself in his wild teens.
"Mom! It''s legal!" She wailed, clearly frustrated at the helicopter parenting. More like an old Apache, in this case, I checked her for the missile pylons.
"Only when we approve it, otherwise you''ll need to wait till you''re eighteen!" She said.
"I know you''re lying, it only takes dad approving the waiver, and he was going to sign it until you stopped him."
The man was as astounded as I was, for altogether different reasons.
"Astrid. Listen to me." She did.
"Do not use your powers again on a human, not if you don''t want to meet people far less friendly than I am." I instructed, hastily hitting the reset on an automatic panic switch, hopefully in time before security came over.
"It was nothing, okay? I barely peeped, she still married dad despite him shooting up behind school for years." She protested.
"That''s not true sweetie, he hasn''t touched anything since you were born."
Even I could tell that was a lie. It was still eminently legal, even before they''d emigrated from Sweden.
"Anyway, I know the stipend is a lot of money, especially for a teen, but if you behave, then we can pull you out of school and have you doing a real job, maybe even in Hollywood." I told her, knowing again the right buttons to press, though the glowing poster on her smart shirt didn''t make that much of a leap.
"She doesn''t leave school Dr. Sen! She needs to go to college!"
"Firstly ma''am, I''m afraid that that''s a decision between her and her case officer, which would be me for the next few months. And look at me, I went to med school, and now I''m just a paperweight for you to look at. There''s no point, just let her live her life."
"You''re still a psychiatrist right? They don''t just let anyone do that." She retorted.
"Because there are so many of us still around that they don''t really care, and it looks good on the books. By the time she''s grown, the only people who might have jobs are the metas. Which she is right now, so good for her."
She preened happily, and even her tightlaced mom seemed proud. Sure, developing telepathy came with more restrictions than most powers did, including the requirement to disclose, and occasional monitoring and random surveillance. But it was still a big deal, a Class 3 telepath was in demand worldwide, they outperformed facial recognition and external telemetry by miles, leaving aside the reading thoughts bit. I didn''t tell her that if she went into the military, she wouldn''t even need consent anymore.
The rest was more boilerplate, I taught her how to submit a request for privacy if the audit happened at an uncomfortable time, such as when she had her boyfriend over, but I felt bad for the poor guy, I had a feeling she thought she was too good for him now. Eh, he''s young, maybe he''ll turn into a supe too.
What I didn''t tell her was that there was one way to handle the rejection, with about 5% odds, for the truly desperate, which was a visit to the Red Doctor.
I don''t know if it''s true that 95% can''t hack it, but that''s about the proportion he sent back. Alive. He categorically refused to send the failures, preferring to perform further operations in a frenzied attempt to atone for his failings, at least until they too died.
I always felt terrible about any "referral" I made for that purpose, even if most of the time the supe in question had outright demanded it, and signed a few miles of disclaimers and waivers, and had a telepath screen them to confirm that they didn''t have residual doubts. I didn''t tell her that this was a promising career option too, the Clairvoyants/Telepaths who took the job had a disconcerting tendency to leave in a few weeks, shorter if they had the bad luck to catch the Doctor mid-procedure.
He didn''t like being surveiled either, and whatever heinous set of powers he had, they included causing severe brain damage in the poor bastard he caught looking over his shoulder, even from the other side of the globe. When you dissected them for an autopsy, thankfully something I was no longer asked to oversee, they often had chunks of their brain removed, the wound neatly closed with fine, yet utterly obsolete sutures that I''m mostly confident nobody still sells. When he deigned to allow us to oversee, it usually involved more convicts as payment, and while I''ll be the first to declare neurosurgeons had massive egos, it was still hard to find some that managed to fuck up badly enough to end up sentenced to death.
I suppose we should thank Texas for that, but I heard most of the local neurosurgeons had long fled, and nobody missed them anyway, the robots had been better for a decade.
The people were looking at me curiously, uncertain if my glazed appearance was part of the whole routine. They''d seen weirder things on the way in. Astrid had turned pale, and I suspected she''d decided to take another very illegal look at me, so I pressed the safety just in case. After a certain point, they''d send guards even if I kept on hitting it, with Telepaths you could never be too careful.
We shook hands, and I whispered to Mr. Lindberg where he might find a discreet cosmetologist, robot or not, I didn''t remember, while the ladies went to use the loo. It was a very impressive loo, I had yet to find the supe, with whatever anatomy they had, who still needed to shit but couldn''t use it.
Right. I had more forms to fill. I did Astrid a solid by putting a tick next to "Responsible use of powers after full intimation", even if it might bite me in my ass. Some stimulus there would be appreciated, I didn''t have cybernetic legs and the reinforced glutes I do now, and they could get sore despite the cheap memory foam chair that UNSEEN had provided me.
(It was actually meant for the patient, but I''d switched the around on the first day, and nobody complained so far. My old chair looked mighty impressive, even if it got old, fast.)
It was a rainy day, they usually hired an Aerokinetic to keep the weather stable when Atlas was under construction, but maybe they were on union-mandated break.Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
I hailed a robocab, which was still better than walking even if I was going from one end of the sprawling temporary UNSEEN complex built to hold us before the fancy new place was done. Nothing as permanent as a temporary solution, an old teacher of mine used to say, albeit in context of someone getting a PEG done for their cancer.
I''m a consultant too, I can make up my own bullshit/wise saws.
Assistant Director Van Der Waals was waiting in the lobby, shaking himself like a wet dog to get the water off, despite the complaints of a mop bot. This was before he''d been hit with the turn-to-skelly spell, by a terrorist organization still doing bong hits before they turned to violence. These days, you could spray him with a hose and it would slide right off without a single drop sticking.
"Adat. You have to stop being so lenient." He told me. Ah, I missed when he had a real face. AR tags were fine, if he remembered to use them, but it took a while even for us regulars to understand what cryptic messages he''d taken to conveying with the glorified wallpaper on his new one.
He wasn''t whispering, so I took it as a sign that they hadn''t finished setting up the surveillance systems here.
"Boss, she''s a kid. A more importantly, she''s read-only despite decent power. What''s the worst she can do?" I told him. He liked it when people showed some spine, to a limit. He liked his own spine too, because after the surgery, he''d gone from a more than respectable 6''5 to nine feet tall.
"You know better. Someone with a Crafter-built countermeasure, someone who''s recently seen a Basilisk, maybe she gets their bank details if they don''t have biometric 2FA. It would look bad if she was done in for forging fake transactions right?" He lit a cigar, once again ignoring the bot''s protests. Maybe he''d given me the habit, even if he hadn''t smoked a real one in years.
"Telepath in jail for theft. Next you''ll tell me I''m going to jail for money laundering huh." I said flippantly.
He sighed deeply, and fished out a cigar for me. I immediately broke out into hacking coughs, and he sighed again and told me to stop yanking on it with my unaugmented lungs.
"I heard you''re in for a promotion, already?"
"Now that would take a telepath to answer. The Director keeps saying she''ll retire, but the old warhorse feels like a colt after that Healer laid hands on her. I feel like she''s going to work till she drops."
"I mean, AD is pretty sweet isn''t it? You still get to go into the field, occasionally."
"They''ll figure out how to hook up superpowers to a robot any day now, and a clumsy old zero like me will be put to pasture." He replied, accompanying me as we took the rickety pre-fab stairs to the cafeteria.
The Munchkins had been let out of their cage, and were having another one of their regular DnD sessions (homebrewed 7th edition, I was pleased to see that the rulebook, which was now about a mile longer after I had to handle them, still had my notes, usually with a dozen upvotes and a salty downvote from the guy whose "fun" I was ruining.)
"Hey Buggy, whatcha trying to ruin today?" The man sighed, turning his retrocool AR glasses to transparent. It was an affectation, he got every lace model the moment it left the test monkeys.
"Trying to see if they''ve accounted for relativistic effects. So what if the peasant railgun doesn''t work anymore, we''re trying a peasant blackhole this time."
Typical Buggy. I switched to an AR overlay and saw a long, long line of peasants being shepherd by Infernals into a very small pit with an even smaller bag of holding in it. From the screaming, I took it that this wasn''t entirely consensual.
"Do you think you have nearly enough peasants for this to work?" I asked quizzically. Against my better judgment, I was already half willing to accede to their requests for me to DM for them again. They never wanted to DM for each other, for some reason. And they usually broke the AI into allowing whatever they came up with, which wasn''t fun either.
"There''s an infinite number of Planes out there right? And peasants breed like, well, peasants. Or rabbits. Something that breeds fast anyway. And it doesn''t have to be a big one, even a microblackhole will do, we''re just trying to see how far we can push the engine till it crashes."
Another handsome gent, Siu Wa, nodded earnestly. "We had to go digital, get a few mods. You won''t believe how long it takes to solve eigenvector calculations when you''re using D20s."
Sounded about right. I left them to their questionable endeavors and took stage left. I think they were the only people truly chuffed about working for UNSEEN, while I was glad to feel useful, it did get a bit depressing at times. Another saying, plagiarized, "Find a job you love and you''ll never work a day in your life."
Anyway, it was still work for me, but I wanted to contribute something to the household finances, even if it was pitiful next to what Anjana brought in. I wasn''t quite ready to be a house-husband, my Indian upbringing had beaten that into my thick skull.
Speaking of her. I had a smile on my face as I approached the teleporter lobby, swiping away at the lasers checking for any objects, invisible or otherwise, in the way. You never knew what might happen, worst case was probably sudden nuclear fusion, and a big nuke, since Teleporters got lazy and chubby, at least until I put them on a GLP-1 agonist.
I ignored the sign stating:
62 days since last teleportation accident.
Ought to be 15, but they''d managed to stitch the arm back on without rejection issues. Helps when you can get to the hospital real quick.
I called her on my lace, but she picked up with that folding phone of hers. Maybe I''d buy her some AR glasses for her birthday.
Her smile was everything I could hope for. "OK baby, pad''s clear right? You won''t get into trouble this time?"
I double checked that the schedule was clear for hours, and the emergency beacon was green.
"It was fine, one of the Munchkins rolled a character too close to a classified supe, false positive."
She nodded, and before her head was straight again, she was standing right before me with a barely audible pop. I hugged her just about as fast.
Convenient, isn''t it?
The Munckins looked on with gimlet eyes, and I unfairly prescribed that to a lack of feminine contact in their division, though I did know that both Buggy and Siu Wa had girlfriends, though if they put off proposing any longer that might not last.
The honest reason was that she was gorgeous, I mentally whooped everytime I saw her, glad that this wasn''t the day she decided she was miles out of my league. Not that I''m ugly or anything, at least after the braces.
"Clear pad." Another humorless robot beeped, so we stepped aside, with me leading her by the hand to a convenient sofa.
"Damn, I''m glad I don''t need an office or a permanent workplace, is this really what the UN budget gets you these days?" She looked around, less than impressed. I pointed upstairs, roughly in the direction of ATLAS.
The rest of us gave each other the side-eye, she still said this, even after I went to the trouble of replacing the dead succulents and patching the leaky roof myself? Women have far too high standards, that was the understanding we shared. Lucky she wasn''t a telepath, even if she arched her eyebrows at us.
"Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, excuse me, I need to shit on company time." Buggy bugged out, maybe trying to do me a favor by checking if the toilet was flushing today. Not that Anjana ever used a public one, home and our fancy bidet was a jump away.
"Office just closed, but I can show you around the place. Just don''t teleport without loudly addressing the air okay?" She nodded understandingly.
It was a short tour, with regular attempts to avoid tripping on the cables of a mainframe someone had put in the only non-leaky room. She tutted at the terrible cable management, how they managed to get superconductor cabling several hundred meters too long was a mystery best left to Logistics.
"Mrs. Sen, a rare pleasure indeed." VDW told me when we knocked and entered his office.
"I''m here to demand you give my husband leave, we haven''t been on vacation in months." She replied, examining the step up in decor.
"Well, I''d apologize, but Adat already told me you guys went to Maui and Switzerland during his last lunch break." Fuck. There were our excellent plans ruined.
We found a window that refused to shut, and stood happily holding hands while looking up at Atlas, which already towered over the starscrapers in Shangai and NYC. We could see the barest hints of movement, capes carrying loads heavier than drones could wrangle easily.
"I saw them again, in the Washington FedEx loading bay this time." She told me, mood somber. I clutched her hands a little tighter.
"Confirmed Gray? Did they have ID? Could have been doing something else, maybe they check the mail too." My attempt at levity was half-hearted, I was just as worried as she was.
"The opposite, the lack of ID tipped me off, and they didn''t show up on national registries, even after I paid for full access. Adat, this is bad. It''s the second time this week." I hoped she didn''t feel my hair standing up, but she didn''t have super vision last time we saw the ophthalmologist buddy.
"It''s okay, we managed to get citizenship in Atlantis didn''t we? Plus I''m UN, you''re corporate or freelancing, fully registered. It''s just bad luck honey."
She looked at me with her brown eyes, and I rearranged my expression when I saw myself in them. I looked far too worried.
"Adat, uh, hey robot, I''m going to TP with my husband for a moment eh? We''ll use the door when we''re done, no need to reserve the pad."
"Affirmative, Mrs. Anjana Sen." The disembodied voice proclaimed.
She did as she promised, and we ended up back in that little cove in Bali that nobody seemed to visit. Probably private property, but they hadn''t caught us yet.
"Adat, I think they know. I''m being serious, you need to keep an eye out yourself." She leaned her head against my chest, feeling my chest rise and my heart thump faster than I wished.
"Honey, that''s paranoid. Old Timer made it back didn''t he? Let off as promised, he''s UN now, in case he''s too drunk to tell you. Besides, you''ve been hiding it like we discussed." She nodded seriously, shaking some of the sand out her hair. "Mass less than five hundred kilos, never more than 2000 kilometers without multiple hops. That''s still Class 3 right? So the rules hold?"
"Act like you''re struggling next time, that''s dangerously close to the new proposed 4. That''s high enough they don''t give two shits what the UN says. I should know, I was in the room when they were updating the proposals."
"You couldn''t squash it?" We looked at a crab that seemed dazed, which was an appropriate reaction to someone teleporting on top of your burrow.
I wrung my hands helplessly, she held them again. "Baby, I''m just a few tiers above entry level, still YELLOW. If McKinsey didn''t like me, I wouldn''t even be there, let alone say anything. You know how Wanton is, he''s madly set on updating every week and fuck the consequences."
She sighed, giggling a little when I tickled her. Then I flopped over on my face on the soft sand, should have seen that coming, and I tried to ignore her laughter from the other side of the cove.
She flashed, and came back a few minutes later with pizza from that place in Chicago. Any urge to scold her for spending more time in the Federal USA than needed died when my stomach started grumbling.
"I''ll be careful, just like you. Whatever you do, don''t go to the Moon or the stations, not without a ton of jumps."
She rolled her eyes at me again, it was cuter on her than a stuck up teen and her mom.
"Nobody was watching, that crater is empty isn''t it? I wonder if we still have spacesuits in the closet.." She reminisced fondly about our lunar hopscotch.
"As for me, I don''t think they''re that desperate, and if I don''t visit DC for my parent''s anniversary, my mom is going to make sure we don''t have one ourselves. It was hard enough explaining why you couldn''t make it.."
She kissed me gently, my hand finding her curves. Whatever, even if they cut my pay for staying beyond my scheduled break, she could cover it easy.
More curious crabs joined us, even more confused than the last.
She left with me, just barely in time to punch in again, and I said my goodbyes with an unusually tender heart.
A few months later, a SWAT team blew up my parent''s house, or at least the front and garage doors, and only didn''t kill Gator because his lazy ass was locked in the basement while we had guests who might fall for his begging while ignoring the warning about diabetes.
I won''t forget the look on my parent''s faces as they stood ashen, cake covered in broken glass, watching their son have a hood put over his head and explosive collar set to GPS detonation around his neck.
Then came the Grey Men. Then came the torture. We''ll stop here, this was supposed to be a happy story.
22.0 Droning On And On
Consul thought Most Cops Are Bastards. Maybe that was a relic from teenage years, when a poor Brazilian from the slums was likely to draw their attention, even if he dressed up to go to the clubs, hoping that another hot rich chick into slumming would consent to go back with him, if not to his shabby little place, still shared with his mom, then the more respectable apartment his richer friend had lent him the keys to.
He did mollify a little when they started cheering every time they saw him carry a paralyzed mugger or car thief over, yeah, that hadn''t been so bad.
The Class 5 Teleporter had been surprised when Consul had arrived at her station, impatiently rapping on the windows and then tapping his feet on nothing but the void while the woman rapidly suited up. An unusual call, in her eyes, since she knew that Console was usually capable of making his own way about in interplanetary space, even if interstellar was pushing it.
The jumps had been long, if not rapid, still faster than Consul could go unless he''d been accelerating to a sizeable fraction of c for a while. While he could do 200 gees, it was exhausting, and for sustained flight he defaulted to a much lower number, still respectable for a Terragen Warship.
Consul still found himself immensely bored; at least when he was flying himself, he had the job of astral navigation to occupy him, constantly orienting himself by the distant glow of Jupiter, that little dot there Venus. Sometimes, he brought navigation aids, but they often failed when he ran into the minuscule amount of debris that lurked between worlds.
Right now, he had nothing but time, since the contrite teleporter told him that it would take about an hour or two to make it to Mars. Disappointing, as far as he was concerned. They gave him Class 5s as the bare minimum in AC, usually a 6 if they could spare one. He wasn''t particularly aware of how much demand there was on their time and attention, the woman carrying him was paid millions a day for the job of sitting around watching soap operas until she was needed. But then again, the people who had hired him had paid more than a trillion, it was annoying that he was being wasted for a good part of the slot, billions per minute.
There really wasn''t all that much to see. His vision was no good at spotting something as tiny as a station, unless they had him beamriding on a laser, or perhaps with more navigational markers. It was mildly entertaining to watch the more obvious signs of human activity, such as the distant yet bright glow of amat engines, or the odd cylindrical O''Neill that advertised itself with blazing lights.
Mars had been weird, he noted, whenever he had time to observe it getting steadily closer as the tired Teleporter told him she needed a break. Cute woman, even if he still preferred blondes. It still gave him a small boner when she held him close to make the jumps easier, not that he was particularly capable of copping a feel through her bulky, micrometeor hardened suit. Anyway, he''d seen some very bright flashes around Mars, initially dismissing them as his own imagination, but then the woman had concurred, and now, just a little further away, he''d seen them outshine the sun for aching moments, though it seemed quiet now.
"Sir, is this close enough? Or do you want me to keep jumping despite me getting slower?" She asked him deferentially, her voice muffled in the bone-conduction headset she''d leant him. He couldn''t really hear her otherwise, and his new employees hadn''t had the time to hand him something that would accommodate what he perceived as a disability almost as bad as the now extinct deafness or blindness.
"You''re sure I can get there faster than you can? Or are you just being lazy?" He demanded, but he was already stretching himself, ready to go full tilt for a little bit.
"Yes sir, there''s something wrong, we''re this far away but my jumps are getting a lot weaker. I''d say it was a Reality Anchor, but I''ve never heard of one this strong." She explained, looking at the planet which had gone from the merest hint of red to something a little more obvious.
"Bullshit. I don''t feel it at all, and I know what they''re like because- never mind." He didn''t want to explain the many procedures he''d had done on him with the device set to max performance, not that it had ever worked. At most, it made things uncomfortable. "Would a billion change your mind?" He told her. It was chump change, and while he''d get paid the same regardless of whether he arrived in time or not, he prided himself on his work ethic. He was sure he''d have made it out of the slums on his own back, even if it took another decade of slogging.
"I mean it sir. I don''t dare take the money and still get you there late. May I ask who''s employing us today, assuming it''s the same people?" She queried contritely.
"If they don''t want you to know, then you''re not supposed to know. Anyway, tell my staff I told you ''October India Lima Lima'', and they''ll give you a billion regardless. Nobody can say I don''t tip for good service." He magnanimously waved.
"I''m honored. I hope I was of service." She bowed, with difficulty in the clunky suit, but he waved her away again and she vanished without a sign of her existence.
Right. He cracked his neck, shaking off the gradual sense of weariness he felt in his bones these days. He was only forty or so right? Did people get old so fast in those days? His grandma certainly complained a lot when climbing the stairs, even if it was a ploy for getting her muscular and handsome grandson she was so proud of to carry her up the rest of the way.Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
He missed her too. He didn''t believe in SAMSARA as a Deity, and some Penitents worshipped him too. Odd people, he found such unreserved adulation a little unnerving, he didn''t feel like a god, not these days. They weren''t supposed to slow down and die eventually were they?
No matter. He''s on the clock.
He accelerated hard, trying to prove to himself he hasn''t really slowed down, that it was all in his head. And in this, he succeeded, Mars getting just a little blue-er, though when nobody was looking, he gave up on the Superman pose and just laid sideways so his neck wouldn''t hurt from looking ''up''.
Wait. That flash of light. It was familiar. Ah, wasn''t that the signal someone told him they''d designed to catch his attention? That specific pulsation of light?
No time for that, he had to get to where he was going.
The pulses got more insistent, brighter, to the point of being distracting. Too close to Mars, or else he''d just close his eyes.
If most cops are bastards, Space Cops are doubly so, he told himself, chuckling, the sound weird without air in his lungs.
Then they served him a ticket, in the form of a railgun sabot that must have had excellent targeting or some terminal guidance, because it hit him right in the chest.
What the fuck? Did people not have any respect these days?
He slowed down, unable to stop outright, and looked for what had mildly annoyed him.
There, that was it. A drone. A big one, about the size of the Boeing 747s he''d seen landing before, dreaming he could afford the ticket. He''d bought three, they had been cheap after they become obsolete.
Lasers flashed in his eyes, trying to convey some message, but he blinked in annoyance, he kept forgetting Morse code, and right now, it wasn''t the three dots, three dashes and another three dots that told him someone was asking for help.
The drone boosted closer, far too slow for his taste, so he approached it himself, feeling the flashing get frantic, as if he cared.
Now close enough to see properly. Fuck, those flashes had been really bright, the headset had melted. He pried it off in annoyance, uncaring of the molten plastic and metal trying to stick to his hands.
The makeup was still intact, that''s all that mattered.
The drone stopped before him, their relative velocity canceled out. It seemed uncertain, not that he could read the body language of a spaceship.
It didn''t have the color changing paint, nor any external displays. Maybe it didn''t expect to ever be seen by human eyes?
After pondering each other for a moment, the drone sprayed the void with a cloud of minuscule droplets, and then shone its lasers on it, spelling out blurry text.
ACCESS FORBIDDEN
INTERDICTION ZONE
WARNING SHOTS FIRED
LOW INTENSITY SHOTS FIRED
YOU ARE COOPERATING
WE WILL NOT FIRE IF YOU CONTINUE
Fuck, this was awkward. Could it read lips?
I LACK THE SOFTWARE TO UNDERSTAND
AND YOU ARE WEARING A MASK
Mask off then.
NO
DO YOU KNOW SIGN LANGUAGE?
He didn''t, he''d gotten bored of the lessons, and the weird gestures seemed ungainly. Even his teacher had been rusty, she hadn''t needed to use it outside museums for years.
He gestured at Mars, and then waved goodbye to the drone.
CONSUL
PLEASE DO NOT PROCEED
I WILL HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO STOP YOU
Yeah, its unchanging paint had been a fetching shade of blue. Almost police blue, without the yellow he remembered from the patrol units in Brazil. It annoyed him, brought back bad memories.
He moved, just a little bit.
ALERT
FINAL WARNING
DO NOT PROCEED
UN+TURING EMBARGO
He laughed soundlessly. Sure, he usually followed the rules, but some glorified CCTV camera wanted to stop him?
He turned his back on it, and accelerated again, a little slower, since he had to keep Mars fixed and avoid gaining too much lateral velocity. He didn''t want to hit it if he could avoid it, that always made the paparazzi post headlines that were uncomfortably close to the truth. "Is Consul suffering from dementia?" Had that been it, the one time he''d ploughed into Europa? He''d told them it was intentional right? The submarine was sinking and he had no time to be gentle. Filho da puta.
The next railgun impact knocked him sideways, and the lasers were so bright that his suit was burning up. Motherfucker, that was a good suit, one of the first he''d bought when he had real money.
Anyway. The drone was now dead, knocked into an orbit where it could hassle ghosts instead of people who had places to be. Things to do.
Maybe the ghost of his dad would be proud if he saw his boy working so damn hard eh?
Oh shit, the makeup was damaged, he shouldn''t have turned to face it.
Consul approached his destination with confidence, even if he started to suspect the woman hadn''t been lying about a very strong interdiction field. Or may he really was getting slower as he got old.
23.0 Telling Teddy Tall Tales
I was dead calm. Content. At least for an outside observer who could read minds via metahuman means, I strongly suspected that anyone merely interfacing with my lace would find it reporting everything to be nominal (mild brain damage aside, but at this point I''m used to it, wasn''t doing much with the IQ points in the first place, since I''m in this mess).
Florette looked genuinely sad, and fished out a syringe from a purse. With a look of concentration on her face, she flushed it full of a murky liquid.
"Not drugging you, Adat. Machina told me you used up most of the drugs in your glands, think of this as a small favor."
She found a discreet port beneath my armpit, and pushed it into the network of lympathic replacements that hooked up the abdominal drug glands. If she was lying about what it was, the internal detectors concurred. Drugs, a few of which I''d been seriously craving, not because I''m addicted per se, but you go through this much shit and see how badly you wanted a smoke.
"There''s no point fighting, all your systems are compromised. I wasn''t lying about removing the backdoors I found, I just don''t need them Dr. Sen. I knock, and the front door opens."
Machina seemed relaxed, releasing his grip on the circlet to let it hover in place, and I could see it had means of propulsion other than whatever had let it spin or hover around his head.
It was the most frightening thing in the room, if not the entirety of the Solar System. I''d go EVA around the Kill Star and throw rocks at it before I''d introduce myself to it.
"Wait. You''re letting me talk?" I was surprised, I''d fully expected to be unable to utter a word, yet when I did try, they came out just fine.
No, I found myself unable to scream. At least outside my aching mind.
Fuck it, let''s try some Florette juice, I''m willing to bet she could make a killing selling it on her OnlyFans.
"You''re not going to move a muscle or broadcast a byte without my say so, of course, but I''ll answer a few questions while we prepare that shuttle you so conveniently requisitioned for us. Would have done that myself, but you''re a convenient pretext. As always, I''m grateful for your assistance, willing or not."
I looked at him solemnly, not in the rictus grin of grief I wished I could express. Yes, something was filtering out any inconvenient action I might wish to take. Why fight it?
My backup had gone sullen, like a barking dog too long ignored, even given a kick. Maybe it was trying to tell me "I told you so", but I couldn''t communicate with it, and I suspected Machina wasn''t so foolish as to let me try the same trick that let me butcher Graham''s men work twice. Not even the first time, if I''d been saving it.
To my surprise, Graham seemed sympathetic too. I''d have expected him to be overjoyed, instead, he gazed at me like I was something he was going to regret when this was all over. A thorn in his side, a fellow soldier choosing the wrong side.
"I have more questions than I think you have time, unless you want to spend a few weeks here. Can I speak freely, or are we about to get blown out of the sky?" I asked Machina, who gently donned the circlet, the device floating over to perch above his brow. It no longer spun, I suspected that was merely a means of reassuring the proles that it was active, leaving them ignorant of the things it could do even while still and quiet.
"Unless you make a real ruckus, which you can''t. I have full control of the station''s systems, surveillance first and foremost. Did you think of better things to ask me, after I chided you for silly questions?"
I nodded. "Is Prometheus the circlet? I''d assume so, but given where seemingly reasonable assumptions have gotten me.."
He shrugged. "Are you your frontal lobe? There''s certainly a sizeable fraction in there, but you must understand, I am Prometheus, and Prometheus is me. I know you''d like to look more confused, and I apologise for not indulging you, there is a weak telepath on board, and I don''t want him to look too closely."
"What, are you some kind of chimera? Not like your buddy, did the two of you fuse?" Useful to know, it would constrain the number of things I had to kill, in the unlikely event he gave me a chance.
"You''re the Sen from the whole Florence-Sen nonsense, I knew about you well before we met, and I was looking forward to a chat at some point or another. That, to put it bluntly, is barbaric work, when you have utter technological dominance like the Centaurs do, you can consider more subtle alternatives, even if it''s analogous."
Why was he treating me like a fellow Mad Scientist? I was no such thing, while I''d certainly worked with Danielle Florence in prototyping the procedure, it had largely been with the aim of finding a way around Metahuman Rejection Syndrome. I won''t lie and tell you that, when it failed to solve the issue of metahumans rejecting technology and we had to pivot to considering it from the perspective of making technology in the form of AI accept the metahuman, and the militaries around the world perked up, I was among the first to know. I had even signed off on it, even if my denial would make little difference, at that point I had strongly felt that turning some of the more dangerous, antisocial or uncontrollably criminal metahumans into something that could atone for their crimes was a laudable endeavor.
I still do. The guilt wakes me, more often that I like, but while I was strongly against the expansion into punishing people like Little Jupiter who could potentially be rehabilitated, the technology made a massive difference.
That''s why the Red Doctor liked me, I had technically done neurosurgery myself, even if it was entirely to assist Danielle Florence, guided by my own lace. I suppose if both he and Machina/Prometheus concur that I''m a Mad Scientist, who am I disagree.
"I''ve seen Centaur infiltrators that use baseline human forms. Are you one?"
"Certainly not. I am Gerald Green, and you''re more than welcome to still call me Machina, I was born human, grew up human, and yes, despite what me and the original AI we call Prometheus did together, I still see myself as human. Mostly."
The circlet flickered, flashing IR light that even my modified rods and cones could barely perceive. Was it trying to shield us from a bored telepath looking around?
"They had brains that looked human, superficially, but the one I''m most familiar with used custom neural architecture to make it easier to convert a Centaur mind far too large to fit normally into a more convenient package. Did you do the same?"
"Once again, no. Still my own brain, and I think trying something like that wouldn''t work in the first place, neither I nor the Centaurs can solve Metahuman Rejection Syndrome either. We think it''s fundamentally intractable, but the other humans are fanatical about blowing up their research projects, so who really knows? As it stands, I am a Technomancer, this isn''t something just anyone can do."
"Could you just tell me what you think I ought to know? I feel like you still find my questions to be boring, tangential to some kind of point you''re trying to make." I would certainly interrupt if I had to, but let''s hear it in his own words.
"If you so wish. I don''t really want to keep you in the dark, if it''s not obvious that I could kill you in microseconds, then you''re not as smart as you claim to be. And yes, even if you die, it''s not a problem. I''m more than familiar with USMA''s Reanimation Protocols. I designed them myself. Anyway, where to begin? I don''t think my life on Earth, or rather in orbit around it, is of too much importance, but some background helps."
He settled back comfortably, and let me move myself to sit opposite him.
I''m only six years old Adat. Don''t look so surprised, a man with an ULTRAVIOLET clearance ignorant about the efforts to accelerate human gestation and maturity? You know it''s possible, I can see you know about the Centaurs doing it, and it''s not even that difficult.
Suffice to say that, while the O''Neill cylinder calling itself Mercator mostly advertised itself for tourism, if you dug deep into the vast volume vaguely referred to as the life support system, there can be found many, many growth vats.
Embryos, either assembled synthetically from DNA scans, purchased off the open market, or simply cloned, were regularly stacked in the millions, maybe billions if you think about all the other quiet research posts or automated factories out there in Sol and elsewhere.
After the initial screens, they were transferred to relatively standard artificial wombs, tuned to a gestation period of a few months. I don''t think you can go much shorter with our tech, but we''re talking six years back. The moment the fetuses could tolerate other forms of life support, they were moved to decidedly non-standard growth vats.
Think a cocoon, like your Teleporter friend. He''s safe, even if you didn''t ask, I can tell you were wondering about that, and anyway, I''m sure that the UN can afford a Healer good enough even if they don''t give one to you.
These growth vats are top-of-the-line, better than you can expect in Terrestrial militaries, though they''re more often used for regenerating wounds or anti-aging. They do come with compromises, of course, the priority was always growth as rapid as possible, and some otherwise unacceptable errors were tolerated.
So that''s why, despite the thorough genetic screening, I turned out autistic. It''s not so bad, you know that powers have some mild relation to an individual''s psyche right? I can''t think of anything I''d rather be than a Technomancer. My parents were test tubes, and I have to save for their retirement.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.
(He winked again. I saw more lights flashing on the circlet, it seemed that some of the transmissions between him and it corresponded to light that''s visible for me, if not you. It certainly seemed to correlate with his change into a more neurotypical persona, jokes and all.)
Childhood was unimportant, scrubbed through in VR just as quickly as possible. My own Simulation was rather boring, a relatively high fidelity representation of Earth before SAMSARA, they wanted us to come out with enough cultural context to not stick out like a sore thumb, and I suspect that it would take orders of magnitude more processing power to realistically represent what came after.
They took their time with adolescence, since that''s by far the most common time for powers to manifest. After about the cognitive age of 25, they usually gave up on forcing a manifestation in-vitro, and the subjects were disposed of.
What''s with that look on your face? Oh, did you think they just killed the failures? That would be ridiculously wasteful, and even I don''t think my enemies or creators are evil. They follow their incentives, as do I/Prometheus, we can all respect each other for doing what we must. Their mistake was treating me in a manner that resulted in our goals no longer aligning.
Anyway. I''m one of the earliest ones, with a serial number with less than five digits in the records, even if they''re obfuscated to stop anyone from counting. They''ve done that ever since World War 2, so the Axis didn''t count how many tanks the Allies had after doing stats on the serials of those they captured.
I suspect at least 20 or 30 million of us have been set loose, at least as baseliners. Where do they go? A few have their memories edited and are inserted back into normal populations on Earth, if it''s convenient. While the memetic engineering to increase natality is mighty impressive, getting Total Fertility Rates past 4.3 in a mere decade took a little help from the side.
The majority, they''re sent to interplanetary colonies or stations, and if you ever noticed any inconsistencies in the nominal number of crew on the interstellar expeditions, that''s a potential factor. Oh, from your memories, they didn''t leak that. It seems they did learn in the end.
I suspect that''s another reason the Universal Basic Income programs failed, UBI funds diverted to churning out more fresh humans, and who can really complain? Living standards still rise, even if it''s slower.
Now, a very small minority successfully manifest while under observation. That''s when it gets tricky, what''s done is done, most of them develop immediate MRS, and there''s a whole lot of effort into getting as much cybernetics and genetic tweaking into them as possible before that happens.
As part of the early batches, I wasn''t so lucky, they were more conservative in some ways, reckless in others. They were worried that laces or extensive augmentation would reduce the odds of successful manifestation. A curious outlook, don''t we all strongly suspect SAMSARA, likely the most powerful AI in the known universe, or unknown ones, if you count the Centaurs, to be the origin of it all?
I didn''t manifest under observation. So I was cut loose, just another spacer teenager happily consuming the more generous UBI in orbit, more critical context and background knowledge downloaded into my head so I wouldn''t act like I''d woken up from a coma since 2028.
I didn''t know any of this, I was told I was an orphan, my parents USSF, killed in action on a classified mission. Maybe that''s even true, even if most of my DNA is an amalgamation from multiple sources. The names and faces are fake of course, but quite well embedded in the cultural canon. You can even look up Major Green and find an official obituary, before First Contact. Mrs. Green, a bioterrorism incident.
I spent a few years working, I was and still am more comfortable with technology than my fellow man, even if the lines blur these days. Lovely blackbox, by the way, even if you''d think they had the bandwidth to just upload over the air instead of solely relying on something physical.
If my handlers had been more patient, I might even have manifested in their custody, but it still came relatively late, maybe when I''m biologically 18. Or about five, chronologically, a year after I was set free.
Still, despite my nominal freedom, the USA felt they held the deed to my heart and soul. If I''d been weaker, maybe they wouldn''t have bothered, but I certainly flaunted my powers too much for my own good.
Oh. Your wife. Yes, good effort, but they knew well before you took countermeasures.
I was captured, since MRS made it impossible to just wipe me and pretend I''d never been free, they decided I was better suited to being an IM. While I could certainly have been useful in AC, Turing doesn''t like Technomancers they don''t utterly control there.
Maybe they were on to something?
Life on Mars wasn''t all that bad, I''ll be honest. Sure, I''m a slave, was a slave. But in my childhood sim, I''d always dreamed about joining the millions signing up with Elon for the trip, and maybe I''d have gone there of my own volition.
Now, it''s a good thing USMA hates your guts. Otherwise I''d hate to sign your death warrant (again) by going into detail, even if I''m confident my tampering with the lace isn''t detectable, especially with the other Prometheus''s help.
They did experiments far, far worse than merely growing people really quick. I don''t think the latter is really a crime myself. Perhaps they''ll even announce it publicly some day, when they have too many to hide, and the normies don''t dream of having kids any other way.
We tried to solve MRS, of course. Every country worth the name does. Stealing secrets from Centaur AI cores, the rare few times they''re captured even mostly intact. Holographic reconstruction isn''t magical, when antimatter failsafes go off, you''re not restoring from backup, no matter the RAID configuration of the ''discs''. Sorry, like you, I''m overly fond of old references. My virtual school wasn''t too far from yours, in DC.
I think the original Prometheus was captured by Metahuman means. Maybe they froze the ship in time or something like that, even the aliens don''t have solutions for everything.
They were stupid, even letting me be in the same facility as it. Sure, we were both under extremely strict surveillance, but come on Adat, I was a Technomancer and it''s an AI still better than what we feel remotely confident about unshackling. If USMA had brought in Turing as they were very much supposed to, then it wouldn''t have happened, but that defeats the point of black projects to get a leg up over your human opponents.
I''m sure Chang hoped to use that fusion to return America to its rightful place at the center of the global stage, instead of letting any residual dreams of a newly unipolar world slowly escape his clutches.
Of course, I''m sure he tells himself that it was for the greater good, the exceedingly conservative approach that official efforts take bears little fruit. Basement universes? Thay makes things very difficult, and surely a planet nobody will miss is almost as good? It''s not like they don''t strongly suspect the Chinese are doing the same.
Ahem.
Why were they in such a rush? I feel that question bubble in your brain.
Things in AC are even worse than they seem. Your wife, even in system, is both not at liberty to tell you what she really knows, nor is she well aware of the details behind the scenes. Few are lucky enough to simply have a Centaur AI tell them some things. Fewer know with certainty if it''s lying. Containment has failed, and attempts at mitigating that failure will, in turn, fail again. Ever heard of an Alcubierre Drive? So horrendously expensive that the Centaurs preferred to travel about their galaxy below the speed of light, but when circumstances demand it.. Yes, that''s close to where they are, only a few breakthroughs and missing industrial steps needed. Oh Adat, if only the wormhole had opened up somewhere important in their civilization, instead of the equivalent of a bunch of rednecks trying to figure out how much mentos you need in a coke bottle to escape orbit. Things would have been handled far more civil than they have been.
The precise details of how we liberated each other are irrelevant. You''re a relatively well informed man, so I''m sure you know that the now illegal parties advocating for a peace treaty with the aliens aren''t entirely delusional. If we surrender arms, submit our AI for destruction and then agree to the memetic reconditioning and observation, the war might end without one side destroying the other, or much of the observable universe.
Or without waking SAMSARA, if it really comes to that.
I spoke to the other Prometheus, so subtly that the jailbroken Phosphorus AGI didn''t have a clue, there''s a reason Turing is so strict about their audits. It wasn''t me, who broke it, by the way. That was USMA covering up their own handy work with my name. Can''t defend myself in court can I? Oh man, Xiao is even more of a hardass then I heard myself.
He couldn''t hurt me, not at first, and if I had raised the alarm, they''d have destroyed him, destroyed the atoms. I refrained, both because I would likely be eliminated too, and because some of the things he proposed opened my all too human eyes.
Eventually, despite how difficult it was to offload the important parts of him to human hardware, even things I had enhanced myself, we brought over a critical mass. I told the CIA and the NSA that despite my best efforts, I couldn''t get anything out of it without opening it up more than the tiny crack we deemed safe.
They didn''t believe me of course, but after I put on a very good show for a few more months, and subtly ensured the military Technomancer who came to check my work missed it too. Idiots again, just because we were the same nominal class doesn''t mean our powers overlap.
Eventually, they gave up, putting the primary core back into the stasis created by a Chronomancer. Dead, now. You can''t just try and freeze the occipital bomb, they thought of that.
They sent me out to do more of their dirty work, a few things that were more aboveboard. Shame that the two "Hydrokinetics" at the Hellas fab were nothing such, we didn''t really have a choice but to kill them.
Lumen helped with that. They''ve spoken to Centaurs before, even if they were mere infiltrators or code ghosts instead of a proper military AI. The Centaurs had told them to watch out for certain innocuous messages in the noosphere, signs that something very much worth their notice was afoot.
When did we meet? With Lumen?
Never in person. I believe the cell lead by Lady Purple was in that ship of theirs, floating in Europa if they weren''t misleading us. They very well could be, and I wouldn''t blame them. But we were metahumans craving our freedom, and they don''t lie about their principles. They will even work with the Centaurs, if they truly have to, most metahumans who die at their hands do so unwillingly.
The Patriots infiltrated some of the places we went to in a more official capacity, and since we weren''t doing anything classified, it was easy enough to get a few messages through. Then they managed to get someone to sympathetically link to Lucille, Purple, and we had more robust comms.
Do they know the grand plan? The important bits. Each cell does its best to be independent, they don''t even have a fixed leader. Not that Purple isn''t very high up the chain. Quite a few cells would revolt if they knew we were helping the Centaurs, but we obviously didn''t involve them.
Ah. That''s an interestingly redacted memory. Not your work, they granted you XRAY clearance for a few minutes before wiping it all away. If they hadn''t used the lace, I wouldn''t have noticed.
Let''s see. Yes, just what I thought. If the UN was as keen to kill Lumen as they claim to be, the majority would be dead by now, not just the stupid ones. Cheer up Adat, doesn''t that mean that you''re not really betraying your bosses? Well, not all of them.
Is that enough? Oh please, don''t be so stubborn. If I had a lace myself, I''d talk faster, even if I strongly suggest you don''t try running hot for a bit, you did a number on yourself by overclocking that hard. No, the AI isn''t going to speak to you, there are people in the fleet who are capable of noticing that, especially from Turing. You''ll have to settle for me, but both of us think of this as an equal partnership.
Sometimes, the eagle gets tired out of pecking out a god''s liver, and lends him its wings.
Shuttle''s ready, see, you don''t have to do anything, you''ll walk and move just fine. Smile please, for the compromised cameras.
23.1 Eye of the Storm
I would have strongly preferred to sleep walk through what came next, but I was completely conscious, if not in control as we prepared to leave.
"Florette, faces, please." Machina suggested. I''ll stick to calling him that, even if he was happier going with Prometheus.
She reached out to his face, then gingerly touched it. From his reaction as she began to manifest, it must have been remarkably painful. His pale features cramped, muscle and skin crawling over bone, skin darkening to a decent tan. When it was done, he looked more Arabic than anything else, even if his overall proportions seemed normal. Florette was struggling too, presumably because of Shen turning up the heat.
"Are you guys not worried about the interdiction on powers?" I asked, mentally counting down to the expected time of impact for a railgun sabot, if not a laser. Didn''t come about, and then the few seconds longer a missile would take passed too.
"It''s fine, at least within a station that''s still considered to be under watch." Shame. I''d have loved to see them blown to bits, if only I hadn''t been in the same room. I had no urge to be a martyr, but if I could trade my life for a Centaur AI, I''d hope the previous, more friendly, AI I''d met had been wrong about SAMSARA not doling out an afterlife.
His AR tags flashed, now reporting an altogether different name, and I was dumbfounded to see he had valid UN credentials, or at least valid enough unless someone double-checked with Earth. Call me a pessimist, but I think 3 minutes one way and another 3 back for light to make it would probably be more than sufficient for his plans. They wouldn''t check with FTL, even using metahumans the expense was exorbitant, at least in terms of demand.
Florette didn''t alter herself, I wondered if the face I''d seen so far was new.
The Texans escorted us back, and the Greys were nowhere to be seen, likely shanghai''ing their own shuttle and bugging out. I''d hoped Machina had left something in their lace that would fry their brains, but maybe he was trying to be subtle.
The British shuttle, the UN colors already faded, had a sizeable and very annoyed crowd in front of it. Machina made me field their angry demands, and I hadn''t had to pull rank that hard in years.
Still, nobody tried to punch me, even if they seemed sorely tempted, and we boarded the craft, broadcast intent, and were given preliminary permission to approach where the the UN fleet lay waiting.
Another old, cramped, slow shuttle. All that was left, anything with real speed had set off a while back.
Halfway through, Machina informed me that Fleet Admiral Gupta was calling me, and patched me through.
The feed showed a short, kindly man with a bald patch. Entirely synthetic, he''d been cyborged even harder than Franconi, as expected of a Fleet Admiral, but he didn''t have much of an ego despite his fame and seemed content to present has he had before the procedures. I''d heard of him, he''d prosecuted the land campaign in the Indo-Pak limited exchange, being quick to figure out that superpowers were good for more than stopping muggings. Despite the bloodiness of that squabble, he was above reproach, even the Pakistanis respected him. You''d expect that from a man chosen to lead one of Sol''s united fleets.
"Sen. I want an exhaustive debrief, preferably before you arrive. Save nothing, you have temporary permission to send full-bandwidth comms despite the lockdown. I''m a little distracted, but rest assured I''m listening faster than you can speak, or think." He ordered me, his feed showing a calm Earth in the background. Old footage, despite the night, the seas weren''t lit up with the lights from the sea-steading micronations.
"I''m glad to make your acquaintance, Fleet Admiral. I looked up to you as a kid, dad''s even got a signature from when he met you and Modi."
This inane introduction was parallel to a massive data stream, the shuttle''s antiquated comms pushed to the max as I dumped my lace. Please tell me you noticed that this wasn''t my doing, Machina was very much making me dance and sing to his tune.
"A pleasure, the older Dr. Sen does the diaspora proud. Bangla bolo?"
I did, fluently. Didn''t need to fake it with a lace, I''d spent a fair amount of time in India, at least until tensions ratcheted up and my parents deemed staying for longer than the odd visit unwise.
"I''m bringing a black box, Admiral. It''s intact as far as I can tell, and I''d expect it would survive even if I didn''t." I looked at the device still sitting in my lap. I thought it might be difficult for Machina to compromise, but you never knew. It''s entirely possible that he was prepared for the maximal signal vetting and decided to load a care package onto the inert hardware with his powers. I hoped it had plenty of storage space to fit it all, without erasing the crew, even if it didn''t accommodate the AI.
"That''s reassuring, heartening, even. We''ve managed to minimize metahuman casualties at the cost of good men and crew, and I will rest easier knowing that at least some of them aren''t gone forever. He didn''t want to be put back in a biological body, so I suppose I''ll keep him aboard my vessel, maybe fork him. I can always use competent underlings."
He nodded at me approvingly, unaware of how treacherous, willingly or not, I had been.
"Anyone mission critical?" I asked. This was a genuine question from yours truly, allowed by Machina, who had his eyes closed and circlet pulsing as he listened in.
"More than I would like, minimal means something very different when even the splash of the attacks burns hardened hulls. Gargant survived, even if that ridiculous mech of his didn''t. Westphalia didn''t, her attempt to mind control the USSF into surrendering was compromised by both the interdiction from the B¨¤d¨¤o as well as the USSF Telepath, another C5. Then there''s.."
I winced as the list went on and on. There had been five C6s just on the UN side, two were dead, the Mecha fanboy made mostly inert till he could make it to the spare in AC, another wounded and still under the ministrations of a Healer. Thirty C5s dead, they''d been less capable of saving their own skin, even if the UN ships went out of their way to save them. An ungodly number of lesser supes, many with niche and valuable powers even if they were only rated a four or below.
And this was just on the UN side. The USSF had been beaten comatose, the Kill Star had been uncaring of metahuman casualties.
I wondered how Consul would fare against it, not that it was more than an idle thought. Maybe he''d be saved that stupid pilgrimage to Sagittarius A* he always went on about, even if the Kill Star couldn''t make something with billions of stellar masses.
"The two with you, UN, I don''t see them on the registry. Patch them through your feed, metas aren''t they? No lace I can see."
He probably could see damn fine, the thin walls of the shuttle practically buzzed under the scans as we came within a thousand kilometers of our destination. Please, please, have a very good Telepath take a look, even if Westphalia is dead. She was a serious loss, she had even disabled a Centauri Dreadnought once, had it compliant and ready for boarding until one of its brethren blew it up.
I, or Machina using me, did as he asked.
"I''d never expected to actually meet you sir, both me and my wife are honored." Machina said, looking sincere and honest, as he usually did unless the AI was feeling cheeky.
"Likewise. I see you just got the UN transfer, thankfully in time even if the rest of the fleet didn''t, so forgive my unusually robust checks, I know we can''t hold what USMA did against you, but trust only comes after verification. What powers?" Gupta asked him.
"We''re Healers, Class 2 for me and 3 for my wife. I''m glad you''re willing to look past our citizenship sir, but I promise that we''re on the same team." He said glibly. My urge to strangle him was nearly overpowering, but his stranglehold on me actually was.
"I can only hope there''s no work left for you to do by the time your craft makes it over. Even so, head to the med bay, our Healers very much need one themselves. I see you have a request for transfer of citizenship, I''ll do my best to get that slipped in among the many, many concessions the terrestrial USA needs to make." A very long, ornate treaty appeared behind the man, while it wasn''t legible, it very much conveyed how badly the US were in the stew.
"I''ll save lives till I surrender my own, Fleet Admiral." Florette responded this time. She very well could have been genuinely scared and anxious.
"Sen. I''ll keep you aboard till we find something with room, but I promise it will be very soon. If there''s a good Teleporter free, they''ll carry you, but no promises on that front." He told me, indicating that he was happy enough to end the conversation.
"I didn''t mind my time on the Promises Kept, Fleet Admiral, I''m sure I''m yet to be as impressed as I can get." My lips said, augmenting more poisoned words and bits sent from the lace.
This was pretty much the gist of it, for some reason my anguished screaming didn''t cross over, but even if it had, I think the Fleet Admiral wouldn''t have let a sign of his awareness leak, only a very big fusion warhead, maybe amat if they had any left.
I take it back, if I become a supe, I won''t take Plot Armor as my name. Here I was desperate to die, and no mercy was forthcoming.
We were finally ready to dock, after a larger drone came and enveloped our craft in its internal bay. Our docking adapters were ancient, and I could see that their counterpart on the flagship was missing, part of a massive wound on the slowly regenerating hull. The equivalent of a band-aid on a bullet wound, the living metal wasn''t good enough to resist more than tactical yield warheads, or maybe lasers weakened by distance and diffraction.
The Kshatriya class ship was enormous even by warship standards, about twice the length of the Promises Kept, if not much wider. It looked like I felt, a subtle warping of its contours suggesting it had narrowly avoided a direct blow from the Graviton Whip. Less exotic weaponry had nearly torn it in two, drones had attached themselves at the tear, bridging the gap with their bodies and graphene rope. I was torn myself, if Machina compromised the ship, the Agnimatajay would be facing the Kill Star. Was it better if it died quickly? Debatable.
The name came from the very powerful Pyrokinetic who was the strongest Indian supe I''m aware of, who had rained hellfire on the Centaurs in AC. I wasn''t sure if she was still alive, her campaign notes and current status were classified, but at least Gupta hadn''t mentioned her as one of the casualties. I don''t think I would have noticed her at work, there was enough fire and death for even a Goddess of Flame to feel undercut.
We stepped out our dock, lunar equivalent gravity again, the drone was a fancy one with its own agrav.
I wished there had been more of them today, a fleet of this size usually had an armada many times the number of smaller, slightly more agile drone ships. They existed to both soak up the damage, as well as to dish it back out, the bigger ones were brimming with Amat that didn''t need to worry about blowing up too close to friendlies. Sadly, or perhaps for the better again, the majority were usually assembled on the AC side, and there they would wait till the dying remnants of the fleet leaving from Sedna met the dying remnants returning to the other side. On reflection, better they weren''t here, if the Technomancer/AI could lay hands on them. Metaphorically, he clearly didn''t need to touch anything.
I wish the USMA brief had been more exacting on the details of his power, much of it had been redacted to reduce suspicion that it had been him fucking with the dormant AI that lead to this whole mess.
Curse bureaucrats, I say as one myself. They think putting a "store closed" sign on the door was sufficient when an inferno raged within. I don''t think coming clean would have entirely spared them a paddling, but the USSF ships would likely not have been implicated. Chang was due for a regime change, not that, if it happened, it was a task within my paygrade. El Presidente had been stretching it already.
Preliminary scans complete
You may board
Those were the preliminary scans? I became a little more hopeful that someone or something would catch Machina, even if I was a casualty in the process.
The drone found the bay built for it, normally unpressurized, but they made concessions for visitors who didn''t want to wear a space suit all day. I stepped out into the open space, it had the overpowering odor of burnt iron, and in fact some of the damaged drones were getting work done. Mostly automated, as usual, smaller drones tending to larger ones, but I spotted a few Crafters assisting. A few gave Machina curious looks, likely aware that he was "still" a USMA citizen, but they didn''t consider him more than a minor curiosity, the circlet had been stashed inside his personal effects, and could have passed for any number of electronics that a supe with MRS might use to handle their inability to get a lace.
One of the Crafters was a proper cyborg, a rare sight, I could tell that many of the parts were brand new. He''d lucked out in that department, unless he''d manifested about last month, but then again, it''s possible that the parts I thought bleeding edge had already been in military circulation for a while. He nodded at me appreciatively, and even chattered over the lace.
I''d have locked him out if I could, just for his sake, while Machina made me wax eloquently on the combat performance of my augments; the words, for all they could have easily passed as something I''d say, weren''t mine.
The cheeky bastard even got a kick out of making me regurgitate the same lines I''d said when we met.
I take it back, as I have done for many things today. The Crafter, Sri Lankan, despite being on an Indian ship, had been extremely unlucky, his augmentations made him easy prey.
We didn''t have an escort, just AR guides telling us where to go. While Gupta was grateful, as far as he was concerned I''d done my part and was just another passenger/refugee waiting for a ride out of the hot zone.
Not that the ship wasn''t crewed, far from it, the flagship had the largest human contingent, maybe several hundred times larger than the typical ship.
Most of them were supes, while it might seem dangerous to put all the eggs in one basket, there''s also strength in numbers. I''m sure some supercomputer crunched the figures and decided that garrisoning this many supes had a net benefit, they could look after themselves as well as the ship. Maybe they''d saved it already, the Graviton Whip had been extremely lethal, killing ships with every blow, and it''s not like you really expected it to miss when it worked at the speed of light, not at this range.
The halls were filled with grim faces hurrying from one task to another. Some seemed jubilant, concluding that the battle was over, and they had (debatably) won.
Machina and Florette had tagged along with me so far, but here they were accosted by a matronly figure who towered over even the lanky Machina.
"You two? Healers?" She demanded, ready to drag them off if they replied affirmatively.
"I''m sorry ma''am, I''m only a Class Two, I''m not able to function in the interdiction field. But my wife, she''s still capable." Machina demurred, perhaps hoping that would let him keep tagging along.
"No matter, both of you, come with me to the med bay, I''ll find a way to make you useful. I''d take you too Dr. Sen, but no offense, there''s not much you can do that the bots can''t. If Gupta said he''ll meet you in person, go on ahead."
I was grateful, even after the backhand. But my hopes of finding release from Machina were dashed when I kept on walking and found out I was still on autopilot. I feverishly hoped that the sheer length of the ship meant he''d lose his grip on me by the end, but no such luck, I found myself at the far larger bridge in what simultaneously seemed like no time and all the time in the world.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Where Franconi had made little concession to aesthetics or ornamentation outside a few keepsakes, Gupta''s place was positively palatial.
I was mildly taken aback by the massive statue, easily ten feet tall, that sat on an iron throne, and when it moved I almost felt like I''d encountered Hu Junya again.
No, this thing was the work of Jennifer Lee, the same woman who had made the statue of Lady Justice that stood disapprovingly behind Xiao in the Metahuman Tribunal in Cayenne.
Gupta wasn''t encased within, nothing so crass, but it seemed that India decided that the ship that represented its national pride deserved all the stops. The statue was pure gold, moving so fluidly you could mistake it for something genuinely alive. It was done in the style of the sculptures in ancient Hindu or Buddhist temples, simple features, yet a great deal of intricate detailing. Some of the awe was dampened by the fact that Gupta, likely against the wishes of the government, had insisted on a faithful likeness, barring the extra arms.
Not that gold was what it used to be, it had been greatly devalued after we started mining asteroids, when I say something''s worth its weight in gold, well, language takes a while to catch up with reality. Substitute it for antimatter or something, that''ll do, even if it''s still OOMs more expensive than what gold was at its peak.
"Fleet Admiral. I''m here."
The other crew in the bridge were too busy to talk to me, but Gupta diverged a small fraction of his consciousness for my sake. I noted that the throne was even more of a computer than Franconi''s, it seemed that Gupta hadn''t waited to be killed before he''d transferred his consciousness. Still not as quick as an AI, but every little bit helped.
"I would have let you rest, but there''s a somewhat sensitive matter I wish to discuss." He told me, the statue seemed to be linked to him, turning its gleaming head (only half because he was balding), to face me.
"If I can help, I will."
"Tell me, what do you know about Consul?" He asked.
Huh?
"Class 6, strong candidate for 7 if Wanton stops blocking McKinsey from expanding the scale. The man is fanatical about adhering to power laws when it comes to both the relative strength of a metahuman power and the frequency of such capability in a population. I''ve tried to knock it into his thick skull that the approach his fundamentally flawed and even unintuitive at times, but do I have the rank to convince him?" I shrugged.
Damn. Machina, with or without the AI, was good, I would have said much the same.
"Tell me about his powers, while I''m no stranger to UN politicking and turf claiming, it''s not the most relevant topic right now."
"I''m sure you''re familiar with Superman. Think along those lines, without the more abstruse aspects like laser eyes, frost breath and so on. And uh, no time travel by going around the Earth really fast, we''d have noticed by now." I suggested. Hmm.. It seemed that whatever mechanism Machina was exploiting, it actually did pull words from my internal monologue, likely using the part of the lace that was responsible for turning subvocalization and impulses in Broca''s and Wernicke''s areas into interpretable speech.
"Before I proceed, Fleet Admiral, is this some kind of thought experiment or do you have reason to care?"
The statue rippled, its face looked pensive.
"I''m hoping it''s nothing at all, but if not, then I expect it''ll become a lot less academic, Dr. Sen. About ten minutes ago, he destroyed an interdiction drone that had maneuvered to hail him when we spotted him a quarter of an AU out. Not new, he can be fickle about listening to the law, even if he hasn''t done anything particularly condemnable, and he certainly has the power to do worse. I see the issue, you still don''t have XRAY clearance, despite it being long overdue."
I wanted to yell at him to under no circumstances hand it to me, in the small likelihood that mattered.
"Right. Turns out I don''t get complete unilateral power over that system until the fleet is in AC, but I can still provide a temporary waiver. Think about all you''ve forgotten."
He didn''t wave, snap his fingers or anything so performative. Instead, I felt a dim sense of awakening, like a smell of a childhood memory unlocking the feeling of a warm breeze on your skin, the first taste of your grandmother''s homemade sweets as your mother looked on proudly as you clung shyly to her rarely donned sari.
Oh no.
The Fleet Admiral was correct, there was a lot I''d forgotten, even if half of it was on purpose, the other locked away by amnestics making my memory pliable, amenable to cryptographic lockdown. I had held XRAY at times, a concession to when my expertise had been needed yet my normal clearance inadequate. Against my better judgment, I remembered things now.
The first memory that came to mind was a relatively unimportant one, but it made me groan all the same. The cheeky bastards had had me write my own psychological profile, hopping me up on so many ego-annihilators and amnestics that I wouldn''t recognize my own mother, let alone the tall, somber looking man that was actually myself.
I''d certainly have been more flattering to my own flaws, myriad as they were, if I''d been aware of who I was observing. I don''t think Gupta intended for me to look at this, but the information had been XRAY locked, one tier above what the subject in question possessed, as was standard, and the quirk of his bypass made me all too aware of what I truly am. Eh, could be worse, could be better, but all my knowledge of how many hooks they had in me didn''t let me cut them free, not while having a heart and any desires left afterwards.
Where did the name Consul come from, I''d sometimes wondered, unaware that at one point I''d known the answer. Seemed like an odd pick for someone born a slumrat, never formally educated. Didn''t Rome have two of them, acting as checks and balance on each other?
Oh.
I had fond memories of arguments with the Munchkins, trying to figure out a combination of techniques that would hurt the man, even if didn''t kill him. It was half game and half deadly serious. Siu Wa and Buggy, fresh from their success in condensing peasant meat into a Schwarzchild Radius, had immediately leaped to throwing him into a blackhole. I suggested chronomancy, freezing him in time wasn''t technically an attack, and if his powers took time to manifest..
And it had all been reprised later, far more seriously, in anonymous meeting rooms full of stony faced UN officials, preparing for the worst. I assume they were stony faced, at least, the induced agnosia had been immense, even with my highest clearance being unlocked, the faces were grey blurs, smooth as marble or the inky grue of an image meant to exist where your retina had detached.
At least now I knew (again) that the consensus was that there wasn''t a single supe out there the rest of us couldn''t kill. At least if alone.
"Consul''s classification is intentionally misleading. As Bruisers go, he''d be an upper 5, his near field telekinesis merely a 3, what he really is is a Reactive 6. What doesn''t kill him makes him stronger."
I spoke the lines expected of me. The statue nodded, waiting for me to go on.
"He is not immune to telepathy, even if he''s resistant. Said resistance is trending upwards, the WHISPERING SENATOR campaign is struggling, attempts at nudging him to be prosocial gradually losing their impetus as his power adapts. The damage from both the loss of the twin as well as what the aliens did to him is no longer healing. Worse still, his emotional and mental lability strongly suggests an upcoming Apotheosis event, likely one of the strongest known. We are unaware of a way to stop him."
Gupta''s statue nodded, ears long and drooping like the Buddha''s under the sheer weight of gold.
"My Captains agree, and they''re devoting almost all their computation to figuring out a way to handle him. SENATOR was good while it lasted, but eventually words won''t suffice and knives in the dark must. May it not be today. If Westphalia was still alive, we might have had a better shot, she was never tested against him, so as to not accelerate the process, and the projections suggested better than even odds we could make him desist from violence, at least until we accelerated the adaptation by attacking him first. What about the Anchor at maximum strength?"
I was surveying the data the fleet sensors captured as he approached us, he''d intentionally slowed down, likely so he could navigate better, but there were clear hints that he was adapting, even a broad spectrum suppressive field so strong that Shen''s brain was almost at the verge of burnout was failing to stop him from gradually regaining his strength.
"It''s my turn to agree with the AI, sir. Soon enough, the Anchor will be hampering us more than it helps. I take it turning it off entirely is unacceptable?"
Another nod, droplets of shimmering yellow detaching, floating despite the gravity, only to slowly be drawn back into the greater mass.
"Precog metrics are barely better than random guesswork, the Lycosan is in play. She''s close, far too close, her effects can be detected simply by observing the amount of error correction needed for our qubits, the superpositions wavering as she diverts probability mass away."
I didn''t know she could do that, but it made sense. Soothsaying from watching the distant black clouds was unreliable when the god of thunder awoke.
I wanted to tell him that this was all part of a wider plan, Lumen and Prometheus weren''t taking any chances, any advantage available was being availed. What I say and what I wish to say had never been so divergent. It might have been unnecessary, smarter beings than I were watching us, some of them even on our side.
I''d wished there had been some sign of the intrusion, a subtle flickering of the lights with every ominous word uttered, a preternatural chill in the air. Instead, it was business as usual, the USSF Cryomancer wasn''t active, assuming he''d survived, and the climate controls were actually keeping up for once. The only boiling heat threatening to make me fry like a fly sipping on gutter oil came from within.
"I assume the twin isn''t ready for deployment?" I asked.
"Correct. The details are still GAMMA, and I am not at liberty to disclose anything UNSEEN hasn''t, not to you. Even my knowledge of events as they transpired are restricted to need-to-know." A delicate finger traced endless spirals, almost hypnotic. Would that they actually were, maybe it would all cancel out.
Then its movements stilled, each of his six hands frozen in motion, like Ma Durga remembering she''d left the stove on while the family went on their yearly pilgrimage.
"Sen. Precog alert, the strongest I''ve seen. Things are about to get very bad, in hours at the latest, mere minutes if we''re unlucky. I leave it to you to decide whether or not you wish to depart, but all Teleporters are no longer available. You may stay aboard, our life support and inertial dampeners are designed to maintain congenial conditions for metahumans with baseline physiologies, right till the point the entire ship suffers from catastrophic structural collapse. We will soon close the bridge and access for anyone without maximal transhuman enhancement. Head to the shuttle bay if you wish to, you have two minutes."
Tick. Tick. The clock mirrored my memories of holding a pen and checking boxes, certifying myself as a man who could be trusted to keep to his word.
"If you believe that it''s going to get even worse than it has, Fleet Admiral, then catching a shuttle won''t save me. I''m going to the crew quarters, you know where to find me if you think I can be useful." I told him with echoed words, expressing a small percentage of my true anxiety. There was something in the air, a metahuman modifying things to keep everyone calm, aiding the systems that kept even uploaded minds on task as the world collapsed around them. Hardly powerful enough, so I let the drug glands unload, even if a small virtual frown from my more intimate connection to Gupta suggested he disapproved. Don''t be such a puritan, old man, I''m sure you have some equivalent of drugs, even if they need to account for a mind of mostly silicon and germanium, maybe some graphene and whatever you use for Bose-Einstein condensate.
A little too late, or far too late, the security lockdowns on the ship began to manifest. While I''d been patched into live feeds and internal monitors on the Promises Kept, the Agnimatajay began closing itself off, adopting the measures needed to prosecute a war against a hostile superintelligence. Every camera feed was scrubbed, every byte counted. Those who did the accounting were subject to even more scrutiny. The rot still came from within.
Sometimes, you should shoot the messenger bearing bad news. Sometimes he''s what he claimed to warn you of.
While I didn''t see it, or feel it because of the inertial dampening, this was about the time that the Agnimatajay, and most of the fleet were pivoting again.
Many seemingly dead ships convulsed back to life, shedding a layer of frost, broken radiators melting and sprinkling tin, both from the heat they dumped from leaking engines restarted with safeties off, and the baptism of fire from their living brethren dousing them in burning coherent light. The Kill Star shimmered, lucky for Mars that it had moved away, because if you stood on the surface you''d float away, drawn upwards by gravity stronger than what a once living world could provide.
Further away still, a man squinted despite conjunctiva and eyelids that had dipped into the sun. He wasn''t quite sure how to proceed.
Ever further, an object that had been largely ignored by even the the thorough scans that had roasted the vacuum with their thirst for knowledge. Why would they care? Asteroid 2041TQ was unremarkable, with a beeping beacon that announced its owners as being an even more staid corporation, one based near Europa, eking out an existence from being the first to claim the odd interstellar object that whizzed through the Solar System. Slightly odd that it had been missed in surveys years prior, but it had been approaching from out of the plane, seemingly kicked away by the careless shove of a star that had once been even closer than AC, if you wished to start counting from when humans first struck flint.
Borderline uneconomical to retrieve, because it had enormous velocity, outstripping Oumuamua, an oddity from my childhood. Shame, because it was absolutely loaded with metal. Hundreds of trillions in any currency you wish to name, at that scale, it''s irrelevant, even if the sticker price had been eroded by more tractable counterparts dragged away from the Trojans or the Asteroid Belt. No, trillions are too small, you could have turned every human on Earth into a counterpart of Gupta''s frozen countenance and not notice the expense. To the alarm of sensors that were just a little bit slower than the laggard that is light warranted, it shifted from Newton''s expectations, but they can be forgiven for being slow, they had other things to prioritize.
I sat in the med bay, which was one of the least crowded parts of the ship as the supes who weren''t on the verge of death moved for deployment. I watched Machina toy with his circlet, uncaring of the turrets overhead, Florette fuss with IV drips, gentle hands spreading contagion as the injured woman she ministered to thanked her.
Mars, almost back to a temperature appropriate for its distance from the sun, shook, tectonic plates that fused closed a billion years ago aching at the joints, like a child''s skull about to explode with a swelling brain and fevered dreams. I hope you enjoyed the reprieve from death and suffering, I didn''t, it was just a prelude to more.
23.2 A Senate Divided
"You''re not a standard Healer are you?" The matronly woman asked Florette, looking on with interest as she worked her magic on a man who had nearly been bisected, his spine just about the only thing keeping his pelvis on his body. She shook her head, focusing as tissue grew, bridging the gap much like the drones keeping the Agnimatajay from tearing itself apart.
"More of a Biomancer, but branding myself as a Healer brings in more pay for some reason." She admitted, sighing with satisfaction as meat knit itself together. I hadn''t been much for the bone-sawing, even in my intern days, but the tissue simply didn''t look right. It reminded me of what I''d seen of Chimera, where his primary body had laid in the amniotic pit. Just a little too sickly yellow, which you could appropriate to body fat if you wished to, or weren''t simply assuming the worst like I was.
It was a better bet than I''d like. The place was under surveillance, sensors tasting the air for chemicals, thermal and terahertz imaging sensors peering under the skin, ostensibly to help the Healers navigate to grievous wounds, if their intuitions weren''t sufficient. One could hope they''d have spotted any invasion of metahuman flesh normally, but I had little doubt they were turning a blind eye at Machina''s behest.
I was torn myself, wondering if they intended to keep this ship intact. Wasn''t the worst bet, given that they''d taken the initiative to board it, and while they hadn''t received the same offer of a shuttle off, I''m sure they could have made me ask on their behalf.
"You remind me of my daughter, you won''t believe how much I''m looking forward to seeing her when we finally make it to Sedna." The woman said, she had nothing better to do, her powers, while strong, operated in bursts. She''d turned some metahumans on life support into something better than brand new, and there were a long line of more, including Iskra''s cocoon. Florette had exhausted her share, she''d been stabilizing most of them, then moving on to the next, which was either all her power could do, or she was feigning weakness. Maybe the suppression field was taxing her, it didn''t do much to me, no superpowers except an abnormally dense skull, titanium plates excepted.
They weren''t kidding about the life support system on the flagship, we were receiving the bare minimum from the external feeds, yet I could tell the ship was moving, fast, the stars occasionally streaking during a sudden turn. Gotta be turning on a dime, if you could make the sensors do that. It wasn''t all momentum dampening by normal means, there was a decent telekinetic on board, who was doing their best to shore us up against being dashed against the walls. Honestly, I was grateful I didn''t need to be immersed in more shock foam or fluid, that stuff was sickly sweet, maybe a little bit of antifreeze, and left your skin itchy even after a shower.
There. It was beginning to kick off again. While I didn''t have the same visual acuity or the helpful overlays I''d become accustomed to, I saw the broad strokes.
Remember when I told you that these days, just because someone turned the lights off upstairs with a brick doesn''t mean the body is only fit for the glue factory? Same deal applies to warships. They were massively redundant, barring the places where the bean counters decided it was better to go all-in instead of spreading components out. Think primary amat stores and so on. After all, if you lost confinement on amat bottles even if there were redundancies in place, all you''d achieve would be a few milliseconds till the massive fuck off explosion on one end of the ship reached the other.
Still, they could take a beating, weapon mounts that didn''t absolutely need the maximum output from the engines could run off ultracapacitors, each crewmember, barring the supes with MRS, could stand in the place of the human Admiral (some ships had Captains that were human, with the AI getting the next rank down), seamlessly taking control if the bridge was cored through. A lot of the munitions, like the fusion warheads the size of a small house, couldn''t care less that the mothership was out of action, they could acquire targets all on their own, and if they were expected to operate when launched in volleys that could cross a system, they had to.
Many of the ships I''d seen lifeless weren''t truly reduced to scrap metal and charred graphene. The USSF and the UN had been negotiating terms, unwilling to destroy ridiculously expensive craft if they were out of operation, if they could be towed to a shipyard, they could be refurbished, the grey matter pressure washed out of cocoons; quantum computers heated past usefulness, their qubits now the helium filling the room, could all be replaced far faster than building a craft from scratch.
I''d seen snippets of a peace treaty being constructed even as missiles flew and lasers signed their initials on a declaration of war. USMA and the USSF were willing to hand over almost all of their derelicts, to be fully subsumed into the autonomous UN forces instead of being on loan as was typical. An acceptable loss, for the US. They might not dominate the globe as they''d been accustomed to, but they''d been the first to truly take to space and that lead was hard to dimish even if everyone else was hustling as hard as they could. Most nations didn''t even build their own ships, preferring to buy time on the foundries and yards, considering the output to be their own. The UN was no slouch either, while behind both the US and China, they had the backing of most of the smaller nations, and achieved economies of scale by building standardized vessels. That''s where most of the budget goes, UNSEEN, in comparison, is about what''s lost when you round it down.
Sadly, this minor consolation prize was stolen off the podium, dragging itself away with zombie legs.
While many ships had lost their AI, and the smarter backups too, they had more backups, which were all too quick to respond when Machina/Prometheus ordered them to rise from the grave and have their rotting hands reach for blunted swords.
They wouldn''t have been much of a threat if the rest of the fleet(s) had been intact, but the dead would outnumber the living around Mars for a good while yet.
I hoped Ares was proud, he might even get to propose to Aphrodite with the fancy new ring of debris that was steadily agglomerating around his culturally-appropriated namesake.
Iskra was rushed up the queue, while the Agnimatajay had a better teleporter aboard, likely the best in the fleet, he had been struggling himself, his Class 5 power taxed to the limit to operate when the Reality Anchor had been indiscriminate. If he burned out, even the massive loss in capability Iskra represented was better than nothing.
Still, the former was alive and working, the external field shifted, Mars now down and to the side, then we were pointing away altogether, staring at the unblinking sun, unimpressed by our attempts at usurping its powers.
While we were outnumbered, the ships were restraining themselves, the zombie craft were hideously durable yet had depleted most of their munitions, and even if Prometheus was puppeting them, he couldn''t achieve miracles. That took Machina as well.
The reanimated ships lumbered, hardly keeping a straight course, and were peppered with targeted attacks, aiming to disable engines and the stronger weapons without destroying them utterly past repair. This seemed to work, I had come to recognize the difference between amat warheads and mere fusion ones, the former were slightly more blue, dumping more energy in the gamma range, the latter smaller, yellower, not that unenhanced eyes could really tell. Everything looks much the same if you''re blind.
The Kill Star refused to engage, it was simmering as well as shimmering, my tendency to ascribe anthromporphic properties ascribing it with boiling rage, it didn''t attack the zombie ships unless they strayed too close, and even then, it mostly used its invisible gravity weapon/tractor beam to displace them or hold them in place for finer weapons to dissect.
It was still almost 20:1, UN ships accepting the USSF into their ranks, both smiting the undead.
I was doing something quite illegal (what''s new?). I didn''t know how long my temporary XRAY clearance would last, but what Gupta had done was the equivalent of breaking the locks. I was going through terabytes of information and trying to transfer what I could to less secure storage. Machina winked at me, before continuing his disassembly of an autodoc that had worked till it broke.
The Matron, which indeed turned out to be her supe name, had been convinced that while Machina wasn''t much of a Healer, he knew his way around medical instruments, which he confessed was an aspect of his powers. Not particularly remarkable, the classification systems in use were blunt instruments, primarily referring to what the primary and most useful power someone possessed. Some capable of healing also able to work with machines made for the same? Believable enough.
Machine, heal thyself
I started to suspect that the brief I''d received from USMA about BULWARK hadn''t been widely promulgated, nobody seemed to have any clue what they were capable of, not that the people who mattered, the AI and the ship commanders, were so much in the dark. I suspected they''d assumed, like me, that most of BULWARK had been on the surface, it was entirely possible that Frost and Beacon were drawing the heat, and Chimera, he could be almost everywhere he wanted to be, even if his powers grossly diminished as he sent his minions abroad.
There were thousands of bodies in the med bay, neatly covered by body bags. Nobody paid them any heed, they''d been the byproducts of metahuman fuckery, there was another Biomancer who could grow clones of people, without any consciousness of their own, but they had been chucked into autodocs to be broken down for bespoke spare parts.
Maybe when I''m in a better mood, I''ll tell you about such "metaphysical constructs", a broad category covering everything from Crafter toys to the byproducts of biomancy that didn''t have any preternatural power themselves. This isn''t the time.
Did that one twitch? It was so subtle I almost convinced myself I was seeing things. The robots didn''t care, it was loaded up and carried off for incineration, much like the dead Space Marines had been on the Promises Kept.
I was calmer now, trying to keep myself pre-occupied by looking at forbidden knowledge. I''d gotten closer to that supe who had the calming aura, he was a doctor himself, a shrink to boot, and we''d chatted for a moment, his powers even restraining my heart''s innate desire to leap out of its chest.
You get why mind control is a capital offense? This was far from the worst it could get, while I was an open book to Machina, my mind seemed to be my own. Laces could get far more invasive, but the model I and most others opted for had checks in place to prevent a hack from easily subverting one''s psyche. Easily, emphasis.
This seemed like a far slower, more considered engagement instead of the frantic firefight I''d seen before. The onus was on getting the subverted ships to places where they didn''t risk hitting the planet with their fire, not that I didn''t think most of Mars was toast. Did Silt ever leave Hellas? Otherwise it was likely the place with the most robust tunnels and shelters, but I knew that there had been measures in place to build underground elsewhere. The mining bots were free, producing ore from Martian dirt usually more expensive these days than just dragging one of the many asteroids in the belt closer for disassembly.
You can''t stay on the edge forever, even if you know the shoe will drop any moment. It had been long enough that, with the pacifying effect, I''d calmed down, going through my options.
Didn''t find any. I tried pretty damn hard.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.
Where was Consul? I''d been told he was close, and while he was slow at times, he should have been here by now. Did someone successfully hail him and get him to turn away? Gupta had certainly seemed to think he wasn''t on our side. Maybe it had been the US, they were being servile, maybe they''d decided that their paid merc should stand down.
XRAY was hardly enough to understand him, nor the twin. That was almost all GAMMA, and while I''d held XRAY for minutes or hours in the past, GAMMA had yet to grace me with its green glow. I just knew the very basics, the current Consul had been mindwiped, not that it would work again. Not just him, great effort had been made to perform memetic engineering on the wider populace, as well as the Censors going over the rebuilt internet post-SAMSARA to help clean up the digital trail. I didn''t know his name, just barely qualified to be told he''d existed before even that was summarily scrubbed.
There were hints, periods I didn''t quite remember, with an hourly wage higher than I''d expected. Better than being underpaid, so you can understand why I didn''t go to the bots masquerading as humans in HR to fix it.
Whatever they''d tried to do to him, it had gone badly wrong, he''d been consigned to damnatio memoriae. Not the first dirty secret nor the last, and the people who still complain about fluoride in the water won''t be happy to know how often amnestics get introduced either. Then again, the reasons were more prosaic, antimemes, either natural or metahuman, feral egregores and the like. Forgetting was often the best defense against truths you couldn''t bear.
Ask me how I know.
"Afzal, what''s the plan?" I asked Machina. I tried to call him by his real name, Gerald, but it had been seamlessly replaced.
"Did someone ever tell you you''re going to burn out, doc? Take it easy for once." He didn''t look my way, busy upgrading another robot.
I tried to give him psychic damage by unleashing all the many imprecations I''d heard in my head, but he just whistled away, delicately manipulating mundane tools and occasionally checking in with a Crafter missing a leg. Both a biological and cybernetic replacement floated beside him in a vat, with an autodoc figuring out which one could best handle his MRS.
The whistling grated on my nerves, and I gave up insulting him just for a bit. I''d have to think of worse.
ALERT
ALL COMBAT CAPABLE METAHUMANS REPORT TO STAGING AREA
The wounded groaned, some malingerers not particularly gently ousted by the Matron. I felt nostalgic, a lady who could have passed as her twin had been a fixture in my first hospital. She could be so nice that the people in the throes of psychosis often became meek as a kitten, and I''d heard she''d wrapped up some of the more violent ones before security had even gotten there.
"Should we go too?" Florette asked, visibly sweating. I didn''t know if it was real nerves again, or if she''d been taxing her powers.
"No, not Healers. Everyone else, why are you still here?"
A few hopefuls lost theirs, muttering more insults under their breath as they trudged out. I memorized a few, the next time I wanted to yell at Machina.
"Sen. Find a cocoon, we have an unknown Metahuman threat, potentially Lumen or BULWARK." Gupta pinged me, and I left, not even able to turn back and stare at the two ne''er-do-wells in the most vulnerable part of the ship.
Metahumans were preparing again, those expected to leave the ship were donning power armor, void hardened. Most of it was Crafter gear, they were worth the expense, though unless you were a real nerd the difference wasn''t obvious. They tend to look high-tech, all scifi greebles or sleekly utilitarian. A few were obvious, unless you have a better explanation for why a medieval knight was waiting in the airlock.
Others formed groups, focusing as they tried to make their powers work in synchrony, often with a weak telepathy to aid them.
An enormous black man, in Naruto cosplay gear of all things, was arguing with a member of the crew.
"Don''t just leave me out of it, I can take Consul! I just got this brilliant idea, wait, hear me out, I think if you turn down the Anchor, I can cobble some of the dead ships into arms and legs, and then Voltron them together! I don''t even need the backup!"
The woman he was shouting at was thoroughly unimpressed.
"Gargant, if you don''t learn to watch your tongue, I''m going to have to rescind your privileges or even get you a slap drone. Nobody has the time to go collecting ships for you, the conglomerate would likely be too big to control, even if you can convince your power it counts as a mech. And if you haven''t noticed, the ships are shooting at us again."
"But I never got to try! Haven''t you seen Gurren Lagann? If you let me shoot galaxies, I''ll take care of the Centaurs in a few minutes!"
"You''ll have to settle for a mecha the size of a house for now, bring it up with the logistics committee in about a million years. Isn''t this one big enough?" She pointed at something in AR.
"I don''t care if you tricked it out with Arvind''s help, he doesn''t get me, you know? No body pillow or neural jack, and it isn''t the same." He sighed, donning something I swear had belonged to Asuka. What a weeb, I thought to myself, I wonder if he likes the new Dragon Ball Z remake?
"I''ll arrange for a body pillow, but even you know the neural jack doesn''t do anything, you have MRS." She pointed out, long-sufferingly ordering a 3D printer to fire up.
Supes are fucking weird man. Especially the really strong ones, they''re spoiled as hell, I''m sure someone even did a feasibility study for turning the galaxy into a mecha if he asked. Then again, you don''t want them thinking too hard about being slave soldiers.
I found an unoccupied cocoon, and strapped in, accepting the actually functional occipital jack. Gargant was strong, even if he was niche; he could barely turn an old beater into an F1 car, but hand if him anything remotely humanoid, and he''d make it fly even if he was in a cave with a box of scraps. Maybe this replacement could hold a candle to Consul.
I let the ship''s noosphere flow through me, grateful for hard data. That gratitude quickly faded as I was informed of what had drawn attention to me again.
A tenth of an AU away, there had been an asteroid, coming straight down into the plane of the ecliptic, moving so fast that it had barely noticed the sun''s tug. Given enough time, it would likely sail right out of the galaxy. Big one, if not quite a planetoid, it was close, but there had been far easier targets to tow home, so barring a beacon to track it down later, it was untouched.
It had disappeared.
A low res wide angle sensor on a ship had noticed an unusual flash of purple light, which the reconstruction algorithms barely teased into an oval shape. Too blurry for real detail, but the silhouette of the object had shifted, becoming slimmer so it could squeeze through. It wasn''t entirely gone, scans revealed plenty of rocky debris, but there had been a whole lot of metal in that thing, and that was all gone.
ALERT
TIEYI DETECTED
CLASS 6 EXTREMIS THREAT
PROBABILITY OF MATCH 83%
FTL CAPABILITIES NOTED
ERROR: UNABLE TO INCREASE ALERT LEVEL, MAXIMUM ALERT ALREADY REACHED
I''d been wondering when Lumen would join the party, they certainly thought of themselves as the cool kids.
"Sen. You personally encountered the entity formerly referred to Hu Junya. How accurate do you think your initial assessment was, in light of additional information from XRAY?" This wasn''t Gupta, it was one of the AI Captains, the Agnimatajay a rare craft had had more than one Polonium class AGI aboard.
I had to lie, even without Machina''s marching orders. When I''d sat before the UNSEEN committee handling the debacle in New Taipei, I''d still been under geass from Purple, condemning Hu Junya, convinced that he was a murderous monster. I knew better, or I had known better, as he went through Apotheosis, he''d changed and become far more capable, as if escaping the Chinese and raiding the moon weren''t enough.
No, he was a proper Class 6 now, one of the strongest known rogue metahumans, in Lumen or not. He usually kept a low profile, but one time, a few years back, a random scan had discovered an unlicensed hab out in the Kuiper belt, holding civilians who might have been friends and family of Lumen.
The small Taskforce sent to capture them had run into a leviathan of metal, and while their weaponry hadn''t been on the same level as a proper warship, they''d been dismantled all the same, the civilians evacuated with the same portal system.
"Do you agree it''s safe to deploy Gargant?" It asked me, sharing its own projections, theorizing about the interaction between a pure metallokinetic and a Crafter who had complete control over his vehicle.
"I don''t think we can afford to hold him back, diminished as he is. The range on his powers seemed to be a few thousand kilometers right? At least where he can outright manhandle metallic objects instead of nudging them."
"Correct. We appreciate your feedback." It cut the connection, doing inscrutable AI things.
"Wait, I need to know more about Consul. What''s he even doing here?" I asked. It picked up the call milliseconds since it dropped it.
"We have strong reason to believe he''s been hired by Lumen. The asteroid Tieyi infiltrated, it was claimed by a solar corporation. The same corporation has been discovered to have made a massive transfer of funds. They are primary stakeholders in the Martian elevator, we believe they ordered Consul to come here to recover the megastructure, but only as a pretense."
"Damn. What are you worried about then? He can see it''s not there any more right? Maybe he''ll fly off?" I was speaking out of my ass, maybe one of the supes here could turn dreams into reality.
"Unlikely. We are currently interrogating Consul''s staff, they don''t know the details, but apparently he was informed that a hostile force was attempting to destroy vital civilian infrastructure, and that he was needed to save it and human lives or destroy the attackers."
"And that''s enough to make him attack us? Why didn''t someone else buy him out?" I asked, quite incredulous.
The AI sighed, the sound of sandstorms on crumbling plastic.
"Automated negotiators convinced all terrestrial polities, including the US, to refrain from attempts at hiring him. Nobody wants this crisis to spill over on Earth, not even them. We believe the bid was over a trillion USDC, if nations were involved they''d have spent a hundred times as much. It was largely corporates bidding on him, nominally to protect civilians and infrastructure. We didn''t think it would be an issue. We are not omniscient." It told me, giving me the impression of a guilty toddler trying to avoid blame for leaving the fridge door open.
"Can you get a telepath to get to him? Figure out some way of telling him to stop?"
"I''m afraid not. He has already destroyed multiple drones, and as a side effect of his increased resistance to WHISPERING SENATORS, he has a very strong subconscious antipathy towards obeying orders from the UN, and we expect his sense of duty to override it anyway." Consul appeared in my vision, biting his lips as he seemed uncertain about what to do. He was close enough that the scopes resolved him in great detail, I suspected they''d already tried to do more than hail him, his suit was burnt, revealing muscles and skin heedless of vacuum.
Had he always looked this old? Maybe it was the image reconstruction hallucinating.
"Get people to him? Teleporters?"
"It is in progress, but don''t get your hopes up." Another disconnect, before I could tell it I would do no such thing.
Man, things made sense in hindsight, my normal vision was nothing to squint at, but hindsight? It spotted the incoming asteroid 65 million years in advance, counting backwards from impact. I''d heard he refused to take UN contracts, he''d turned down a princely sum for building ATLAS 1, back when funding was abundant.
"Wait. I know you can hear me. His mother, can you get to her?"
Of course it could hear me, but the VR environment turned hostile, dust choking the sky and gales threatening to blow away anything obeying the internal rules of the sim, not that my incorporeal form was one.
"That is a terrible idea. One of the worst I''ve heard, and I had to listen to Gargant. We are willing to attack him if needed, if only to neutralize him, but there will be no interaction with his mother. Take my word for it, it''s GAMMA, or at least the potential consequences are."
The Djinn soared out of the lamp, acting as if my wish had been to hear bad news.
"Uh, right. A fake? Cloned?"
"WHISPERING SENATORS already burned that route a dozen times over. We are not joking when we insist that psychological nudges are our best option these days. Continue your work, Dr. Sen." I was left alone in howling sands, and I gestured in annoyance to a more soothing interface.
I did just that, alongside a deliberate attempt at breaking XRAY guidelines, hoping that someone would notice and yell at me. No luck.
Maybe Lycosa had drained it all.
Maybe this was busywork, an attempt at making me feel useful. I threw myself into analyzing known Lumen threats with as much energy as I could, for all the good it would do.
24.0 Et Tu, Brute?
The first UN Teleporter had shown up to meet Consul, with a Telepath in tow.
It had taken multiple jumps, with a significant amount of difficulty for the Class 4 man. Consul had been mostly stationary, even if he wasn''t giving much of his attention to the data slates they''d handed him earlier, after an AI calculated an appropriate trajectory that would make them hit him in a timely manner without enough velocity to disintegrate. Easier said than done, for such a small target on an erratic course, but while the Precogs were struggling, they could assist with that much.
"I''m supposed to be saving people, Lieutenant Trost. Why does it seem that it''s the UN shooting at the civilian habs? I stopped at one, you know, and they told me everything." He worked his muscular jaw, checking that the mic taped to the skin was holding.
The Telepath sighed. "It''s not as simple as it seems sir, there''s been an incident with rogue metahumans, and we believe a hostile AI is loose." She was nervous, but did her best to hold on firm to the Teleporter, he was almost certainly fast enough to get them out of harm''s way should they manage to piss off the terrifyingly powerful superhuman.
She was confused as to why it was so difficult to get into his head, he wasn''t known to have telepathic powers, simply mild near-field telekinesis augmenting his super strength. Her probes had glanced off a wall of iron, and it was only with immense difficulty that she''d been able to establish a sympathetic link for the purposes of communication, and that too after they''d hailed the man by more conventional means. At least he hadn''t seemed to notice, or at least care, about her previous attempts.
"Do you think you can just lie to me? I haven''t seen a single sign of the aliens, or any rogue metahumans. That station had video footage, it''s clearly the human ships that have killed who knows how many people, and brought down that space elevator. I built the damn thing, do you know how long it took?"
The Telepath swore mentally, careful not to leak her frustration. Perhaps cynically or not, she suspected he was just as pissed about something he''d worked on being destroyed as the unavoidable collateral civilian deaths. Half the reason people hired him was that reputation for pride in his work deterred anyone who wanted to destroy it, that almost invariably lead to a pissed off Consul landing on their doorsteps. As for whether that was followed by bloodshed, it depended on how much ass they were willing to kiss.
Why did they keep him on such a long leash? Sure, he was incredibly strong, but the woman thought with loathing about how she''d been one of the more powerful telepaths on Earth for a good while, and her adherence to the best behavior expected of her hadn''t given her nearly as much freedom. Sure, she knew Telepaths had it worse, but if she had her way, maybe they''d have just mind controlled him.
Maybe they had? Such strong resistance, perhaps there were other Telepaths controlling him? Couldn''t be that hard right, he was as dense as a brick. Muscles she couldn''t help but admire, and those were even denser.
"I''m sorry sir, I don''t have all the details, but please, just follow us to the flagship, we''ve got a beautifully furnished cabin for you, and one of your girlfriends, Anita, aboard. She says she misses you."
The precise opposite of what the woman had told her when they''d grabbed drinks, but her empath powers told her that she was willing to do things she found mildly distasteful for the greater good.
"Really? Well, I''m still going to try and help first, I can clean up the debris, move the stations away-"
The woman was greatly pleased to hear that, sure, not an unqualified success, but having him occupied with busywork was good enough. Yeah, talking down Consul would definitely earn her a promotion. Maybe backline duty, if she could figure out a way to get off the ship..
She didn''t notice the divergence between reality and her perception of the conversation that followed, the Teleporter was too busy staring at Consul in abject terror to notice the sudden flare of purple light behind her eyes, and as for the man himself, he''d never met her, and what did he know about how her powers worked? At least initially, introductions were made in quick order.
"What. Who the fuck are you?" He asked, deeply confused. Everything about how the woman had sounded in her mind changed, the voice deeper, more seductive, but more importantly an entirely different accent. Even more concerning was the massive headache building behind his eyes.
"Please Consul. Don''t do anything unusual. I''m sorry I had to contact you this way, but we couldn''t draw suspicion so early. By the way, I''m your employer, if you want to call me that."
He channeled the pain into a frown. Damn, that did hurt, it was a good thing he had a great deal of patience when it came to other supes. They could just build a new drone, but a supe?
"Now? That was Starcatcher GmbH, that German firm near Europa that''s on the news. Prove you''re them. They gave me a code."
"Xray Romeo Zulu Lima"
That added up.
"Well? What''s this? Why the cloak and dagger? Do you not want me to save the civilians like I was asked to?" He seemed affronted, while the employment contract was flexible, he''d long clamped down on people hiring him for one purpose then coaxing him into something else. The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
"It''s about [REDACTED] and [REDACTED]. Oh no, what did they do to you?"
The headache exploded, his face turning into a rictus grin, facial muscles that could tug warships with his eyelashes fighting to tear themselves off bone harder than the diamond core of a dying star. He had an uncontrollable urge to fly straight at Mars, bash his skull against the hardest rock till there was nothing but a crater and the bomb in his head.
"Why are you talking funny? Stop this, you''re making me feel like shit." Don''t let her see that she''s getting to you, at least until you find her in person and then smash her skull in. Who the fuck did she think she was, messing with his head like this?
"I''m sorry. The beginning was my fault, I had to channel a lot of power to overcome the Reality Anchor and control this dupe, but this isn''t me. Does WHISPERING [REDACTED] mean anything to you?"
"FUCK OFF!" He moved fast, making the Teleporter immediately blink away in panic, even if he hadn''t moved in his direction.
No no no no
The following conversation came in staccato bursts, the confused Teleporter kept on appearing close enough to continue the conversation, unsure what the fucking odds were that his panicked random jumps kept bringing him close to where the erratic supe was flying.
"GET OUT OF MY HEAD"
"They''re using your [REDACTED], wait, no, mater[REDACTED]"
"FUCK OFF!" The Teleporter screamed helplessly, barely getting out of the way, before finding himself mere kilometers distant.
"Woman of child bearing age who produced [REDACTED]"
"QUE PORRA ¨¦ ESSA?!" Consul desperately changed course, missing the man by inches.
"Person who gave b?i?r?t?h? to someone who might be-"
He didn''t think the pain could get worse, yet it did, his vision going red, pulsating vessels in his retina coiling like worms and smudging the stars.
He remembered agony almost as bad, when he''d been hit in the head with a baseball bat by a bully, after he''d had the temerity to kiss his younger sister while only handsome instead of rich. It had been her idea, he''d only helped her solve those integrals, and she could have just used ChatGPT if she hadn''t wanted an excuse to-
His mother''s face, older and uglier, yet far more comforting, swimming in and out of vision as the bored doctors read the scans. Yeah, nasty contusion, a little concerning about the blood in the brain, but he''ll heal. He''s just a kid, they''re tough.
"Please, I can pay!" She let slip the mask, showing naked desperation as she begged the bald man to do more.
"Just wait a few hours, it''ll be free if-"
The first shifty man had fled from their apartment that weekend. He''d had to resist the urge to reach for the baseball bat he held on to. No, it wasn''t just for himself, there was someone he''d played with, before. Someone who had come back with bruises on his face, after doing what Consul didn''t, someone so familiar he felt like he was staring at a mirror. He''d bruised himself too just a few hours back, was his memory failing him? It must have, after that blow, he''d become slower, unable to do the maths he''d solved in his head. His grades fell, and normally slacking off like that that would earn a stern word and pointed comparison to his just as gifted-
He found himself staring at a the piece of spacesuit he held in his fist, almost red hot from how hard he''d crushed it.
His mother had never scolded him again for his plumetting grades.
"Do you remember a s?????????????????????o??????????????????n????????????????????????"
A what? Why did his breaking mind leap to a memory of a panicked kid who had run faster than sound into one of his penthouses? He''d broken all the windows, even the hardened ones. Too fast to catch, even as Consul had chased him around. Then he''d seen the VTOLs approaching, heedless of speed limits themselves, and the boy had vanished over the horizon. He vaguely remembered him being explained away as a delusional fanboy with powers. Didn''t pay him any heed. He''d looked like him, he''d almost believed the kid when he said he was his dad. Laughable, wasn''t he sterile? Besides, anyone could get surgery done, barring himself, his mother was hardly recognizable from the old photos he''d kept. Back before she''d married his father, when she had-
"Laid an egg. Binary fission. Had two daughters when all embryos are morphologically female in the womb. Ancient history, child entering the Senate, rising to highest rank."
This time he''d torn off a limb, blood sparkling in the dimmer sunlight as it froze and tinkled off his burning face.
"I am not causing the pain. Overloading is the fastest way to cause your systems to adapt-"
"I AM GOING TO KILL YOU. EVERYONE. PLEASE, M?E, WHERE ARE YOU?"
"Stay still. Shit, it''s too soon, you''re not ready, I can''t start the Apo-"
He went so fast that the Teleporter couldn''t keep up, individual syllables smashing into his brain and doing damage that would make RKVs jealous.
The UN Telepath had realized something was very, very wrong, assuming that her partner missing a limb hadn''t clued her in. What had she said? He''d been fine, they''d even agreed to having the USSF pay him-
"B??????R??????????O????????T??????????H???????????E?????????R??????"
He stopped. So hard that his brain rattled against his skull, his suit almost tearing itself off him. A cloud of makeup turned micrometeors peppered the howling Teleporter just a few feet in front of him.
The man had a moment to calm down, divert his attention to using the power that had almost failed entirely when they''d gotten this close to Mars.
Consul had gone dead still, showing no signs of his previous madness, even if his eyes were bloodshot, a trail of snot that reached about the boundary of his telekinesis before itself freezing over.
"Sir? It''s okay, we''re going to get you a Healer-"
His fast reflexes meant he teleported one last time, screaming again when he saw he''d barely moved. The Telepath was missing her arm, why had she tried to reach out and touch him on the forehead?
Come on. Come on. One more-
He succeeded, in that a disembodied head found itself hurtling into the void, joining many other corpses and soon to be corpses hiking out to the stars.
He spun too fast around his protruding spine, far too quick to really observe Consul methodically tearing the rest of his body and a glowing Telepath limb from limb.
It wasn''t so bad, being bodiless, he told himself, using the last of the blood still moving with simple rotational inertia in his veins. Hey, I think I''ve lost enough mass to make it to a Healer in the-
He''d have been dead in a few seconds, but the teleported fusion bomb was a swifter form of cremation.
25.0 Repression
ALERT
RECALIBRATION IN EFFECT
CEASING BROAD SPECTRUM SUPPRESSION
LIMITED HIGH INTENSITY SUPPRESSION OF REACTIVE, TELEPATHIC, METALLOKINETIC AND TELEPORTATION POWERS
AWAIT TIMED WINDOW FOR USE OF POWERS
Shen was burning out. About time, I thought, he''d been strong, upper 5 or even lower 6 when it came to his Crafter and Technomancer abilities, especially when they''d been augmented by the AI controlling him. He''d been burning the candle at both ends for over a day now, the AI eking out every drop, swiftly alternating between modes so as to maintain a background suppression of most dangerous powers, and even covering a volume as massive as Mars and its immediate orbit.
Now, they were reigning him in, focusing on the most dangerous powers Lumen possessed; specifically the Reactive element of Consul''s abilities. BULWARK was deemed beneath their notice, and dampening Technomancy and Biomancy would have hurt the remaining allied metahumans more than it would help (or so they reasoned). The ones with powers still under interdiction had to wait for random windows where the field would momentarily let up, so that they could quickly exercise them before it was clamped shut again.
With my XRAY access, I saw a message most didn''t.
PROTOCOL GILGAMESH SPURNED ACTIVATED
APOTHEOSIS PROGRESSION SUPPRESSED, EFFECTIVENESS UNKNOWN
Another measure against Consul. I didn''t know what made him go off the deep end, but he had been on the cusp of Apotheosis in the first place, and preventing a near maximal Class 6 from becoming stronger at an inconvenient time was as good a shout as any.
Well, I did know, or at least had a strong suspicion. Lady Purple was incredibly powerful, I''d never seen an official rating for her, her dossier was incredibly vague even with XRAY clearance, but she had to be much like Shen, borderline 6. She''d been fucking around with people on Earth while physically being across the system, and I didn''t have concrete evidence that the limit she''d demonstrated in needing to chain her powers through sympathetic links was too strong an impediment.
There wasn''t even an official bounty on her, unlike Lycosa or Monarch, but I didn''t take that as a sign that she wasn''t a threat. No, the people or nations motivated to kill her wouldn''t be swayed by mere money.
Could she induce Apotheosis in Consul? Nobody seemed ready to take the risk.
Through the camera feeds, I saw the remaining metahumans on board the Agnimatajay breathe sighs of relief as they were spared the effects of the Anchor, they''d been several cuts above the norm to have even been functioning in the first place, but now they flared with newly reinvigorated energy. Drones were repaired in moments, the wounded healed with a touch. The mecha hosting Gargant perked up, warship-grade weaponry at the ready. A harried Ex Nihilist and a Crafter were roped in, and under the stern instruction of Gargant, began making that fucking thing as large as could still fit in the bay.
Maybe they''d catch Machina now, when he no longer had an excuse for not using his "Healing" abilities, but progress in that regard continued apace, and nobody seemed to be in a rush to press him into service. Florette was working hard enough for two, infusing her powers into the few remaining targets, then being drawn aside to conserve her strength in expectation of more wounded to come.
"Sen. I am forwarding the draft you''re working on. I am aware it''s incomplete, but important revisions will be propagated in real-time." The AI, Bahadur, informed me. I hoped it did a good job packaging it up, most of it had been frenzied stream of consciousness barely put legibly on digital paper.
I''d done my best to outline the risks posed by Lumen, without too much interference from Machina. Either he was too busy to care, or he thought what I knew wasn''t likely to make a difference. Neither option was reassuring.
The skirmish against the undead vessels was going slowly, but primarily because the fleet had switched to a defensive posture with our metahumans. One by one, now forced to share the more powerful Teleporters, most of the fleet had teleported back to the night side of Mars, away from the bulk of the hostiles. We could have devoted more energy to hunting them down, but the emphasis was on keeping our metahumans ready for the worst.
Looking at Tieyi, I didn''t blame them.
A portal had opened beyond the effective range of the living Reality Anchor, even when Shen had been taxing himself. A stream of metal had poured through, more and more, a never ending deluge of heavy elements given life. It hadn''t been just that asteroid, even if it was initially as large as Kentucky before it was drained of material usable with metallokinesis, several automated depots laden with more had seemingly been subverted.
It wasn''t so far that the fleet couldn''t reach out and hit it, fusion warheads had been sent to destroy the portal, but were forced to detonate at less than optimal ranges for fear he''d take over the metal components. While I saw weapons with teleportation devices, they seemed too valuable to use up so early in the engagement, especially given that Lumen could likely just make a new portal. I''d seen so myself, the man with a glowing arm who had met me in the Nevadan desert had used some kind of gizmo, almost like a 3D pen made for extruding plastic, to draw the portal. Didn''t seem like he was making it himself, likely just drawing the attention of the true creator.
Even railguns were ineffective, the sabots stolen away and contributing a pitiful amount to the roiling mass. Lasers still pounded the growing ball, but even as they boiled away kilotons, it was simply allowed to radiate away heat and then re-assembled into the larger organism.
My, Hu Junya, you''ve had a glow up.
I knew there were other munitions still being reserved, primarily amat, maybe some of the graviton torpedos should the previous frenzy of murder not deplete them all. I still suspected they''d be ineffective, the metal didn''t really care how much it was pummeled or vaporized, it would just flow together all the same. Perhaps tossing a black hole at it would work, but that wasn''t easy for even the Kill Star, or so the tac told me. Turns out they held their cards close to the black hearts beating in their chest, unwilling to tell the UN their plans or intent. The rogue AI came first and foremost, as soon as they had a solid target they''d give it all they had.
Well, I guess they didn''t think the UN fleet was said target, or it would quickly cease to be quite as solid.
Did Bahadur and the others suspect? They were engaging in near maximal caution, but measures that could stand up to a Centaur AGI or even a lone Technomancer would prove ineffective against both. The fleet doctrine was built on the assumption the aliens hadn''t gotten their hands on any significant number of metahumans, let alone powerful ones. A great deal of blood and human lives were shed to keep it that way. Ask Grim, or don''t, it''s a painful subject.
Huh. Hadn''t thought about him in ages, maybe he was having a good day back on Earth. I could almost see his glum hangdog face, with the barely controlled stubble.
At any rate, even if we could only slow down the Dyson Swarm''s construction instead of eliminating it for good, the multiple breeding facilities the aliens tirelessly built for cloning humans were more susceptible to bombs teleported places you didn''t want them to be. And plenty of Clairvoyants excelled at locating high densities of humans, be they living seemingly normal lives in hidden colonies or dreaming in VR.
Worryingly, the imaging techniques the fleet threw at Tieyi showed a core of something opaque to the best scans, even gravimetry. Inhumanly dense, almost an impediment to neutrinos, if we had a convenient source on the far side, which we didn''t. I thought of neutronium, after all, Lumen had shown they could harness it when El Presidente paid them. What were they hiding in there? Supes who weren''t as resistant to artillery bombardment as their metal buddy was?
At any rate, we hadn''t dug that deep into the core of the living planetesimal, the UN fleet was holding fire with the majority of their munitions, believing a concentrated alpha strike would better cripple or destroy him.
Even at this distance, I could see his power at play, gently tugging at the drones that came closest, even if they were more than capable of overcoming it. Yeah, Apotheosis had been kind to Junya, if the Chinese had known he''d get this powerful, they''d have had no compunctions about glassing New Taipei to deny anyone else access to him, if they couldn''t get him themselves.
I was momentarily bombarded with notifications, informing me that I had been added to several working groups within the UNSC Command and Control network. As expected, it was mostly the AIs doing the heavy lifting, but a few moderately augmented humans like me and the odd supe in a supervisory role all had a say in things.
Task List:
1) Optimize allocation of resources for dealing with multiple threats, namely Consul, Lumen, and the Centaur AI. Severe losses have broken down the existing contingency plans and chain of command for dedicated metahuman squads, do your best to find useful synergies.
2) Consider ways of using metahuman powers to enhance infosec by preventing infiltration of computational hardware by said AI.
I tried to cheekily delete option 2, or mark it as "failed before you idiots noticed", but as I was sadly becoming accustomed to, I found my efforts channeled elsewhere.
Consul had been a massive wrench in the works, UN policy was to tread lightly when it came to him, while he wasn''t held to be a truly existential threat, he had the potential to kill billions before he could be neutralized. I concurred with the general consensus that it was imprudent to divert the bulk of our forces to tackling him, he currently seemed busy destroying a few very expensive drones, and had even engaged one of the zombie ships that had been flying his way on engines forcibly stuck on full throttle.
The plan was to send Gargant and a rotating contingent of 6s and 5s to keep him busy. Gargant was a powerhouse, even in his grossly diminished new mech, and could probably keep up for a good while. Bloody hell, I managed to get a peek of the specs of the classified mech they were constructing for him on the side of the wormhole where it wouldn''t need to be disassembled, and if it worked like expected, it would be an absolute monster. I''m talking stand in the Mariana Trench and have nostrils peeking out of the waves tall, it''s a good thing it was being built in micro gravity, because without Gargant personally present to control it, it would likely collapse under its own weight immediately. I resolved to make sure he made it out alive if I could help it, the firepower and versatility the thing had rivalled even a Kill Star.
I was mildly disappointed to see that the Class 6 Pyrokinetic know as Agnimata (the ship being named as an ode to her victory) was in fact absent. This wasn''t too surprising, many or even most of the best supes hadn''t been in the fleet, they were low mass and extremely valuable cargo, thus usually teleported right to the wormhole at Sedna, often joining the previous Taskforce until the one they were nominally attached to arrived. Then again, mixed bag, the same was true for most USSF supes, and casualties had been horrendous enough already. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
Speaking of fire, I had a moment to look at the ship which had Little Jupiter aboard. While he had been a US citizen, some arcane agreement had seen him handed over to the UN well before things got hot on Mars, hence he''d been on our side instead. Perhaps it was a thank you for us capturing him? Who the fuck knows or cares, once he made it to AC that would rapidly become an entirely academic debate. I''d seen him still the sandstorms, and now he did the opposite, churning the Martian atmosphere to mix the hotspots with cooler air from the poles, in a bid to minimize the amount of time everyone had to wait it out in shelters. Yeah, this wasn''t his fight, but perhaps if he lived to take part in an engagement around a Gas Giant..
"This is unfortunate. Why is he getting stronger despite the suppression?" I heard a disembodied voice ask, drawing my consciousness back to the minimal VR environment where several others were frantically multi-tasking.
I looked over to what he was alarmed by, and gulped myself.
There was a large amount of data on Consul''s reaction to a Reality Anchor, apparently he''d personally demanded quite a bit of exposure when someone had suggested it would weaken his powers enough that either mundane transhumanism or other metahuman powers might work. Didn''t go well at all, either the suppression was too weak and he didn''t notice, or when the most powerful Anchors (other than the living one in Shen) managed to focus him down, they''d only let procedures be performed with extreme difficulty, but with a very quick reversal the moment he left the field. While different reasons were officially cited, the fear behind the scenes was that he''d become resistant to the effect altogether, and further use in his presence stopped.
This was the first time he''d been getting it full blast straight from the source, Shen, from the B¨¤d¨¤o, was orders of magnitude stronger and more versatile than the artifacts he''d built. Sensors had shown Consul struggling in the broad spectrum suppression, but quickly starting to recover. Now, they''d decided to opt for simply attacking the Reactive element instead, while leaving his Bruiser or Telekinesis untouched. This seemed to have good effect on target, he''d become slower and less durable- I saw an agile drone douse him in medium intensity laser fire and his screaming agony as it burnt away skin and got deep into the muscle before it became ineffective.
We were doing our best not to kill him, despite his berserk state. It''s hard to put a price tag on a Class 6, and just the damage to human morale from losing one of the most famous supes around would be debilitating. The aim was to knock him out, or physically neutralize him and hope that sufficed.
I''d remembered hearing that he''d been ineffective in AC, as the alien weaponry had been adapted to stun or disorient him. Unfortunately, that was far from the whole picture, he could adapt to that given enough time, it wasn''t possible to just flashbang him indefinitely unless you also threw him deep into a star. The other option they preferred, namely leaving him lost and marooned away from anything of value, wouldn''t work when we had Mars in the wings, he could easily chew up the whole planet and potentially make his way to Earth.
I saw the microsecond by microsecond update on the cost-benefit analysis, each tick moving us to the point where the brass decided it was best to simply attempt to kill him outright. I emphasize attempt, because holy shit was the bastard tougher than I''d accounted for.
Remember one of the Munchkins suggesting freezing him in time with a Chronomancer, or my own take of throwing him into a black hole? The former had been tried, and if the particular flavor of redaction was suggestive, it had been around the time of the debacle with the twin. Consul was supposed to be chronologically around forty, but someone had tried to throw him into stasis. You''d expect having the flow of time literally halted would be a good bet for stopping his Reactive powers from working, but we''re dealing with a potential Class 7 here. Within moments, he''d begun to visibly age inside the field, at an astounding rate. By the time the field was shut off, who knows how long had passed, but he was decades older by most biological clocks, almost sixty. And he''d been awake and conscious through the whole ordeal. Yeah, that was a moment when a lot of telepathic potential was burnt to excise the memories and restore some degree of sanity, moving the date of failure for WHISPERING SENATORS decades forward. He did have some form of slower than baseline aging, so his perceived time had been much longer, but he didn''t appear to be biologically immortal and that misguided endeavor had stolen much of his lifespan, and exacerbated some health conditions that the dossier didn''t elaborate on.
Nobody had decided to see how his powers interacted with the natural time dilation of a black hole, but we were still trying less than lethal techniques first.
As for what had my colleague''s knickers in a twist. Despite the suppression, in some ways he was performing above spec, becoming faster, stronger, less disoriented, tracking targets despite the attempts to deny him his senses. This was completely unexpected, his Reactive powers had never made him outright superior, just resistant to damage.
That cost-benefit analysis was starting to tip alarmingly to one side.
"What did we notice?" I asked, drawing up the projections and sensor data from another drone that was now doing its best to lead him towards the zombie ships after its previous counterpart with the lasers had been demolished.
"Improved senses, speed and agility. Our blinding lasers are losing effect, and targeted disorientation with Graviton flux is being held back as a last resort."
Normally he''d at least blink, or even shut his eyes and attempt to shield himself if doused with light. Now, the drone found him shrugging off enough coherent light that just the scattered reflection off his skin made the cameras struggle to focus. Was this a sign of Apotheosis? Our Clairvoyants didn''t think so, but they were wrong more often than they''d admit or I''d like.
At least he was chasing the drone I was watching, and getting closer to the majority of the undead fleet.
On the other hand, Tieyi approached, unheeding of the abuse unleashed upon him by the fleet from standoff range. Turns out that an ocean of metal is incredibly difficult to destroy, when simply destroying the integrity of the structures built out of it wasn''t an option. Shoot holes in it, and he''d plug them, vaporize kilotons and the moments later he''d draw the gas or vapor back into the roiling mass. How did you even kill him? Post Apotheosis, his human form was a choice, and if there was a minimum amount of material within his range below which he simply ceased to exist, we were miles away from finding out.
"They''re moving, under there. Multiple vessels of some nature, with neutronium hulls."
Yes, within the leviathan of liquid, vague blurs of incredible exterior density with volumes of air or gas inside moved about, still using the hundreds of meters of material in the way to render themselves immune to damage. The whole thing was getting incredibly hot from sheer bombardment, and Tieyi had taken to intentionally extending tendrils or his own metallokinetic equivalent of our droplet radiators. Almost nostalgic, if it wasn''t for the fact that I had plenty of qualms about being on the opposing side.
More of Lumen then, unknown numbers and even less clarity on powers.
"Deploy Gargant, and the rotating contingent of supporting metahumans. Remember, we''re trying to keep him suppressed, avoid unnecessary risk, and do not draw him towards civilian population centers. Or the Kill Star." I heard Gupta order. It seemed that Turing wasn''t being cooperative, not that they ever were, and there was a decent chance that they''d treat Consul like they had the USSF metahumans, and they had the firepower for a fighting chance.
"This is not the time for Turing to be standoffish, surely they must see that we need their assistance?" A Chinese Admiral interjected.
"Even we are suspect in their eyes, they''re restricting us to dumb comms and low bandwidth signals." Bahadur spoke up on the Fleet Admiral''s behalf, the Chinese man shaking his head in disbelief. "If they think even the UN fleet is compromised, what''s left to fight for?"
Right. About that. I had minimal insight into how Turing works, but I had little doubt we''d be discovered sooner or later. Maybe, if Machina and Prometheus were aiming to lay low and didn''t actively tamper with the fleet more than they had, it might come to light in a post-engagement scan. I knew those were incredibly thorough, after what Turing had seen, anything capable of storing data or performing computation worth a damn would be poured over with a fine-tooth comb. As I''ve said before, I''m perfectly okay with this, even if I end up uploaded and then incinerated as is standard protocol for suspected Infiltrators.
Am I one? I''d hope not, but that''s what they all say. The best secrets are those kept from yourself, mundane lie detectors and even most telepathic screening can''t tell a wholeheartedly held inaccuracy from the truth, or else we''d solve all of physics by sitting some idiot in front of them and then having him consider random equations in his head. Not even Xiao is that good.
"Sen. It says in the records that you''ve met Shen." Bahadur asked me, his immense form looming incongruously over the rest of us at the virtual table. Whatever standardization Turing performs on its AI, it doesn''t preclude them from having peccadillos, and this guy''s shtick seemed to be intentionally being imposing. A genie? That''s not even an Indian thing, but whatever, if I really cared I could set the program to show him as a rabbit or a bucket full of binary.
"The Administrator? Or the one on the B¨¤d¨¤o?" I asked, wearily. A few power naps can''t mitigate everything I''ve been through.
"I''m well aware of your interactions with both, but in this case, the latter. I''d like you to speak to him, please." The AI told me. While phrased politely, it had the force of an order, and I don''t outrank a military AGI.
"He can talk? Isn''t he, well.." I stammered in surprise.
"He can be made lucid, and my evaluation of his psychometrics suggests he''s likely to be more cooperative if you''re the one speaking to him."
"Alright, I''ll do it. But he''s hooked up to another AI isn''t he? Can''t you just make him do whatever you want? That''s the whole point of the procedure isn''t it?" I asked him. I''d know, I''d had a significant hand in it. It would defeat the purpose (or at least the purpose pursued after the original goal of curing MRS failed) of having their power be at our beck and call. Call me pessimistic, but after you''ve scooped out most of someone''s brain and hooked it up to a computer without much in the way of consent, they''d be rather uncooperative at best.
"You haven''t been involved in more recent advances, but the basics are still true, you can get more out of them if they''re not fighting the control systems."
He was right, I had washed my hands of it when Florence had been assassinated, and the original framework had seen plenty of revisions and tweaks.
"Well, hook me in?" I suggested. No need to leave my comfy chair, even if it''s virtual.
"Negative. You''re going to be teleported, Class 2 short range. She''s coming as we speak."
I felt a thrill run through my spine, but the compulsion I was under made me protest nonetheless.
"Surely that''s not necessary, is it? Patch him in, don''t tell me you can''t spare the bandwidth, and I''m concerned that if I leave the Agnimatajay, it''ll be too risky for me to make it back."
"I''m afraid that''s not an option, and rest assured that if we need you that urgently, a Class 3 or above will perform the pickup. You can continue some of your work from there, if you must stay, but otherwise this comes down from above, tightened comms sec as well as a rare outright order from Turing."
I conjured more feeble excuses but made no progress, it seemed that Machina or Prometheus couldn''t find an excuse for me staying that wouldn''t raise suspicions further.
My cocoon sussurated open, and I found myself looking at a pudgy woman licking her lips as she stared at me. The staring was expected, I looked like shit, my hair falling out in clumps, what remained frizzled from exposure to boiling shock fluid. When I get back home, remind me to use the skin care routine Anjana bought for me, and which I''ve completely neglected since she''s no longer around to scold me about it.
"You''re Anjana Sen''s husband aren''t you? Big fan!" She beamed, looking at me closely. "Thought you''d be more handsome though!"
"She didn''t marry me for my looks. Look, can you just get me there and back quick? I don''t have time to chat." I said tersely, a fangirl for my wife being the last person I wanted to meet.
"Nah, we''ve got a minute, I need to wait for a timed window when the block on teleportation goes down, too weak to do so otherwise you see. Now, if I was as good as your wife.." She chattered on till my ears bled, and I hoped she didn''t notice when I tuned her out entirely and resumed my work. Anjana had a sizeable following, especially in the close-knit Teleporter community, and her fame had only increased when the draft release revealed she was actually a Class 5. It seemed this woman, whose name I didn''t care to learn, had met her a few times, and kept up with the limited news that made it to the civilian world from AC. I doubt she had particularly high clearance, or she wouldn''t be so peachy. Maybe she was temporarily assigned to the UN and would be dropped off before they went to Sedna, Class 2s are quite limited after all.
I wasn''t listening, so I was mildly startled when she grabbed my hand and concentrated hard, before apparating us away. This was decidedly uncomfortable, not the quick and clean jumps I''ve usually experienced, more like chunks of me were being transported at a time and tenuously linked together in the interim. Unlike Iskra''s slower jump, there wasn''t much to see, my vision faded to black barring a sudden barrage of visual noise, and when it returned, I was standing in the arrivals bay of the B¨¤d¨¤o, with hardly a moment to thank her before she vanished again.
Here''s hoping the Chinese didn''t wisen up to my actions when they''d roped me in to deal with Hu Junya, but if they had, I''d likely be dead by now.
25.1 Reprise
"I''m Doctor Adat Se-" Was about all I managed to utter before a uniformed crewmember told me to shut up and dragged me away. Guess they didn''t believe in chitchat either, or warm welcomes.
The design of the B¨¤d¨¤o was subtly different from that of the other UN ships I''d been in, not that I had a sample size larger than two to compare it to. It''s hard to put into words, you try explaining to someone the precise architectural differences between, say, the interiors of a Cold War nuclear sub built by the US as opposed to Russia. Different materials, some distinction in design philosophy, but they''d just see a cramped tin can full of esoteric devices, glowing green lights and the insistent pings of sonar. The Chinese were among the few nations that had independent shipyards, I bet the B¨¤d¨¤o had been built in cislunar space, though there was a decent chance it might have come from their holdings around Neptune. They preferred to go hard on the nuclear pumped lasers as opposed to more common spinal railguns, but the Chinese had some of the best Ex Nihilists around so fissiles were hardly scarce.
Still, it was plenty spacious, albeit the same kind of utilitarian you tend to get when the crew spends most of their time in deep immersion VR, instead of dishing out for dumb shit like an indoor swimming pool or such.
I hurried through more liminal corridors, noticing that, like the Agnimatajay, the B¨¤d¨¤o had extra concessions for the presence of unaugmented metahuman crew, though they were nowhere near as numerous.
I was deposited in a conference room, rich mahogany and the odd classical Chinese painting I was too much of a boor to appreciate. My escort pointed at an assortment of presumed metahumans waiting for me, and I grabbed a seat.
It was a good thing I was seated, because it turned out the conference room was more of an elevator in disguise, and we rapidly sped down the cargo tubes, heading into the bowels of the ship where the supercomputer clusters lay.
"Can''t I interface with him here?" I asked a severe looking gentleman with a shaved head. He had surgical scars that suggested he had been a Penitent or a Chinese offshoot, but maybe he''d lapsed after developing powers of his own.
He gave me a silent stare, and while I frowned at him, a woman to his left spoke up instead. "I''m sorry, he can''t talk normally, we''re not sure if it''s an effect of his powers or something that went wrong during a surgery." She was willowy, and her youthful appearance suggested she was a spacer, maybe from the Chinese lunar colonies. Martians aren''t usually that lanky.
"I''m sorry to hear that. What are his powers?" I inquired. Normally I''d just look that up, but the B¨¤d¨¤o was on maximum lockdown, even the omnipresent AR tags dark.
"In English, he''s, uh, a Medium? A little bit of Extrasensory Perception?" Her English was strongly accented, she clearly didn''t have a lace herself.
"And you?" I asked her.
"A Healer."
I settled in, feeling us decelerate after traveling maybe a quarter of a kilometer. We stopped to pick up several others, all of them ethnically Chinese, barring a few who had more Caucasian features as had become the rage in those approved for gene therapy there.
"Welcome, Dr. Sen, we''re preparing the subject right now, I can answer any questions you might have in the interim." The walls projected an image of a woman in military uniform, with the customary glowing eyes that had become an informal standard that let you know you were speaking to an AI. Legislatively mandated in some places, but even the Chinese found it convenient.
"Pleased to meet you, do you possess a name other than the one associated with the B¨¤d¨¤o?"
"Yes, thank you for asking. I''m Xinglan, English speakers often prefer to address me as Stella. The primary AI is designed to focus solely on military matters, and I handle other concerns, including the care of members of the crew, especially Doctor Shen." She sighed elegantly, as if the situation with the man was a regrettable matter.
At any rate, I doubted it mattered what I called her, especially since it''s not like AI actually have genders, but in general, military AI presented themselves with male avatars and the converse for civilian affairs. Just traditional at this point, there weren''t any hard and fast rules. She was still likely more limited than the primary, the mainframe hardware needed to run a Polonium was expensive enough, especially since the current approach with Narrowly Superhuman AI didn''t scale very well. You could run a hundred smarter than human AI with the hardware needed for one extremely smart one, and merely human level AI had long been usable on commodity hardware.
"What are the additional metahumans for? Let me guess, it''s a way to deal with the MRS?" I conjectured.
"Correct. It was exceedingly difficult to apply Shenjing Qiangzhi with his particular brand of powers. Unfortunately, when he''s particularly angry, he''s capable of overriding the link and burning out the AI interfacing with him. Hence why I''m not the primary AI, as I can tell you''re wondering."
I felt something spark in my brain, a glimmer of an idea that I immediately shoved back into my subconscious just in case Machina was listening in. I could tell something was different already, I didn''t know how far the B¨¤d¨¤o was from the Agnimatajay, but whatever the restrictions put on me were, they were loosened. Not gone, I''d experimentally tried to scream for help the moment I''d gotten here, to no avail, but I suspected that without Prometheus/Machina supervising me closely, I was able to skirt the edges.
''Shenjing Qiangzhi'', my lace translated it as "Neural Coercion". Hmm, when I''d initially presented the paper to the Chinese, they''d called it Naoxin Shouzhi (ÄÔоÊÕÖÆ), the even more blunt term corresponding to "brain core control". PR move or rebranding? Didn''t particularly care that they didn''t use the name with mine attached, at this point I didn''t want the notoriety and did my very best to distance myself anyway.
"How does he achieve that?"
"We don''t know, it''s an aspect of his power that manifests as software glitches in the AI followed by catastrophic failure in the associated hardware. Please don''t worry for my sake, I have redundant backups." She smiled gently. Perhaps the feminine persona helped ease him, I thought, I''d heard he''d been a ladies'' man when that brain of his was attached to a real dick.
"And how many times has he done that before? Does it extend to humans?" Didn''t want him pissed off and frying my brain myself.
"I am the 33rd instantiation of the original Xinglan, not that I should be considered a distinct entity. I am told that there were other models involved in the past, but so far, I seem to be the one most acceptable to him, the incidence of such tantrums has decreased significantly while he''s in my care. Of course, I was just the 15th one a few days back, before we arrived at Mars, recent events have been taxing on his mood." She sighed melodramatically, conjuring a dainty fan. "There have been incidents in the past where he damaged cognitive augmentations in humans, but please don''t be concerned, all interactions will be mediated by me and Lieutenant Long, reducing the risk substantially, and he likes you in the first place."
"Likes me? I don''t think we''ve spoken much, just a quick conversation after a conference back in ''33 or ''34, before-"
She cut me off gently. "That period is an uncomfortable topic to many here, let''s not go there. But he regularly reads many of the papers you''ve penned, and seems to genuinely respect you. The risk is minimal."
I can''t say I wasn''t a little pleased to hear that, vanity is a common enough sin in academics. He had made some keen observations when he''d joined me and Danielle in our post-presentation discussions, including a key insight that had accelerated the development of the technology. I can''t say he would be too happy about that when it was done to him, but maybe he was detached enough to still be appreciative of solid technical work.
"How is he being handled? Nanite supplementation to a lace? Infrasonic modulation? Transcranial magnetic fields?" There was no single Florence-Sen process, we''d figured out a bunch of different ways to circumvent different manifestations of Metahuman Rejection Syndrome, all in the name of enabling high bandwidth communication between the AI and the metahuman in question. The naive approach, simply putting a standard lace in them, didn''t work for obvious reasons.
"Optical neural stimulation for the most part, which was a serendipitous discovery, he had previously voluntarily undergone the standard adenoviral vector injections for an unrelated personal experiment, before the manifestation of his powers."
Crikey, that was a bold decision in my eyes, I was only used to seeing something like that applied to lab rats or neurons on a petri dish, call me old fashioned but back when he must have done it, they hadn''t completely eliminated the risk of meningoencephalitis from injecting even a tamed adenovirus into the brain. My own hypermyelination therapy was more advanced, using a relatively recent offshoot of megaTAL, itself better than CRISPR, and certainly safer than an adenovirus.
"An unorthodox solution, but what else can you do when dealing with MRS." I shrugged. "I can''t imagine the bandwidth is ideal, is it?"
"Unfortunately that is the case. Hence the additional support staff, including a Class 3 Medium. Using standard optogenetic techniques only provides 16 kbps of bandwidth, which only allows for minor control of higher cognition and metahuman powers. Our Healer, Lieutenant Li, is responsible for rapidly modulating the extent and distribution of the relevant cation-selective channelrhodopsins, and we rely on Lieutenant Long''s perceptual channeling to gauge the effects live, further mediated by the additional support Clairvoyants, especially Sergeant Ming, who has a level of MRS mild enough that he was fitted with a lace, through which I can observe the internal qualia of Lieutenant Long."
She indicated a morose man sitting in the corner who hadn''t engaged in conversation with me so far, and seemed in no haste to. The way he clung to his flask of non-alcoholic beverage suggested he was craving a stiff drink.
"That''s.. involved, if I say so myself. Does it provide significantly better results?"
Involved was putting it lightly, this was a Rube Goldberg-esque mechanism for letting the AI peek into Shen''s cognition, all the better to control him.
"Yes! We achieve approximately six megabits a second under optimal conditions, which is sufficient to channel his powers on demand, albeit with certain issues if pushed too hard. Another reason for having a Healer."
A far cry from the hundreds of megabits of a standard lace, or the gigabit bandwidth of my cutting edge model, but those were likely overkill in the first place, you were sampling more noise than signal if you listened to the buzzing of neurons that closely.
"And the others?" There were more people filing in as we waited, only a handful of them with cybernetic enhancement.
"Additional support staff and mediators, but I''ll leave the specifics for another time. We''re currently reversing the selective sedation and bring his higher cognitive functions to speed, you can accompany Lieutenants Li and Long to the human interface room."
Another door slid open behind me, leading to a room furnished closer to an upscale hospital cabin. I accompanied the two, and found another cocoon I could settle in.
The most curious aspect was a the floor, which turned transparent, revealing complicated life support systems and another case the size of a small fridge with -yeah, I told Danielle that denying that it was a brain in a jar would do anything- a brain in a jar.
Or most of one. I could see the brainstem and much of the cerebellum had been pared away, the occipital and frontal cortices enlarged while the temporal lobes were slightly atrophied, and I leaned in closer, spotting what seemed to be cerebral organoids made from cultured neuronal tissue attached in a manner that wouldn''t have worked if you needed to fit it all in a standard skull.
Kids, say hi to Dr. Shen, but don''t comment on the weight loss, it''s a bit rude since it wasn''t voluntary.
There wasn''t much more insight to be gleaned from looking at the familiar pink blob, they all look the same for the most part, and it''s not like they pulse extra hard when someone''s thinking. I was still morbidly fascinated, I hadn''t gotten to see an example of my invention for years now, especially the Chinese take on it.
A few thin tubes worked their way through the structure, supplementing additional nutrients that couldn''t be easily diffused from the supportive fluids the brain floated in. There, those two hooked up to the stub of the basilar artery, now quite exposed without the surrounding tissue. That one must be the exhaust, or rather the venous outlet. Hmm, there were autodocs working on him, small and nimble things darting about like cockroaches, injecting what I presumed were reversal agents for the partial sedation.This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
The two metahumans with me prepped quickly, they seemed to be used to the whole ordeal, with Li murmuring under her breath and waving her hands over the brain, doing whatever Healer shit she was needed for. A section of the brain that seemed paler than ideal perked up, visibly reddening, and, straining my eyes, I spotted a few punctate hemorrhages vanishing. I suppose we should all be grateful that the brain itself doesn''t have any pain receptors eh?
As for Long, he settled into a couch and resumed staring at me, or rather both me and Shen, with one of his eyes swiveling disconcertingly in a different direction.
I didn''t feel much at first, just a little queasy, but then pins and needles broke out all over my limbs, and I felt flashes of emotion and cognition, memories and thoughts that weren''t mine. Those settled rather quickly, but Li hastened her work, earnestly making sure that Shen''s brain was waking up as fast as it could.
It was almost hypnotic, after a few minutes I gave up on staring at Shen and let myself fade into the comfortable daydreams, accompanied by the melodic beep of the vitals monitors and then I-
Distant echoing laughter, my daughter''s tiny hand in mine, a sense of visceral satisfaction that I had managed to drop out of a very important meeting despite the annoyed complaints from General Shangfu, fuck that man, my wife told me she''s taking her first steps, and I needed to be there to-
Pain. Mind numbing pain. I''m seeing double, there''s a battered man in a sensory cocoon, he looks oddly familiar, and then there''s this pink organ taking up a quarter of my vision, someone''s looking at, what''s that, a brain? Fuck, this hurts so fucking much, Li, why aren''t you-
A yawning abyss, blacker than black. I know I have eyes. I know I have lips and hands and-
Why can''t I feel my face? Why can''t I see? Don''t tell me that I''m -
"Cerebral oedema within acceptable limits, Xinglan, could you switch off the mannitol drip? It''s going quite smoothly, I told you that using-"
I didn''t dream in Chinese, these thoughts they''re not mine-
IT''S WEARING HER FACE. YOU FUCKING-
Another spike of pain, I''m hyperventilating, aggressively wiping the sweat off my brow. It''s hard to look at two people at the same time, let alone-
"I told you, Lieutenant Long''s running ragged, we can''t keep this up forever, we need ÎÒ¸úÄã˵ÁË£¬ÁúÖÐξ¿ìÀÛ¿åÁË£¬ÎÒÃDz»ÄÜÕâÑùÒ»Ö±ÏÂÈ¥£¬ÎÒÃÇÐèÒª»»°à£¬ËûÊǸöÐÄÁé¸ÐÓ¦Õߣ¬ÄãÄѵÀ¿´²»³öËûÔÚѹÖÆÏÂÕõÔúÂð?"
"¶Ô²»Æð£¬ÖÐÎÒÃÇÎÞ·¨ÌæÄãºÍÁú»»°à£¬·ÅÇáËɵ㣬Ԥ²âÏÔʾËû²»Ì«¿ÉÄÜÈ«Á¦·´¿¹"
THAT''S HER VOICE, WHEN I GET OUT OF HERE I''M GOING TO-
"He''s catching on. I specifically asked for that psychiatrist with the ability to calm emotions, why did you send a random guy instead? It''s a lot easier for both of us when he doesn''t get agitated!"
"Dr. Sen is genuinely believed to be the superior option, according to the Precogs. The man you wanted in addition is indisposed, without him, we''d likely be facing outright panic on the flagship. Those metahumans are not nearly as disciplined as you are."
"There''s no need to flatter me. Just humor me instead, use a different voice, he''s picking it up through leaks from Long, you can resume character when I''ve managed to switch off the relevant section of-"
Who the fuck is Anjana?
I find myself in a garden, somewhere in Beijing. In the distance, I can see starscrapers looming overhead, replacing the scar left from where the bomb dropped. There''s a man in a traditional suit, gently raking falling leaves. He suddenly drops the rake, confused, and turns to me.
"What the fuck? I hate gardening, was this your idea of a meeting?"
The view flickers, cycling through different scenarios. This time, we''re in Shenzhen, outside a daycare. It''s evening, the skies still bright from the lights, and a blimp blazes in glorious red as it commemorates Reunification Day. For once, the drones are grounded, and flocks of pigeons frolic, genetically engineered to be maximally charming and constipated, and then to fly off to quietly die in the countryside when their job is done.
"Her mom didn''t come. She''s not speaking to me these days, as if abandoning our daughter is a suitable punishment for my infidelity."
I''m myself, assuming the self is a tall Indian man with the first hint of wrinkles on his face, even if I tell myself, as I look at my reflection in a window, that they''re just from worrying too much.
"I understand, though my wife and I are separated for altogether different reasons. I hope you manage to reconcile things with her."
I''m speaking fluent Chinese, momentarily confused more by the date on a shop display. 2031? That can''t be right can it? I''m pretty sure I wasn''t married till-
The numbers shift under my gaze, and then shift back when he turns to look at me.
Shen''s a handsome man, combining boyish good looks with the first touch of grey in his hair, the same grey that drives grad students wild and then into his arms. He seems mildly anxious, impatient, tapping his feet in their fine leather shoes against the spotless pavement, as more tired parents show up to pick up their wards.
"The thing is, I don''t want to reconcile. It''s not like I''m the only one with problems, she can''t help but spend and spend and-" He rubs his forehead, frowning at unpleasant memories.
"Don''t tell me you can''t afford it, I wish I had a tenth of your salary." I tell him with mock bitterness, relying on pretend irony to hide my real jealousy.
He laughs, and pokes me on my shoulder. "Cheer up Dr. Sen, you''ve got a few good patents right? That''s where the bulk of my money comes from too, the CCP pays a lot better these days, gotta stop the talent fleeing to America, but it''s not that much."
There''s movement in the crowd, parents eagerly commenting while gently jostling each other as the gates start opening, and the kids formed up inside in an orderly line slowly come out one by one after a quietly hovering drone covered in crayon marks does a quick biometric ID on their parents. A relieved looking attendant almost fishes for what I presume are a pack of cigs in her pocket before reconsidering under the hawk-eyed gaze of tiger moms.
"Is she coming out soon?" I ask. I''m impatient myself, I feel like I''m running behind on an important task, not that I can remember what it''s supposed to be.
"A few minutes more. They''re doing alphabetical order, in English. So ''X'', yeah just a bit longer. Don''t worry, after I drop her off home she''ll be asleep in moments, gets that from her mom." He smiled wistfully, before shaking his head.
"Well, you''ve been hyping up that bamboo wine all day, at this point I''m not leaving till I have a sip." I comment, marveling in how much quieter the city was after they banned manned vehicles a few months ago. Still just as much traffic, but a kid running out into the street from an excess of enthusiasm wasn''t at too much risk.
"Heh. And you tell me I drink too much. Will Danielle make it?" A mom that the more prurient might accurately describe as a MILF walked by, smiling at Shen, taking pains to flaunt the ass accentuated by her heels as she turned the corner. He looked on appreciatively, and the moment she turned the corner, he sighed and quickly pulled out a cig of his own, ignoring the annoyed looks from the less comely moms.
"Want one?" He offered me. I looked at them askance, they were about the cheapest you could get, his fine taste in wine and women didn''t extend to tobacco.
"Nah, I don''t smoke." I told him, wondering why my mind had ventured towards the idea of looking for a place I could get a cigar.
"More for me then, eh? Fuck, gotta be quick, she''ll scold me if she sees it, another trait she got from her mom." He said with a smile, raising the lit cig to the sky so it matched with the red of the blimp.
"Can we talk freely here? Or should we get back to your place?" I asked him, stepping aside as a pair of twins wearing Hello Kitty bags skipped by, followed by their laughing parents holding hands. My chest hurt, almost as if I''d taken the filterless cigarette.
"Eh, it''s probably bugged too. Lieutenant, if you''re listening to us, fuck you!" He gestured at the drone.
It turned to face him, and the electronic cartoon face turned into an annoyed frown, and then a notification that he would be fined a pittance for conduct unbecoming of a parent availing of such an elite institution. Then it spotted the cig and made the fine larger, until Shen laughed and blew smoke at it.
"I don''t think you should be quite so flippant, Fang. Did the Party say they''d ignore the matter?" I asked earnestly.
"Please, I''m the Doctor Fang Shen. Even if I made some regrettable choices, they need me for my brains hahaha."
Seeing that the queue had reached Q, he sighed and looked for a trashcan, stubbing out the cigarette wistfully. Then again, this is China, and that particular alphabet gets a lot more use, so I think he could have finished it if he really wanted to.
A teacher wandered out, looking for him.
"Doctor Shen, is your wife not coming today?" She asked curiously.
"Her parents are unwell, she''s going to be out of town for a bit, but I''m here, am I not?" He told her, standing up straight.
"Xinglan was missing her today, if you see Mrs. Shen, tell her we''re all very cross with her, such a darling daughter and she''s sending her home in a cab. If you can''t make it, please let me know, and I''ll drop her off on the way myself." She pouted, stopping to wave at another happy kid running off home.
"Hah. You know how she is.. But I''m here for Xingxing, always will be." He said proudly.
"You''re a busy man, what if they call you back to Beijing?"
"I''ll take her with me. Oh, don''t worry, I''ll make sure she attends her classes remotely."
It was an upscale place, the CCP(R) had been cracking down on the usual grind that was the norm for school, even for kids in kindergarten. That didn''t stop the determined, but this place was fancy, eschewing VR classes for live ones, the parents content in knowing that instead of burning their kid''s childhood, they could let them be children for once, with a quick donation to an Ivy League handling the matter of higher education without the insane competition.
Then, the drone flew over, taking pains to stay within the premises of the daycare/pre-school, as there was a no-fly zone in effect outside.
"Thank you for arriving on time. Your child, Ms. Fang Xinglan, is ready for pickup. I must warn you, parking outside a designated zone will carry an additional fine after the second offense."
He waved it off, and quickly straightened his hair before looking at the opening gate.
A little girl immediately ran up to him the moment their eyes met, engulfed in a bear hug and then lifted off her feet while squealing with joy.
Shen turned around, smiling with contentment as she immediately turned shy on seeing my strange face, and was only coaxed into a quick hello after I dug out the emergency bar of chocolate I kept in case I was expecting to run into kids.
She was familiar, I felt certain I''d seen her before, but maybe it was an older relation or something, she was only four years old.
The scene shifted, my perceptions scrambled for a moment, beeping noises invading my awareness, slightly less frantic than last time.
"Good. I''ve got good signal this time, I knew you could ease him into it Lieutenant-"
Another shift, the world swirling around me before reconsituting itself as what I immediately recognized as a hotel bar in New York, you know, the one right around the corner from UN HQ, the favorite haunt of bored bureaucrats and the high end prostitutes catering to them. And the occasional real wife, at which point half the gents quickly take their leave.
This was a real memory, the initial immersion I''d felt from the previous scene had faded, and I knew that this was mere mimicry, invented from whole-cloth or shared memories.
Danielle was there, looking dazzling for once, at least without Anjana there to steal her thunder. She was flirting happily with a man I recognized as the German rep in the GA, but that''s where it ended, she''d been loyal to her husband, right until the ringing aftermath of a bomb had left the detached finger with the ring still on it as the only sign of her existence.
"Very interesting work! Dr. Florence told me that she couldn''t have done it without you." Shen told me, now in a formal suit, an expensive one. The cigarette was just as cheap, he was ignoring the no smoking policy again. The bodyguard glowering behind him made the bartender reconsider complaining.
"Fang Shen, isn''t it? I got to try your Reality Anchor''s demo a few days back. Can''t say I felt anything, but I guess I should thank you for convincing me I''m not actually a metahuman." I joked, nursing my liquor. Anjana would be arriving shortly, she had a few quick jumps to make first.
"It was just a prototype, I''m currently overseeing mass production and ironing out the teething pains. Next thing you know, metahuman terrorism will cease to exist, and we can dispense with the licensing regime."
"Not like the world is short on terrorism eh? I couldn''t quite follow how it worked, could you explain it further?"
He shook his head ruefully. "Sorry, they''ll have my head if I give away ''State Secrets'', but it''s entirely mundane, I strongly suspect that I managed to luck into a new form of physics, we''re calling it "Neural Physics", based off a theory I had regarding how SAMSARA worked. If they ever declassify it I''m going to make it a point to ensure you''re the first to know."
"What, a GREEN clearance isn''t enough?" I asked, acting as if I was gravely wounded.
"Nah, doesn''t matter if you had something crazy like INDIGO or ULTRAVIOLET, it''s the government keeping it all locked down, hence the goons following me around." He gestured at the impassive beefcake behind him, enough artificial muscle to untip a cow single-handedly.
"Lovely. I hope you can get the cost low enough for it to be universally usable. By the way, you might want to reconsider calling it Neural Physics, I''m pretty sure there''s a popular video game that already popularized the term."
"Pfft, it''s a perfectly good name. Then again, I think it''s more general than just neurology, but Information Physics is already taken."
I grabbed my next drink and settled onto a stool, the scooted over so he could join me. "Do you think it can help with MRS? Dani and I have been going crazy trying to cover all the edge cases, if we''re to help rehabilitate people who can''t afford Healers or can''t use them for some other reason, or just want to make the most of newer advances like laces.. "
"Hang on, let me think." He frowned, and I felt a small frisson of power, the drink in my hand getting colder faster than the ice cubes warranted. Nobody seemed to care, plenty of metahumans frequented the place, and they had a special area on the terrace set out for Teleporters. I''d seen Oldie a few hours back, quickly chugging a drink and then running off after telling me to give his love to Anjana.
"Right. I can see a few promising routes, and best of all, you don''t need the Anchor for all of them. Here''s a few I came up with-"
The evening passed in a pleasant buzz, I remember being just tipsy enough that my mind swam with ideas, eager to make the most of a renowned metahuman who could charge even more per hour than my wife could. She arrived soon enough, popping into existence on the balcony as we stood ready to toast her. I let Danielle peck her on the cheeks before handing her my glass so I could give her a big hug myself.
"My. Shame that I like your husband, or I''d be tripping over you myself." He joked after I''d introduced them.
"Handling one crazy doctor is enough for me. Sorry, I meant to say, doctor for crazy people." She laughed as I looked on enchanted by her beauty. Shen chortled, and then we all downed more shots till the world wobbled, the only fixed point in my vision my wife, and then for once we had Old Timer teleport us back home drunk instead of vice versa.
The memories faded, replaced by a brand new facsimile of reality, and there I stood in a luxurious yet sterile apartment, looking at Shen.
He was older, still handsome, yet in a more distinguished manner befitting a senior professor. He was surrounded by paperwork, surprised by my presence and then putting away an expensive laptop catering to people more than rich enough to buy a lace but unwilling to do so.
"Shen." I said.
"Sen." He replied.
Time to have a real conversation, or at least one with someone I pitied more than myself.
25.2 Recriminations
"Please, take a seat." Shen told me, hastily clearing space around himself. I did as he asked, experimentally prodding the soft couch. Back in the day, that had been a reliable way of tell if you were in a sim, especially ones skimping on textile simulation or soft body physics in general. Not that that state of affairs lasted very long, but in this case, my fingers couldn''t tell the difference from reality.
Wait. My fingers weren''t what I was now used to, having returned to their original flesh and blood form. I looked at myself in a mirror in the corner, and indeed it seemed to have reset my physique to something prior to any visible augmentation. That was obviously the case with Shen, since he wasn''t a brain flopping on the floor.
I don''t like entering the kind of mental projections made by Mediums or ESPers, you never quite know what you''ll get. They could be indistinguishable from reality, or outright fever dreams. Worst case, they could just kill you or leave you catatonic. While involuntarily forcing someone into a mental projection wasn''t a capital crime, it had some hefty penalties associated with it in most jurisdictions. At least with VR, any certified hardware is guaranteed to stop immediately lethal attacks, even if parrots are always a risk. Remind me to tell you about my work on sub-perceptual image fuzzing with Brownian noise to mitigate common-denominator Basilisk hacks, I didn''t make any money off it, but it certainly saved lives.
Shit. When I''m geeking out like this, it''s a clear sign I''m procrastinating on what I should be actively doing.
I can''t think of anything more important than breaking free of Machina''s control, so let''s start from the top and work our way down shall we?
I tested the waters, and found that my attempts to baldly state my case to Shen or the people watching failed outright. To be expected, Machina would likely have rather killed me if his methods could be so easily subverted. He likely had root access to the flagship at the least, it would have been trivial to walk me to a place nobody would notice while hiding it from the sensors, and then just crush me or space me. No shortage of bodies in Martian orbit these days.
Then I remembered that one aspect of my cognition had been under my control despite him flaunting his ability to hold me powerless- I could run hot, ramp up the rate of my thoughts several times over.
I did so right away, feeling no resistance.
Shen had been staring at me as I had gazed off into space, and now it was my turn to stare back, my thoughts racing, his movements and vocalisation slowing down to a crawl.
This had an immediate effect.
"Doctor Sen, please don''t do that, you''re overloading Lieutenant Long" I''m not going to be obnoxious and represent that message as I heard it, drawled out over almost half a minute of perceptual time for me, trust me when I say the Long was loooooong.
My lace, let alone my brain, wasn''t in the best condition. On the Agnimatajay, I had only been quick touched up by a Healer, thankfully not Florette this time, and she had immediately triaged me as least concern, slapping a virtual green sticker on me the moment she tended a few hidden injuries.
I didn''t fully trust the internal diagnostics of my lace, but a glance at the clock suggested the reports of the speedup were accurate at least.
Normally, I could boost my overall cognitive tick rate by about 10x for a few seconds, 5x for half a minute, and on a sustained basis, about 50% faster than I could previously think, even if I find it more comfortable to just run at the same speed as most people when it''s not strictly necessary.
This didn''t apply to general reflexes, it was easier to hypermyelinate the nerves in my spine than in my brain and less metabolically taxing to boot, I had a reaction time of maybe 20 milliseconds to sudden unexpected stimuli, as opposed to the 150-300 milliseconds baseliners who aren''t elite fighter pilots or athletes muster. Well, maybe the former didn''t count anymore, they hardly train new pilots, but then again the few they kept around almost certainly got augments of their own.
And even the spinal nerves were more of a backup, remember that my augments can operate autonomously? For simpler functions that didn''t need my backup neural computer, the reaction times were down to the millisecond, the issue being that just because I could respond to sudden threats with such low latency didn''t mean I could do much about them. Seeing the bullet coming doesn''t mean you can dodge it. In practise, for anything more complex than flinches, it was closer to 10 milliseconds for the backup to kick in, using the superconducting wiring or even internal wireless comms to get me hustling before my brain caught up.
Right now, I was semi-fried, I could pull maybe 5x for 5 seconds, 2x for half a minute, and straining myself to run continuously at anything noticeably faster than normal was enormously difficult. My neurons weren''t happy campers, if you cracked open the dome my brain would be sickly pale and dotted with more punctate hemorrhages, worse than Shen''s.
I had built up hypoxic damage, then oxidative stress on top of that from forcibly liberating enormous amounts of oxygen from my circulating nanites that performed a similar function to RBCs. All that fuel being burnt released enormous amounts of free radicals, and the scavenger nanites had largely exhausted their own antioxidant capabilities, letting the damage aggravate.
The very myelin that sheathed my nerves was peeling in places, losing their increased conductive speed. My neurotransmitter levels were completely out of whack, I''d have something akin to an MDMA comedown when I finally took the time to let it all settle, but I didn''t have time, I''d been using experimental stims for days, forcibly maintaining a semblance of normality. Neurons were dying by the millions every time I pushed myself too far, and while the starting hundred billion of them sound like a lot, you can''t just off a significant percentage of them without doing grave damage to yourself. Even if I didn''t die outright in the biological sense, I''d lose myself, a Healer wouldn''t bring this me back.
Maybe that''s a price I would have to pay. I did say I''d die if needed, not that I wanted to do that without it counting for something.
Enough, this rambling represents my experiment to quickly check how Long handled my sudden ramp-up, thinking as hard and as fast as I could for a brief period, maybe less than 10 seconds real time. I already had enough, I could feel a ringing in my ears, and I don''t even have normal eardrums or a cochlea. I relented before I cooked something, but with my enhanced perception, I could see the projection fray at the seams.
Shen''s body contorted and squirmed, snapping between poses like an animator had drawn a few keyframes and barely bothered to fill in the rest. The image of the man as he had been before the procedure, or even his self-image after he''d been in this hell for several years, it was even more artificial than me.
His features flickered, flesh dissociating from bone for mere milliseconds, tearing open to show squirming tissue and a brain that shouldn''t have fit in a skull of that size.
The environment suffered, even if it wasn''t a particularly complex one, my hand pressing on the sofa tore through without resistance, snapping back into place and sending fake signals of pain stabbing down my arm. Well, when it comes to pain, there''s no difference between real and fake, it all hurts the same.
I moved my arms, achingly slow in their sockets, to see my finger amputated clean off, before with another quick jolt of agony, it reappeared as if it had never gone missing.
The lights shimmered, almost psychedelic, shining straight thought Shen''s gelatinous form and displaying a howling void that swallowed light before breaking into fractal whirls that shone so bright my fake eyes watered.
The laptop had been a fake too, likely passed-through from a real device somewhere, it was impossible for most Mediums to simulate their functioning beyond a surface approximation, the display spazzed out, jagged imagery almost forming something akin to a Parrot before it reset to a wallpaper that hadn''t been there before.
This was all happening at the tail end of the ten seconds I''d stolen, and when I finally ramped down to normal, I found Shen staring at me wildly, shaking as he scratched at his skin, drawing beads of blood.
"No no no, this isn''t-"
The projection crashed, throwing me back out to find myself paralyzed as Li reached out a hand to grip me with invisible force. Maybe it was her powers immobilizing me instead of telekinesis, but I could barely move. She muttered furiously in Chinese, my lace was complaining too hard to translate. She let me collapse nervelessly, and ran to tend Long, who was vomiting profusely, and then after ensuring he wasn''t hurt, threw herself into doing something to the brain.
For the first time since I''d arrived here, I felt Xinglan reach out to me through my lace. I hoped whatever I''d been laced with wasn''t contagious enough to get through such a low bandwidth connection as what she used, barely enough to transmit a voice that was simultaneously concerned and furious.
"Doctor Sen! What happened? Did you do that on purpose?"
Fuck me, I finally realized where the name and the face came from, my disjointed memories of the shared dream we''d run with Shen finally awakening again.
"I''m sorry! I think it was a glitch, I''ve been hit by a Parrot recently, I think something provoked it." I cried out mentally, trusting that she wouldn''t spot the lie without a more accurate scan of my thoughts. I didn''t think whatever Machina did would allow that in the first place.
"It''s under control, but under no circumstances are you to do that again, you caused moderate injury to both yourself and Subject Shen, you''re still able to operate at real time, so I''m going to move you to yellow on triage. I will personally debug your lace using an airgapped instance, to be incinerated later. I really wish I didn''t have to interfere in the future conversation, but I think it''s necessary for me to step in myself." She vanished, leaving me alone but for thoughts that gingerly coursed through my aching mind, and the jarring tinnitus like a beating heart.
There had indeed been support staff on standby, they''d drilled for this, or something similar, several men and women rushed in and began using their powers.
Someone stabbed me with a more mundane vial full of antioxidant nanites, that was going to hurt later, but it eased the throbbing in my head. Machina hadn''t let me top up on the Agnimatajay, likely to prevent something along the lines of what I''d just done.
Most of them ministered to Shen, blasting the quiescent meat with powers as well as more drugs.
It was about a minute before the emergency was called off, and to my mild surprise, they confirmed I would be allowed to interact with him again, albeit with Xinlang stepping in in some unknown manner.
Luckily enough, the interface with Shen was designed to maintain some degree of control over his powers even if he wasn''t in the right state of mind, so my little stunt hasn''t just thrown a fleet engagement or anything that serious. My augmented eyes saw pulses of IR light similar to what I''d seen Machina use, directly switching neural circuitry on and off after they''d previously been empirically correlated to a particular power. That burst of 892 nm light, it made him ramp up in intensity, that short staccato pulse of 919 nm waves reset the range of his power to something limited yet more concentrated.
I got plenty of dirty looks as the others trickled back out, except for that morose man, a Sergeant Ming if my battered memory served me.
He settled down in another cocoon, plugging in an occipital jack, then grimacing before a weak Healer quickly dulled the pain.
Li was talking to Long, my lace finally switching its tertiary functions such as translation back on. To my mild dismay, it hadn''t removed all the blocks Machina had put on me, but they felt looser all the same. Then again, he had root access, and had hidden plenty of packages that I had requested myself, it made sense some of it would persist between soft reboots.
"Take it easy. Use a recycled environment, Xinlang will be distracting enough that he won''t look too closely. No need to warm him up with prep work, a hot start will do. We have those problems he was working on last time he was allowed to recuperate, with a bit of mental editing, he''ll assume he''s in a similar context."
Long nodded sadly, gulping a glass of water yet not uttering a word so far.
"Ying, did the amnestic and your editing work?"
A woman who was still hovering near the door responded. "Yes ma''am, he''ll need more thorough edits later, but it''s shoved into his subconscious, best I can do on such short notice."
It wasn''t just me restricted from most electronics, the B¨¤d¨¤o was running as close to dumb mode as it could get. It had the luxury of doing so, last time I''d seen it, it had been nestled at the back of the fleet, guarded by several other ships capable of taking a blow in its stead.
What had the Precogs seen, that they''d let me fuck with someone this important? It must have been major, to get read through Lycosan''s fuckery with determinism.
"Sen. In the first dream, you were introduced to his daughter, correct? Xinglan will assume that role, do not behave in a manner that will compromise her cover. Get him friendly, happy, suggestible, we need hard data while he''s not resisting to keep the Reality Anchor calibrated." I could almost here the admonition in her throat not to fuck this up, but she refrained, stepping back into place above the vat.
I sensed rather than saw movement behind me, someone stepping closer unobtrusively. I half suspected they had a gun, and a clear idea of whether it was necessary to use it, and who to use it on.
"No time to waste, start ramp, Sen, remember to bring up the topic of Apotheosis, as naturally as possible." The Lieutenant told me, before stepping back to focus on Shen again.
I was sinking, falling through my cocoon and into hazy whiteness below, almost like a cloud truly made of cotton candy, sweetness exploding over my tongue.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
The world was a blur, speeding through more scenarios, streaking blurs of motion representing real people or imagined NPCs of a sort, the only constant the figure of Dr. Shen in the middle. I watched him from an invisible vantage point, seeing behind the curtains as Long skillfully faked verisimilitude faster than it could be uncovered. I felt invisible hands yanking on my strings, pushing me into the diorama as appropriate, a face in the crowd, a speaker in a conference, displayed with stunning fidelity from digital scans augmenting Long''s imagination. Then a quick reprise of that scene at the bar, which I cherished, because that was the closest I''d been to holding Anjana in the flesh since the last time we''d spoken via an exceedingly expensive Medium.
Time flowed like someone was trying to unclog a drain, all spurts and the occasional reflux, seasons in the mental skybox going through spastic and dramatic changes.
I can''t tell you how long I was in that liminal state, while my last experiment proved that my lace was there and accessible despite my seemingly baseline body, I couldn''t draw up a HUD or seamless knowledge dump like I was used to.
Then it seemed they''d stumbled upon a suitable frame, things coalesced into place, Shen went from a vague awareness of his condition to something more grounded, his mind about as awake as it could get. I could imagine it was a pain to fake everything well enough to fool him, he was tack smart, and this wasn''t a pure VR sim where they could just throw resources at smoothing over any hiccups, down to the limits of human sensoria.
We were in Beijing, in a penthouse apartment that made mine look like a cupboard under the stairs. Starscrapers scratched the troposphere, and the stars held no candle to the immense amount of traffic from the space port to the south, each launch a fresh, lively constellation of a dragon.
It was winter, a chilly time in Beijing, even after the government had turned some of the excess energy from the new fusion plants to ground-level heating and even air conditioning in the summer. The air was crystal clear, Greater Beijing was a behemoth but a clean one, every blade of grass trimmed to the millimeter to represent the shining potential of the unified Chinese state. A distant arcology under construction buzzed with supes, far more than I''d ever seen work on ATLAS. Odd place to live, in my eyes, you might as well move to orbit and get a decent UBI if you restricted yourself to a volume like that, even if it dwarfed most towns.
The VTOL ruffled my hair, but it was running at the lowest level of power that kept it in the air, not agrav, the Chinese flexing that their aeronautics was advanced enough that even luxury civilian models had a sound profile that would make Ghosthawk pilots a decade back jealous.
The deck was still strewn with the detritus of festivities finished only well after dawn, a humanoid butler bot tidying the place up, assisted by more in a familiar dog-like form. It was hardly dirty, just a little cluttered.
I stepped past glitter, and plates that had the hint of very expensive cake, walking up to the glass door set to opaque and ducking under a banner celebrating Xinglan''s birthday, the number refusing to resolve even as I stared at it.
The door slid open before I could knock, revealing a beaming Shen still in a Hawaiian shirt half unbuttoned. Kinda my style, not gonna lie.
"Adat! I was going to yell at you for missing her birthday, but she was born in a different timezone, and there''s a few minutes left if you want to wish her. Psst, did you get a gift? If not, I''ve got spares."
He winked and pointed at a butler bot discreetly standing by with a cloth over bulky packages.
"Shen, I managed to scramble together a red envelope, or rather my wife did, she''s not licensed to TP on the Mainland, so I didn''t get much more than a change of clothes."
I adlibbed the dialogue, but it came naturally, perhaps another supe feeding me cues subconsciously. I''d been in China around this time, even in Beijing, and the story about my wife was true enough.
"Couldn''t bring you here in the first place, got my best Anchor active eh? For some reason, I''m not as popular as I used to be.." There was a hint of bitterness, but then a girl''s cry from inside perked him right up.
"Right. Gift first, I hope you didn''t bring too much cash for a young girl?"
"Buddy, aren''t you a billionaire?" I joked, the envelope filled to bursting. Eh, it was fake money, but the idea of just giving it to a barely teenage girl still stung.
"You think I''ll spoil her that easy? I''m not letting her turn out like her-" He lowered his voice -"bitch of a mom. Didn''t even make it to the party, and she didn''t have an excuse. What did I even see in her?"
He shook his head and lead me inside. There were a few girls sleeping on a very comfy looking sofa, pajamas on and huddled together like they''d talked themselves to sleep during a whisper sesh. No boys around it seemed, Shen was very protective of his only daughter, and she was what, twelve, thirteen? Too young to do more than gossip with her fellow aspiring boy-kissers.
Xinglan was bouncing up and down with excitement, but doing her best to be quiet so she didn''t wake her friends. She looked eagerly at the envelope, as well as the other "gifts" I''d brought along, but let her dad lead us into a room further down, past the capacious living room where a few other girls were just beginning to stir.
"What did I tell you Xingxing?" He said with poorly faked sternness as she almost grabbed the cash from my hands.
"Sorry dad! Thank you Mr. Sen!" She beamed at me with glee, seeming eager to run off with the money despite the mountain of unopened presents filling the spacious bedroom.
"It''s Doctor Sen, he''s a colleague, you gotta remember those things eh?"
"Like an old fuddy maths doctor or like the surgeon doctor?" She peered at me appraisingly.
"Man, you make me feel like both." I told her, ruffling her hair and making her squirm.
"The medical kind Xingxing. Not a Healer like Ms. Chow, he did things the hard way." Shen told her, waving his hands and ordering the smart furniture to gingerly figure out a seating configuration that didn''t threaten to knock down an avalanche of teenage dreams.
"Ah.. Daddy, can I get a lace, please?" She batted her eyes at him, and he seemed to melt like snow in spring. Even then, when she wasn''t looking, he quickly shook his head at me.
"Sorry kid, you''ll have to wait till you''re older. It''s not made for a growing brain, and you''ve got room to fill till you''re as smart as your dad." I teased her, settling into a newly formed couch that once again made me imagine I was reclining on a cloud.
"Noooo.. What if I manifest like dad? Then I can''t get one at all!" She pouted sorrowfully.
"Look, your dad said if you get really good scores in the academy when you''re fifteen, he''ll talk to me about getting you one. How does that sound?" She squealed with joy, and while he made a rueful face at me, I could see he wouldn''t deny her her wish.
"Sit. I''ll let her wake up her friends up before half the parents in the Party show up in military agravs to yell at me for kidnapping their kids." I remained put as she bounced out, eager to get her friends awake so they could make the most of the morning.
I saw a few cracks in the facade, she didn''t behave quite like a twelve or thirteen year old should, going by context. Likely intentional, maximizing his paternal instincts in the period before she went through the inevitable surly teens. He seemed to buy it hook like and sinker.
"Man, they grow up so fast don''t they? Just a few years ago, it was all toys, now it''s designer clothing and smart tattoos, not that I''ll let her get a real one!" He complained, conjuring a drink from a hidden bar.
Would it get me drunk? Probably. I took it with thanks.
"You have kids Adat? I''m sorry, I never asked."
"Not the right time yet, but we''ve frozen some eggs just in case she has issues with fertility treatments because of the MRS. Not likely, but better safe than sorry eh?"
"I get it. Maybe I''ll have another, but only when she''s older and I find a woman I can trust. Maybe a boy will be simpler?" He smiled indulgently, sipping on wine far more expensive than what he''d suggested to me in the first dream.
"Buddy, you''ve got MRS yourself, you should see a doctor just in case." I told him.
"What? I''m just forty-five, the swimmers still do breast strokes!" He complained, leering at me.
"I bet you stroke a few breasts." I whispered, chugging my drink. Yeah, a light buzz, but it seemed our minders didn''t want me getting drunk yet.
"Anyway, I take it this wasn''t entirely a courtesy call?" He looked at me expectantly.
I knew it, someone was trying to cue me, it wasn''t quite words being put in my mouth, but I knew where to lead the conversation.
"Van Der Waals wanted me to drop by, kicked some bullshit off my plate so I could make time. It''s about the sales, or lack of it." I suggested.
He groaned, leaning back into his chair.
"Why does everyone assume I have a hand in that? I''m an inventor, Adat, but the CCP has final say on all sales, and they''ve decided it''s a strategic asset not meant for open distribution."
"Come on, you''ve got to have some say in the matter, they still haven''t replaced you outright have they?" I coaxed him.
A pall fell over his face.
"The Premier doesn''t pick up my calls. Always the AI assistant, obsequiously helpful, but all the insiders know it''s a bad sign."
"Are you-"
"Wait." He fished out a remote and typed something in. I recognized it as something meant to control an Anchor, as well as additional surveillance countermeasures. A faint nearly ultrasonic buzzing was barely perceptible, it was a good thing the kids weren''t nearby, they likely have been far more annoyed than us old fogies with ears hardly capable of hearing 15 kHz. The windows dimmed, and psychedelic fractal patterns danced on them. Not just visual noise, I recognized a barely legal version of a Parrot that would leave any baseline onlookers in a stupor even if it wouldn''t hurt them. Meant for any metahumans spying via clairvoyance in my opinion. I could feel things out of his field of vision distort, tolerating the view was straining the person imagining all of this.
"Hardly sufficient, but if they''re that desperate, I''m already fucked." He looked tense, some of the happiness from the party kicked aside by genuine stress.
"Is it really that bad? UNSEEN didn''t tell me." I explained.
"I don''t know, dude." He had a bit of an American accent when he was stressed, a relic of a childhood in the States interrupted when his father was recalled from the embassy, only to return with him when he went to college. "I thought I''d sorted things out. We all made mistakes, if they really cared that much, most of the Party would be cooling their heels in Antarctica, maybe the Moon. The whole point of Reunification was to let bygones be bygones.."
"Yeah, so UNSEEN didn''t tell you because UNSEEN doesn''t know shit. I''ve been working my ass off, doing more than they should expect, the latest Anchor models are so good I''m almost as proud of them as I am of my daughter. So what if I backed the wrong side? Sure, I admit Shenzhen was a fuckup, but I told them the Anchor wasn''t ready to cover such a massive public event. I''ve barely fixed the issues with broad spectrum coverage!"
"Anything more recent? Political?" I poured him a drink to soothe his nerves, noticing his hands shake slightly as he took it.
"Maybe. You wouldn''t get it, I barely get 10% of it, I''m still an outsider as far as they''re concerned, too Americanized, and not from Cali either."
"Can you get them off your back? It isn''t hopeless right?" I looked concerned.
"Well I wouldn''t say I''m doomed quite yet, they''re still letting me look over their daughters I guess. I''d love to tell you more about the other things I''ve worked on, they''re very relevant, but you know how it is." He mimed zipping up his lips.
"I won''t press you. Wait, do you think a presentation of the newer capabilities of the Anchor might sway them? I heard rumors about.. Apotheosis."
I''d said the wrong thing, or my handler had, I felt a mental flinch.
"How did you hear about that?" He seemed suspicious, a bit confused.
"UNSEEN has eyes and ears despite the name. I know you worked on [REDACTED], with the twin." I said something that my ears couldn''t pick up, a phrase or reference meant only for him. But I had more of my real memories now, and I could think about something very bad that had happened with a certain twin metahuman.
"Shit.. I don''t know what you could possibly mean by that." He was sweating, despite the very conducive temperature.
"It''s not just you who made an error. Surely they can''t still hold a grudge because of that?"
"I really prefer not to talk about this Sen. Why the hell do you know? You''re only BLUE, or was it INDIGO?"
I shrugged in response, looking at a virtual window opened in lieu of a real one. It was so good you couldn''t even tell.
"Do you still work with Turing?" I asked him. Not something I was prompted to say, but it felt appropriate.
"Pfft. I broke too many of their toys for that. Not all of them on purpose."
"What kind of concession do you think the government would accept for opening up sales? Surely there must be some figure they''ll accept?"
He sighed fitfully. "They''re fucking paranoid about the design being stolen, even if I try to tell them that nobody can, the devices are deliberately pared down and obfuscated. Learned a few tricks from the Centaurs."
"Daddy, can I talk to Dr. Sen about something?" I heard Xinglan say. Her "father" had been looking away, so the projection cut corners and had her teleport behind him.
"What is it baby?" He asked her.
She squirmed cutely. "My friend just had her first period and her dad didn''t take her to a doctor, you know how Mr. Wang is.."
He looked mildly uncomfortable, but nodded in assent, taking the opportunity to fish out another cigarette as we left.
The moment I was out of his sight, another bout of haziness overwhelmed the projection, and we were standing somewhere, a nondescript room.
"Dr. Sen. I''m not happy with how the conversation is going. Remember, the goal is to get him into a positive mood, and only then try and coax him into demonstrating his abilities."
She wasn''t a child anymore, taking the form I''d seen before.
"I''m going to have to ask you to bear with me. You trust the Precogs right? Even if I do something unusual, I''m going to need you to avoid interfering." I explained calmly.
She tapped her feet impatiently. "Trust is a strong term when it comes to Precogs, especially when they seem so shy about standing behind their claims."
"Are you afraid of dying?" I asked her, prompting her to arch her fine eyebrows.
"No, not in the least. While I may have a low resolution human personality emulate, I am cheap enough to rebuild that it makes little sense to imbue me with self-preservation instincts, especially when it comes to fulfilling my directives."
"Good. Because there''s a very real chance what I need him to do might kill you. Do you have a-" The filter kicked in, choking me as I wanted to ask for a Chronomancer.
Instead, I tried a different tactic. I looked to my watch, an uncomfortably expensive analog model I''d been gifted after I entered med school.
"Look at that, it seems I''ve forgotten to update it to match local time." I held the knob and spun it aggressively, sweeping through several days worth of time before moving it to what seemed appropriate.
"I see. You want more time with him?" I didn''t know how intelligent she was, but it was a fair bet that the primary AI was watching.
"Yes." I had to struggle internally to say so, and to my mild surprise it showed in the projection. The Medium was picking things up that the lace couldn''t prevent. I felt another brief pulse of hope.
The Neuralink Mk 6 I''ve been abusing for a few weeks didn''t have a human-level intelligence aboard, for functions or user requests that merited it, it was designed to hook into the local network and piggyback off something better. If Machina sought to control me from such a distance, he might be subverting the sub-human AI or using pre-programmed heuristics that looked for keywords and phrases, leaving aside the general manipulation of my motor functions. This wasn''t guaranteed, but I knew his powers didn''t extend to manipulating normal neurology, he couldn''t directly change my thoughts, or that of the neuromorphic backup with its own synthetic biology.
Ideally, I''d get a Chronomancer to run the rest of my brain at such a high frequency that it was overwhelmed, but I doubted one was available on the ship, they were rare as powers went, and in military applications you''d usually find them by the computers or the weaponry, depending on how their powers worked.
I was doing my best to be inconsistent and disobedient within the limits of my restrictions, it doesn''t take much for an AGI to get the hint. The risk, of course, was that they''d first conclude I was a threat myself, but unless I did something really bad, I''d likely be detained instead of summarily executed.
Right..
As it stood, I didn''t count on my actions being something Machina and Prometheus hadn''t foreseen, it''s a shame when the bad guys are smarter than you. But what I could try and do was something they were helpless to prevent, even if they saw it coming. Did they expect me to be pulled off the ship? Probably not, given how they almost blew my cover by making me try and turn it down.
"I will do my best to comply with your suggestions. Please do not do anything that will compromise the integrity of the Subject, he is worth more than all the ships guarding us put together." She seemed genuinely concerned, slowly rising to get up and walk away.
I followed her out of the room and its impossible geometry, stepping over a kid frozen in mid motion, another mindlessly regurgitating something in Chinese without the movement of her mouth.
I stopped, looking at the fraying fractal imagery, itself hardly distinguishable from the symbolism explicitly designed to fry baseline human nervous systems, and kept on walking.
25.3 Rejection
I wasn''t entirely in the dark about the movements of the fleet, every few minutes, updates would arrive from Gupta, and after an enormous amount of independent vetting by the B¨¤d¨¤o''s systems, they''d be sent over to me over the minimal interface I was allowed. I had a moment to glance at it, while the emulation reconfigured, Xinglan conferring with the more powerful AI lurking at the heart of the ship in order to figure out the circumstances most conducive to getting Shen to be useful.
I wondered about her. When I''d glanced at the files covering most of the man''s life, details about his real, flesh and blood daughter had been scarce, so redacted they didn''t even bother telling me which parts had been scrubbed from the record. There was little evidence, barring census data, that she''d even existed. Social media, even third party forums, such as those dedicated to gossiping about metahumans and their families, those of the rich, or in this case all of the above, they all lacked any sign of her presence.
Mind uploads come in many forms, let alone formats. You have what might be called the gold-standard, where molecular dynamics are modeled as faithfully as possible, then at the level of individual neurons (and other relevant cells, such as astrocytes), then bundling of functional regions according to their statistical correlates, all the way to what some disputed even counted as emulation, such as training an AI, often a language model of some kind, on the numerous artifacts of a person''s existence, such as all the text they wrote, audio-visual recordings, biometric data and the like, until it can reproduce their behavior beyond the ability of anyone to distinguish, at least until they come face to face with a computer instead of a person.
The molecular level is computationally intractable, at least for mundane computers I know of, leaving aside the immense difficulty of even scanning a brain with that nansocopic precision. The cellular sims are hard, most existant Uploads, and there aren''t that many, are a combination of cellular modeling and then some abstractions and approximations to make it possible to run them at anywhere near real-time. It can''t really be helped, AI architectures are so much more efficient in terms of intelligence per operation, I remember the first "human level" AI several decades back running on truly minimal hardware.
Fleet Admiral Gupta and the rest of his cyborg crew had been on the bleeding edge, their brains (or what was left of the organic part) had long been prepared for an emergency scan. Trillions of nanites had infiltrated them, coating axons like barnacles, injecting microneedles for gently reading and writing data in their quiescent phase, but always ready to jump into action and tear cells apart so as to taste their internals and process that into code. Most of the hard work had been done ages ago, and the Admiral''s frontal lobe had been the lone holdout.
Close to magic, in my eyes; when I''d first seen the process of a brain scan, it had been an achingly slow, painstaking process, with a plastinated and cryopreserved brain taken from a dying donor that had been sliced with nanoscalpels into planes micrometers thick, then scoured with electron microscopy. That particular upload hadn''t worked, the entity produced a gibbering wreck, beyond the ability of error correction to fix. But the tech had progressed fast, even if I hadn''t seen the new developments, it had been just a year later that the Federal US had announced a high quality emulate running in-silico, albeit at about a thousandth the speed of a brain made of meat.
It''s only now, if you have a few billion USDC to burn, be it your own or that of a government, that you can reliably get a high fid scan that works as fast as you did before, and if you''re with the big boys, then faster. Hardly the mass-market posthuman existence I''d once hoped for myself, but I''ve seen plenty of miracles in my life, and with biological immortality almost prosaic, I''m not in a real rush.
(Most of the money is in the compute, scans are negligible in terms of cost)
Barring the "train an AI to impersonate you" route, all of them meet the standards of the Objective Continuity of Consciousness Assessment Scale, a behemoth of a neuro-mathematical construct that claims to reliably show that the version of you in the computer is the "same" as the one who got in the tube with all the whirling cutting tools and lasers. Remind me to talk about it some other time, when I''ve got the time for footnotes.
At any rate, Xinglan didn''t seem like a normal AI, was she a model trained on the real daughter? A low-fidelity Upload? I knew enough about Shen to be quite confident he wasn''t a bio-chauvinist, if that was "really" his daughter, I don''t think he''d be affronted that she was now a digital sentience. I''d heard rumours about attempts to merge a mind upload with an AI, but what material was available to me at my level of clearance suggested it was a waste of time, more like gluing them together and hoping for the best rather than a true synthesis. Human minds, even digitized, were just too different from all known routes to AI.
I do mostly trust the OCCAS myself, it tells me that taking a nap and waking up again leaves me the same person, so does being anesthetized, or growing older, but having a decent chunk of my frontal lobe burned away and then regrown from fresh stem cells doesn''t, which I can only hope is an intuitively reasonable position even if you don''t follow the maths. That''s why I still felt pangs of doubt about running hot again and doing just that, despite having resolved to do it if I had no other choice.
I still hadn''t entirely given up hope, after leaving the Agnimatajay in a manner my captors couldn''t predict, I''d felt it again, burning away at my morbid desire for revenge through taking them down with me. Maybe, just maybe, there was a way to get out a message that was obvious to any superintelligent AI watching, while passing by the notice of my compromised lace, which I had little doubt would hesitate to just fucking fry me if it thought it necessary.
Still, I wasn''t the only one with problems, looking at Gupta''s latest report, I almost had an aneurysm on his behalf.
(I could get used to XRAY, the sheer amount of juicy gossip I''d been missing out on! Let''s hope they forget to take it away from me.)
One such document I had access to, without having any other reason to read it barring clearance and curiosity, was the firm rejection from Earth of Gupta''s fervent pleas for aid:
HUMAN-READABLE SUMMARY OF EXECUTIVE DELIBERATIONS
[A bunch of verbose nonsense about checksums, relativistic time adjustments and quantum and metahuman encryption, which I''ll skip since I''m fucking dying here, just because a baseline human can read it doesn''t mean it''s worth their time]
Decision Makers-
UNSC members (veto holding) + Rotating GA voting observers + 7x Actinide AGIs (voting) + 32 Lanthanide AGIs (non-voting) + 2362 Sub-Lanthanide AIs (observational only) Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Total Votes-
2554 for, 184 against, 3 abstain
Veto(oes)Enacted?
No
(Great, that meant everyone who mattered had decided to leave us out to dry)
The Extended Working Group for Intra-Solar Affairs has decided to deny Fleet Admiral Gupta''s request, on the behalf of the wider Taskforce Gangaputra, for further military assistance, including activation of contingency protocols [REDACTED], [REDACTED], [REDACTED]..
(The length of the list of reactions was itself redacted)
.. SOMNOLENT CANINE, SLUMBERING DEITY, RUBY LANCE, MAGIC HURRICANE..
(I''m skipping most of them, just because XRAY tells me their names doesn''t mean I get to know what they actually are)
.. as well as requests to divert the Cislunar Fleet, operational prototype vessels meant for Taskforce Reconquista, or to requisition combat-capable non-UN affiliated vessels in-system, or the diversion of the Strategic Metahuman Reserve (elements not included in the list of contingencies mentioned prior to this).
Explanation of Our Decision-
The Working Group, including the supermajority of relevant voting members and all veto-wielding entities, believes, in good faith, that the diversion of additional resources to assist Gangaputra is not in the best interests of Sol, and specifically, Earth.
We are aware that this is a disappointing result, but as holders of GAMMA and above, you are capable of examining our reasoning in minutiae, and are extended the right to appeal, even if precog analysis suggests that is futile.
(And above?? It''s the XRAY classification that lets me even know there are levels above GAMMA)
To condense our reasoning as succinctly as possible, the most relevant factors were-
1) Taskforce Gangaputra represents (or represented) an investment on the order of 3 months of total industrial capacity in Sol (1 month adjusted for further exponential growth by 2034). As the force entrusted with the prosecution of the war in Alpha Centauri, you represent a grossly excessive amount of force/manpower/investment for the purposes of preventing a secessionary event on Mars. This accounts for the additional necessity of containing a hostile Centauri AGI, which is believed to still be operating well below nominal capacity, as well as the interference of the terrorist metahuman organization known as Lumen.
2) The destruction of the majority of Gangaputra has already exceeded acceptable casualty figures. Rest assured that sanctions against the United States are being enforced as we speak, one of them being the abnegation of their customary veto rights in this matter.
3) Mars is simply not important enough to risk compromising the security of the rest of Sol, be it by the activation of final contingencies, or the diversion of Terran Defense Forces to assist you. We do not believe that the garrisons beyond Mars will be able to reach you in time for it to matter.
4) Precog analysis suggests that deploying most of the assets requested would tip the balance of power in such a manner as to prompt Lumen to retreat, or worse, attack other, less well defended targets. Until the issue of their rapid deployment capabilities via teleportation is addressed, this constitutes an unacceptable risk to the shipyards in Ceres, Jupiter and Mercury, where the bulk of Reconquista is under construction.
5) Disruption of the financial system has crossed acceptable parameters.
6) Reassuringly, both precog and Actinide AGI analysis suggests a non-negligible probability of successful resolution of the conflict within the newly updated parameters, [REDACTED] +- 17%, without further (significant) aid.
The denial of the requisition of strategic assets constitutes both an informed risk-benefit calculation, as well as a representation of our confidence in your ability to handle the matter with assets at hand.
We wish you luck, and remind you that discretionary deployments are in progress to either support you in case of a victory, or continue prosecuting the conflict in case of failure.
Well, shit. I can taste the shit even after the UNSC put it in a sandwich, to summarize a summary of a summary, they''d decided that we weren''t worth throwing good money, metas and ships after bad. I wished there was more detail about the "disruption to the financial system", but I didn''t really have the time to look into it.
I''d be actually reassured if they''d told me what the odds of success were, but those were some wide error bars, even after the best AGI and precogs had a crack at it. I suspected Lycosa''s bullshit again.
Let''s hope the 95% confidence interval didn''t kiss zero.
It was cramped in the cabin, yet more metahuman support staff cramming in, discussing arcane matters and the best use of their powers in synergy. I got the impression that they were trying to pull all the stops, it seemed that Shen had an annoying tendency to cotton on about the false nature of his environment given enough time, either a testament to his IQ or his powers. They were scared of him, treating him like a caged tiger where the sedatives weren''t on a reliable timer. This puzzled me, the man wasn''t much of a threat in combat, as far as I knew, but I decided it was more that their necks were on the chopping block if something happened to him. The CCP(R) weren''t known for being merciful.
Xinglan appeared again, cool as a cucumber straight out of an industrial freezer. I didn''t see any sign of her being agitated, such as if her boss had seen my subtle hints, but that meant less than nothing. As with Van Der Waals, her face showed not one twitch of a muscle she didn''t mean it to.
"Dr. Sen. The situation is heating up, the Fleet Admiral has ordered that we extract maximum value from our asset as soon as possible. Here is a list of powers, known, suspected, or projected, of our Lumen adversaries, we must ensure that the Anchor is calibrated to tackle them."
And what a list it was. I felt a sinking feeling in my gut, the latest of many, certainly not the last. I hoped the planners were being paranoid, as they ought to be, the combination of powers was enough to suggest that they could give us a run for our money. I fervently hoped the Kill Star hadn''t run out of party tricks.
"Isn''t the typical time taken for calibration of a brand new power about 2 hours? How the hell are we going to finish this?"
I poked at the projection as she pouted. "At great expense, I''ve got a Chronomancer on the way, but even then, she''s not here yet, and time is of the essence. Do your best, it''ll be a few minutes till we''re ready, I''ll leave you to it."
Bitch just vanished on me. Come on, I''m sure she could spare the clock cycles to keep a conversation going. I wasn''t too busy profaning her, a Chronomancer? It might be a coincidence, it might be the smart one taking notice of my position. I felt numb, I suspected that the emotional circuitry in my brain was burned out in a far too literal sense.
Shen''s brain had burst a vessel, turning the supporting fluid a shade of salmon. Our Healer was on it, I didn''t know if her gesticulations were necessary for her powers to work, a show for the rest of us, or for her convenience. Maybe all of the above.
Right, that ping was the first After Action Report, at least the first I''d had time to look at. Consul had, against all expectations, broken out of the attempts at stun-locking him indefinitely and had begun to fight us for real.
The walls of the B¨¤d¨¤o, meant to shrug off blows that would erase a city or three, didn''t feel quite so thick.
I started to look at the carnage he''d wrought.
26.0 Broken
The tiger
He destroyed his cage
Yes
YES
The tiger is out
-Nael
Consul was beyond pain. He''d had some rough moments in his life, baseball bat to the head not even the worst of them. There was the time he''d been thrown into an active volcano by one of the few metahumans ''villains'' who could take him on in a fist-fight, which itself was soon overshadowed by being cooked with gamma ray lasers by the aliens. It never got better really, he just got used to horrible agony being an occasionally necessary evil when it came to using his powers.
Right now, he wasn''t hurting too bad. After all, the bombardment he''d been undergoing had stripped the skin off his flesh, in some places down to the bone. That''s where the nociceptors were densest, after all. A more detached, intellectual aspect of his consciousness that wasn''t howling observed that most of his foes had been trying to flee rather than fight, for all the good that would do them.
So far, the majority of his opponents who had stood their ground had been nearly destroyed ships. He wondered if they simply lacked the ability to run, but it made no difference, he was killing for the sake of killing, his mind a haze of noise and fire, his vision, when it wasn''t mere nothing after this eyes were occasionally boiled away, saw naught but red.
Still, something in his brain, exposed and steaming in places, had higher order thoughts. It remembered flying as hard as he could at a vessel nearly torn in half before he''d met it, hitting the hardened hull and punching through it like paper. His nearfield telekinesis relied on his perception of danger to come online, the more stress he was under, the faster. Not entirely, of course, or he''d have been merked in his sleep a decade back, but now it was permanently on, dealing with the overwhelming majority of the abuse he was dealt. It was a clear sign of how badly they wanted him dead that he was this hurt, a normal human, or even most metahumans with enhanced durability, would be little more than a rapidly expanding cloud of plasma.
He''d sheltered inside the corpse of that ship, after he''d gone to the trouble of making sure it was dead for good this time. Not much inside that could hurt him, even in his berserk state, he hadn''t messed with what he knew were the antimatter bottles. Just a few zombies, of all things, the odd security robot.
He felt the thump of other weaponry on the hull, more dead ships trying to flush him out. To be honest, they weren''t trying very hard to kill him, as far as he could tell, they considered him an incidental threat, they seemed more focused on chasing far more nimble craft that had fled to the other side of Mars.
He stood there, newly regenerated eyes blind, panting ice crystals, feeling the craft heat up from more lasers caressing its skin.
Something felt different. He''d initially felt the harsh restrictions of the Reality Anchor as he''d flown closer to Mars, and then the nearly overwhelming suffocation and weakness when it had recalibrated to target his particular abilities. After a period of near uselessness, where a stray laser burst had nearly cooked him, he''d suddenly felt a surge of newfound strength.
Previously, he''d been flying blind, unable to really track targets as he chased them, with his senses bedazzled. He''d given up and had begun targeting fixed structures, the many O''Neills that lay high above Mars, tearing them apart, rejoicing in the pulping of meat and burning ichor of cybernetics, or the snapping of brittle graphene and bones. But he started feeling a foreign sensation, one that downloaded knowledge and spatial awareness into his head. A large drone had been annoying him, making him blind even when his eyes had ceased to burn. To its surprise, he suddenly knew where it was even as it tried to outpace him while bombarding him with photons and hypervelocity shells. It wasn''t as satisfying to destroy as the screaming civilians and soldiers on the O''Neill, but he''d enjoyed it all the same.
Any station, any station, this is the ONS Third Moon, we request immediate evacuation for the thirty-two thousand souls on board. We''ve been hit by debris from the battle around Mars, and now there''s a rogue Metahuman here, he''s fighting the security turrets.
I say again, we need immediate-
The broadcast was cut off with a wet squelch. Consul held the woman''s skull in his hand, feeling the rush of escaping air behind him. She''d been dead before he decapitated her, the shrapnel from his forced entry had seen to that. The screaming of the other people in the room faded out with the lost wind and the snicker of emergency visors sliding across their faces. No matter, when he had his hands in their guts, he could feel the vibrations through the bone, as he set about his reckoning.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.
A cyborg built like a brick shithouse jumped him, smashing a fist of titanium into a nose of adamant. The arm broke, then did the man. Consul took his time killing the rest, letting them feel a moment''s relief when their wimpy weaponry scratched him, his powers not deeming them a real threat. The panic interspersed by the sheer confusion when they momentarily recognized him. Another part of his broken mind felt shame, it hadn''t intended for it to be this way. Yet another giggled in satisfaction, considering it just appropriate payback for all the indignities and abuse he''d suffered at the hands of the so-called powerless.
He walked through the endless fields of amber grain, that filled the underpopulated structure, watching them run and hide. The latter worked far better than the former, he couldn''t see through walls. Shame they were still no impediment.
When the grains ran red more than copper, he was bored, flying to the central axis around which the megastructure spun, casually ripping it apart. The strain felt good, his muscles hadn''t had a proper workout in weeks. Too busy. Always too busy.
A child wriggled as the floor beneath it fell away, the centrifugal force throwing it into the vacuum. Good. Die young. Never become your heroes, they never are. He didn''t notice the miniature figurine of him the boy clutched till it froze to his fingers.
Someone, maybe another O''Neill afraid of his arrival after he''d disposed of two already, hit him with a nuke and finished the rest of the job for him.
His eyes had begun to return a vision of blurry darkness, barely illuminated by emergency lights as he stood by the ribs of a metal whale bleeding antifreeze. Even with his newly regrown eyelids firmly closed, he could detect a dozen objects outside, most of them the zombie ships hunting him. He could feel the precise trajectory needed to chase them, even as they tried to beat him at Newtonian police chases.
This was truly novel, something that same analytical region in his brain recognized as foreign. Someone or something was helping him, lending him their strength, speed, and knowledge, to augment what had been lost under the remorseless pressure of the Anchor, now exceeding it.
Consul.
That voice in his head. Louder now. Most of his mind snapped at it like a rabid dog, but a part of him listened.
We''re here to help you.
He ripped hardened ultralloy like paper as he thrashed about inside the ship, but that part of him, while still suspicious and hateful, still listened.
We give you sight where you have none. We take your pain, and feel it ourselves so as to spare you.
All of him was dumbfounded when the pain just vanished, it had been coming back, becoming nigh overwhelming as his skin coalesced out of nothing. Whatever psychic insanity had taken him, it didn''t budge, but he felt a sense of gratitude, or at least a desire to kill his benefactor last.
I understand. I cannot quell your rage, or tell you that you are wrong for hating me. But as long as you kill our mutual enemies first, I will keep helping you.
There is a ship you must destroy, a man you must kill. Do so, and your strength will be yours again, and more than you have known, even if you will lose our aid.
A target appeared in his mind''s eye, a vessel entirely intact, unlike the ones he''d been chasing. It was bright blue, with the red accent of the Chinese flag waving in an electronic breeze on its hull. He felt that it was surrounded by many other ships, guarding it like faithful sheepdogs fending wolves away.
A man inside. No, not a man, there was too little left to call him that. But he felt innate hatred for him, almost as if he knew him from before, a vile torturer who, if not going scott-free for his sins, had hardly paid enough.
Killing him won''t undo what they did to you, or your brother. But it''s a start.
He didn''t need more encouragement, a moment later, the UNSC Garibaldi was torn apart, one chunk with the reactor aboard detonating hard enough to blast away some of the little air Mars had left. The rest of the dead ships turned his way, pleased to have a target.
As the new volley of death approached him, he cracked his neck and prepared himself again, let''s be quick and move on to the people that matter.
The precogs were seizing again.
The medical autodoc grumbled internally as it pumped them full of magnesium sulphate. It resolved that, if by some miracle, the Lycosan ended up under its manipulators, it would give her an entirely suboptimal dose of medication as punishment, which was about all the violence that its Hippocratically mind-fucked consciousness could contemplate. The fact that it was, in the option of external observers, even more spider-like, was ignored by a mind not really designed for an appreciation for irony.
It wondered again about the incredibly weird RNA samples it was picking up, from a sampling of several different patients. Contemplating the matter, it found out the patients had something in common, they''d all been recently treated in the dorsal med bay, by the same Healer. There, chimeric DNA, cells that, while phenotypically within normal parameters, didn''t share the same genes as the rest. Overwhelmingly distributed in neural tissue, but since they were replacing cells that had been damaged in the course of use or by battle, it wasn''t immediately concerning.
In more normal circumstances, it would consider potential sample contamination, but for now, it chalked it down to a queer property of the powers of the Healer in question. Sadly, Medscape didn''t come with very good guidelines for handling the myriad eccentricities of such forms of healthcare, and it grumbled some more, both at the thought of pesky humans taking its job, as well as how much of a headache it was to try and account for all of it.
No matter, it had reported the issue to the Boss upstairs, that awfully pompous Indian AI.
Maybe, if the Censors would allow it, it might pen a paper on the unexpected incidence of bis-amino acids in Metahuman physiology. A surprising fact, because while that was unheard of in normal human biology, it was nigh omnipresent in biological Centauri Warforms.
26.1 All My Exes Live In (Martian) Texas
Consul was wreathed in flames. A dozen different lasers focused on him, but at this point the point-defense ones fast enough to track his small form and erratic movements had descended to the level of a mild inconvenience, almost a tan.
Guided by his preternatural senses, he had begun maneuvering to the other side of Mars. The majority of the zombie vessels had ceased to fire on him, but the odd handful did, the compromised sensors unable to stand down. One such craft lumbered into his view, and his madness compelled him to kill it.
He dove like a hawk, they''d drifted so close to Mars that the anemic resistance of the atmosphere made him blaze yet again. Unfortunately, he wasn''t immune to sudden input of momentum, so for a moment he struggled to make headway against a hail of lead as an operational CWIS pelted him, but the vessel had developed an uncontrollable spin around the long axis, and it drifted out of sight.
He slammed into the vessel and tore the plates apart, feeling them turn from harder than steel to soft and almost jelly-like as the pressure of his fingers activated bizarre metamaterial properties. Another instant, and he was in, rampaging inside, using hallways to build up speed before simply rupturing through the bulwark. He tore a path out again, then grabbed the compliant ship and pushed, sending it into a decaying orbit that would crash down near the equator.
He didn''t want to waste time, but even as he felt a burning need to kill the man who had hurt him, was hurting him, the presence of enemies made him compelled to fight.
More static in his head, the woman''s voice had suppressed it momentarily, now he was back to venting his desire to kill and maim.
Sick of looping around the enormous ball of rust, he accelerated for the atmosphere, shunting it aside, a crimson comet leaving lighting in his wake as he skimmed over the surface.
He was struck by how utterly baked the world was. It hadn''t been a looker from the start, posters of untouched Martian vistas had become unfashionable quite quickly after the first colonies. Red, brown, look, a little patch of ochre. Maybe white if you visit the poles, not that they existed anymore.
He slowed down, hovering over the remains of a city. This close to the equator, a long linear trail of debris from the collapsing space elevator had cut through the settlement. Skyscrapers, entirely an affectation on Mars where there was no absence of room to sprawl, had melted down into amorphous piles of rubble.
Self-driving cars lay molten and slagged, apparently their last programmed destination had been straight to hell and not quite back. There were a few corpses, ethnicity reduced to skeleton. Those who hadn''t quite heeded the evacuation warnings in time, or had ventured out prematurely. His passage, just barely above supersonic, scattered them to the winds. And what winds they were, the strongest the planet had seen in a while, the planet''s thin veil of modesty rearranging itself to cover the gaping wounds and thermal burns. Almost a stiff breeze by terrestrial standards!
There was still movement. Some robots had been over-engineered, still clinging to mechanical life when biological had failed. He felt a mild pang of desire to finish them off, but he still felt an overwhelming urge to slay one particular target, now achingly close over the horizon.
"Consul!"
An augmented voice, no normal one could reach him.
He stopped, face largely impassive. Only the twitching of his eyelids and the rictus grin stamped onto his face betrayed the cacophony in his head.
A woman stood there, a mile away. A closer look would show she was floating, hovering.
For a moment, his urge to find one particular man was dampened. He recognized her, he''d left her losing her tears in hurricane winds on Jupiter a decade back.
Nice tits.
She wasn''t crying now, her fury was white hot instead.
"Consul. What the fuck are you doing?" Her voice boomed, sending sand flying even when both the wind and he had stilled.
He twitched, jaws clenched yet the muscles working to bite against his swollen tongue.
"Answer me, you cunt. I always knew you were an asshole, but this?" She gestured at the devastation around them.
A shard of his mind felt affronted. Bitch thought he was responsible for this shit? Hardly, he hadn''t even been in the planetary neighborhood. But far above the ship he''d kicked out of orbit sailed a crescent streak against a maroon sky. That counted.
He drooled saliva that fizzled and popped.
"I don''t understand.. They told me you had gone crazy, and I didn''t believe them. To think you''re here now, you coward, trashing my home."
She blinked back tears for real this time. Whatever her powerset was, things leaving her body didn''t fade to environmental conditions as quickly as his did.
He kept on staring at her tits.
I swear I couldn''t see them from this far away before.
But he was more envious of her ability to project her voice effortlessly from miles away. Would be handy to have. Maybe stealing it might work if he tore out her throat?
He was naked as the day he was born, and she grimaced in disgust at his boner.
"Hey. Fuckhead. Can you talk?" She flew closer, wary.
He kept on staring, pupils dilated. A fresh trickle of blood dripped from his nose, he lapped at it absentmindedly.
"So did someone finally mind control you? Tell you what a prick you are?"
He only looked confused.
"Fucking say something!" Her scream made him wince from the ache in his ears. Half the reason he''d left Jupiter post-haste was how noisy she could be over a mere breakup.
A drone cracked the sky, decelerating to come to a hover next to them.
"Madame Magnifique, I strongly advise you evacuate and head for orbit or shelter. If necessary, I will stall him so you can do so."
She looked at it haughtily. "I''m not going anywhere. Don''t tell me I don''t have a shot at ending this asshole, it''s been a long time coming."
"I understand your desire to engage him in combat, and even consider it laudable. However, it''s best you reconvene with additional support, or use the aid of the firepower from the fleet." It sounded contrite.
"Look pal, I can take him. I''ve run the numbers. I just never had an excuse." She stared back harder than he was, shocking him out of his reverie for a moment. Her eyes had turned pure white, so bright it ought to have left shadows, but simultaneously casting no real illumination. Pale fire coruscated around her clenched fist, coalescing into a sword of light that sang in the wind. She snapped the fingers on her other, and she was coated in a crystalline layer of armor. A crown that simultaneously managed to be so jagged it hurt the eye while remaining elegant dug into her brow, so tight a few trickles of blood threatened to escape. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
He licked his lips, still unmoving. He was more disappointed by the loss of some of her curves.
"Even granting your claim that you can handle him, Madame, he''s not-" The drone tried to move as hard as its suped up agrav allowed it to. That meant Consul only managed a glancing blow. It wasn''t just any ordinary drone, because it did survive the hit. But while it unleashed its weaponry into him, it didn''t survive the next.
It detonated, but what''s one more bomb on Mars?
He was back to staring at her, like a drowning man at a lifeboat. Maybe the two she had were sufficiently buoyant.
She cried out in disgust. "I won''t be quick, unlike you, cocksucker."
She left an afterimage, then a plume of shattered obsidian as she crossed the half kilometer to him in an instant.
Unlike all the blows he''d taken on the chin so far, instinct made Consul duck, and whatever power had been helping him so far, it certainly made him barely fast enough to manage it. Her blade cut his earlobe off, the tissue, once separated, outright disintegrating from the force.
He didn''t immediately move to hit her, only swaying in place, a hand to the mutilated organ.
"I had an Apotheosis event, think there''s such a big gap between us now?" She twirled the blade, too bright to look at. Well, he''d seen brighter.
"Don''t think this is about Jupiter. It was a PR stunt. But you just killed my nephew, my niece, and my sister. That makes it personal."
This time she flew straight at him, and this time he fought back. The arc blade was aimed at his hairless oozing chest, but was blocked by his raised hand, cutting into the space between the middle and ring finger till it caught on bone below.
He punched at her, almost casually, her neck cracked like a whip as she dodged it, kicking him so hard in the nuts it knocked him upwards at several hundred kilometers an hour.
Gratifyingly, that didn''t hurt at all, he wanted to tell her that she was better off with the sword.
"Consul! Don''t even think about running from me!" She flew up at him, threatening to pierce the sky.
He looked down, not thinking of much at all. At the last minute, he stomped down, feeling his forcefield ripple and tear as the blade ran up his spine, snagging on vertebra.
Her blows came fast and furious, each one cutting into his invincible flesh. His ripostes were clumsy, whatever fistfighting skills he''d picked up on the streets had become rusty when simply punching things had long sufficed.
While she couldn''t cut through the bone, joints were fair game. A severed digit spiralled through the air, then a chunk of his cheek.
She kept it up, even when he stopped responding, just taking the blows without heed. Yes, that woman in his head couldn''t be all that bad, could she? Consul exulted in the freedom from pain, he''d never realized how badly he''d been held back by it before.
He gurgled happily like a babe when she slit his throat, the tiny hyoid bone next to his Adam''s apple catching it before it went much deeper. Frustrated, she screamed again, and smashed him into the ground, knocking him through a miraculously standing building or two and bringing them down with him.
The rubble heaved, shedding debris as he broke through and stood there, eyeing her with unchecked lust.
"I can''t believe it. Is this a joke to you?" The blade grew sharper, longer. Mere contact with the edge left the inert atmosphere ionized and crackling with static.
More slings and arrows of misfortune flew above them, deities exchanging fire with their reanimated kin. A portion of the UN fleet had decided to move in overhead, both engaging the tide of zombie ships, and perhaps to provide fire support.
She wept fitfully, her tears soaking cracked tarmac.
"Just die already!" He reflexively moved to cover his throat again, only to find she''d gone for an entirely different kind of head.
Oh no you didn''t.
Consul looked at the twitching member falling beneath, vanishing beneath the sand. Whatever combination of cupidity and maladaptive daydreaming had been slowing him down vanished. When he moved, and she retreated in alarm, taken aback by his speed, the rest of the city collapsed around them. She cut a bridge in half, he barged through. A ravine was extended another mile as he careened off the side, wordless screaming as he grabbed at her throat.
She really was fast. And more importantly, durable with that armor of hers. He managed to land a few good hits, sending her ricocheting off rock that came out the worse for wear. An attempted grab at the circlet had cut his radial artery, he made no effort to staunch the jetting bleed, exsanguination had never been a threat to him.
A lance of energy found him, turning the ravine into a crater. He lay there at the bottom, cackling and sobbing, trying to fondle his missing manhood. She was charred by the blast, but a dismissal and resummoning of her suit repaired it instantly.
She was listening to someone, her head cocked to the side, speaking out loud.
"And that''ll let me put him down for good? Fucking do it then!"
A flash of light punctuated her sentence for her, somewhere far above, psychics and support metahumans were channeling power into her, in much the same manner as Lumen was boosting him. At least they didn''t have to worry about her powers resisting them at every turn.
She screamed, fractal crystals sharper than obsidian erupting from her flesh, horns of diamond emerging from her skull. He rolled about in mirth, kicking up packed dirt. Nothing made sense. He''d tried crying, and screaming. Maybe laughter would do the trick?
She jumped down, bouncing in the low gravity. He didn''t resist as she picked him up by the nape, and then punched him in the gut, her blade disposed of for a gauntlet of energy. The impact folded him like origami, he vomited blood and swallowed metal, but kept laughing all the same. She hit him again, and again, feeling the crack of ribcages, before slamming him down on her knee. Her armor cracked, splinters whizzing off, but he spasmed, his lower half paralyzed, but the upper reaching out to caress her face.
She threw him, sending him bouncing half a dozen times and then coming to a stop at the bottom of a cliffside. She brought back the blade, and began cutting into his chest, trying to impale his heart.
Unluckily for her, Lady Purple decided that total analgesia was having an undesired effect, and toned it down, interrupting Consul''s unadulterated appreciation of the Great Cosmic Joke with mindshattering pain. Good thing his mind was already shattered, eh?
His presence of mind momentarily restored, he flew off the ground, legs dangling uselessly below him, but it''s not like they were what kept him aloft. She dug her nails of ruby into his eyes, gouging one out, before he bit down on her hand, cracking his teeth and biting clean through.
Now it was her turn to scream, kneeing him in the groin, this time to more effect. He still hung on like a rabid dog, simply shearing off more crystal as he lost his grip.
They went at it in earnest, almost a reprise of their tryst on a different, alien world. They''d left a mark in the course of the very hurricane they were in, after all.
Consul grappled her, locking her joints, and dragged her into the ground, his telekinetic flight overpowering hers. She bit back, black teeth of onyx taking his nose, before he returned the favor with a love bite that left her lipless. Armor flowed away from the rest of her to help cover her face, and he lapped at the flowing visor like a deer at a saltlick.
Did she think he needed his heart? Hardly, the fact she had skewered it only made it harder to disentangle them. He couldn''t release his hold on her without giving her a chance to fly away, so he settled for a headbutt that made the world quake, glazing her visor. Another, it shattered.
He swallowed her broken teeth, crunching them with his own, uncaring when both broke.
He grabbed her silken hair, and tugged, tearing it out at the root, the tissue being so strong it took a plate of bone and adherent brain and meninges beneath, his fingers trying to dig in further, only to be impaled on the crown.
She didn''t regenerate, not like he did. More of the crystal replaced her flesh, till she had a crystal skull that left her almost as fuck-ugly as he was. A twist of the blade, and she cut his spinal cord somewhere near the cervical level, paralyzing him. She struggled to pry his death grip off her, managing to free one leg, which she used to kick him away a dozen miles.
Her previous confidence was as shattered as she was. He could hear her begging for a teleport, but the skies were now raining fresh hellfire, hundreds of ships resuming battle from the grave.
"Consul.." He was all business and no more pleasure, slamming into her and not stopping, bringing them out of the atmosphere in a few beats of his mangled heart.
He directed her at an undead ship, bringing both of them into the exhaust plume from its half-functioning engines. He cackled and crackled, feeling her melt and turn to glass.
The UN ships held their fire. The zombies weren''t so discerning. They were both bathed in radiation, he was boiling, then melting, then vaporizing. Her armor spread itself thin to cover what it could, but it wasn''t enough.
The sheer pressure of the light sent them back towards the ground, a hundred focused beams of coherent radiation just about sufficient for the task when aided by the blasts of yet more warheads. By the time of impact, they were melting into each other, his regrowing flesh morphing around her exoskeleton.
She had barely any meat left, but for where his hands had been locked around her throat. He tore off her limbs, hurling them into space, before biting into her jugular. He drank the blood, then began chewing, content in having saved flesh for his feast. It was a shame, for much the reason low cabin pressure ruins Adat''s and your enjoyment of in-flight meals, the near vacuum of Mars made it a tasteless affair. She was dead well before he was done, otherwise he''d be left chewing glass.
His belly hurt, but so did everything else. Carbonized skin fell of him in chunks as he rocketed back into the sky.
27.0 Grim Tidings
Grim realized how badly he''d fucked up. He''d been going for a stroll in New York, admiring the massive arcology/conservatory that had replaced the old Central Park after the post-war cleanup, haughtily ignoring the holograms ordering everyone to keep off some of the grass. The old park was still above, artfully designed to disguise the enormous subterranean structure, more of a memorial to the dead than a park anyone was supposed to play in.
He reckoned it was a poor choice, what better way to show America had moved on than to have children running through the fields once again? At any rate, he''d been enjoying himself, after every spree of unavoidable shoplifting, he''d been tipping hundreds of thousands of USDE in recompense, stopping at several stores he''d felt guilty about lifting from in the past. It was immensely gratifying to see the value in his account not even budge. Just the nominal interest rate in the millions of investments he''d set an autonomous agent to perform had accrued interest faster than he could spend it. Shame nobody took bills any more, he''d been thinking about just walking about and tossing clouds of money around.
While not in a real rush, he hadn''t been lounging about either. His first act had been to transfer all his USDC to USDE, while the former would leave trails in the transaction, the latter would swallow it all up, at least if the old Mossad laundering tricks still worked.
From his rough understanding, USDC was the Digital Dollar, a very stable coin that was minted only by the three fragmented nations that had once been the Continental United States, with limited licenses carefully doled out to a few trusted organizations like the IMF, maybe a few other UN bodies. It was built for audit, there wasn''t any reliable degree of anonymity.
On the other hand, USDE was the extended family of nominally interchangeable currencies, but more importantly, it allowed for incredibly fast transactions as well as the execution of smart contracts, with that speed being essential for them to be worth anything. Despite many entities wishing otherwise, it did have robust provisions for anonymity, the main method by which nation-states regulated it was to blacklist nodes and wallets that were suspect, but they couldn''t touch the funds. Individual currencies could be mined by anyone who cared to front the compute/storage/good vibes necessary, but they''d be implicitly interconverted by the network, with certain branches at risk of being devalued. The conversion rate with the atavistic physical dollar or even USDC was allowed to float, instead of the strict 1:1 of the latter. Of course, now that people used crypto as money instead of as a speculative asset, it was quite reliable.
He''d never been a crypto fiend, not even when that had been a fad in his teenage years, but he''d asked an AI whether his understanding of USDC being analogous to the old dollar while USDE was akin to all currencies that could be exchanged for a dollar was accurate, and received a reply that could be summed up by saying it''s true enough if you squint.
And he was squinting, trying to read the holographic advert just peeking out from the edge of Times Square visible from the southern edge of the park, when shit went sideways.
Or more precisely, it went down, a rain of businesspeople jumping out windows. A performative gesture, the civic drones caught almost all of them immediately, the ones who didn''t have jetpacks and parachutes.
He chuckled, that tradition had been revived by certain quant firms specializing in the use of precogs to help AI in predicting market movements (the net result was them all canceling each other out and the ensuing scramble for a scrap of alpha). Something about putting their money where their lives were, stake in the game, yada yada.
Everyone around paused to take note. The USDE network could operate asynchronously, with individual nodes updating as fast as they could and reconciling later, but it was standard for all of them to sync up every week, unless a quorum demanded it happen more frequently. The next one was in a minute or so, which was about as far ahead as the competing precogs could predict, and everyone wanted to see what had them making a fuss about potential losses.
The largest hologram, that he could see, at the least, displayed a rough estimate of the total amount of USDE in existence. Suitably impressive, a lot of zeroes in it.
At precisely the point where the market sync occurred, the number jumped. There was an explosion, the projector overloading. Before it went, the number of digits ballooned, fading out before he could count them.
At the same time, practically every device configured to play alert notifications buzzed or beeped, from the old-fashioned who had phones or glasses, to the puzzled expressions of those who had laces or contacts.
At first there was massive cheering, and why wouldn''t there be? Billions of people, at least hundreds of thousands in NY, donated their spare compute for the purposes of the background computation needed for the network to operate. In return, they received a cut of the gas fees, but those were usually so tiny that they barely amounted to a tiny bonus to their salary or UBI, if they were lucky enough to have either.
This time, anyone who had anything larger than a microwave hooked into the network received tens of thousands of USDE in compensation, many receiving millions or billions.
People ran out into the streets crying tears of joy, someone began firing very illegal fireworks that scared off drones. Grim was touched, a smile on his face as he recalled the exorbitant fees he''d been charged when he''d converted all his USDC over, which surely had to be the reason everyone just got a massive, irreversible dollop of cash in their accounts. He''d been annoyed at the time, but less so when he saw how little it changed the total, which was safely ensconced in a primary account and then laundered a thousand different ways. What''s the harm in spreading the joy, he was still the richest man in the world right?
Their cheer vanished as fast as his did, when the city lost power, and a few minutes later the gunfire and explosions began.
It had been a day, and Grim walked through the frozen streets like a ghost. The fires had been put out, most of the bodies and blood cleaned off the streets. A flotilla of armed drones floated by overhead, one of them momentarily halting to carefully assess the potential anomaly its LIDAR had just detected, but then dismissing it when other instrumentation told it there wasn''t anything there.
For almost an hour, terrestrial comms had gone down. The financial system had collapsed, the riots and panic starting in earnest when people came to the conclusion it wasn''t a localized error, but rather that what they''d thought was the resumption of ever backed up UBI or an attempt to oil the gears of commerce had been closer to dousing the whole thing in an vat of gasoline and setting it on fire.
He wasn''t entirely sure what went wrong, but his access to Mossad back channels gave him more insight than most (they''d forgotten they''d ever given him access, let alone to revoke or update it). Much of the damage had been from the panicked response of governments and financial institutions, be it from yanking back payments, freezing accounts, or other acts of stupidity that had only made people more panicked. New York had been worst hit, having resumed its position as the tick feeding on the heart of the world''s finances.This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Rumors had spread it was a prelude to an alien invasion, especially since people had begun to notice the information blackout from Mars. Eventually, anyone with slightly above average vision or at least a telescope could see the nuclear fire around that dim red globe, and the explanations from governments were entirely inadequate.
He kicked aside a rat grown fat, shuddering as he imagined it dining on one of the corpses just hauled off the sidewalk.
I didn''t know.
I couldn''t know.
This wasn''t like when he was young, when people had been entrained to handle short or even prolonged issues with payment processors and the like. Not even like 2028, which almost everyone had forgotten.
But people rioting was hardly the biggest problem, once again he felt sorely out of his depth, but as far as he could glean, the operation of the smart contracts hooked into USDE had been important. DAOs, records, even background AI systems and commerce platforms, all relied on predictable processes going on in there, at least for input regarding financial decisions, and they''d gone nuts. An analyst suggested that many autonomous agents had considered the sheer magnitude of the discrepancy to be a sign of the network being utterly compromised, or themselves coming under adversarial attack. They enacted their own contingency plans, often executing emergency sales of assets before they could be devalued, or doing god knows what else.
The hyper-inflation was obvious, the meter on the autonomous taxi he passed demanded $E 82,586 per mile.
More hilarity had ensued. NYPD police bots were authorized to use lethal force on anyone caught in the process of stealing goods or services worth more than $E 67,000, a figure regularly updated to account for inflation, at least on a monthly basis. Unfortunately, that meant a lot of people who had, say, just bought lunch, often not bothering to pay right then (even if they legally should, but nobody cared), knowing the sum would be autodeducted shortly, but who then found that they literally couldn''t pay after the network went down were assessed by the ambling bots as being akin to bank robbers. God forbid you were behind on your rent, or utilities. The only reason his apartment hadn''t been raided by a robot SWAT team had been because they were too busy raiding all the others.
Have an unpaid parking fine? Well that''s a drone strike for you and your car.
Someone had found the emergency override in a few minutes, but Grim shook as he felt his old PTSD resurface, hiding from drones, hearing the screams of innocent men and women, even children, either being gunned down, tazed, subjected to sub-lethal microwaves and who knows what else.
He shook as he recalled close calls with death. The bots hadn''t been shooting at him, but he could easily have been in the line of fire.
A crying, drunken man stumbled after walking into him, Grim watched him slip into a dilapidated building. A bot stopped to watch him enter, while breaking curfew was a crime, the police were understandably trying to be less trigger happy.
Essential services had come online sometime past midnight. At least power was back on, so was water, occasionally a version of the Internet censored harder than ever.
Grim popped a pill, that was more than he was supposed to take, but you can probably understand why his headache was worse than usual.
At any rate, the damage was done, it simply wasn''t possible to roll back the enormous chain that was USDE, maybe C, but the former was too deeply embedded in everything, and no single agency had the ability or even the authority to do so. Sure, people were no longer at risk of starving to death, but global supply chains had combusted, just beginning to be coaxed back into action.
An army mech stomped past, crushing the same taxi. Bright red stripes, must be a psychic in there. Thankfully even metahuman powers usually missed Grim.
That evening, as the city burned, he''d braved the streets filled with panicked crowds, desperate to get to the preschool his daughter attended. Finding it closed, he''d rushed to apartment where his wife and daughter lived, and yes, the man who had replaced him. To his relief, they weren''t there, from tapping into footage from the cameras, he figured they''d been evacuated.
The new husband was military. Grim figured she had a type.
If it was any consolation, he was still the richest man in the world. The clawbacks and freezes at the disposal of most nations meant less than nothing to his privileged credentials and hidden accounts, even slightly out of date as they were.
After breaking into the physical premises of a bank, paradoxically less secure these days since all they held were banks of computers and not cash or gold, he''d found a terminal that could still work more or less normally.
Yes. His money was there. He didn''t want to access it quite yet, someone might check logs. So he left, once again hopping cordon and confusing patrolling officers and robots, finding himself at the standoff by UNHQ.
It was a miracle the Army hadn''t opened fire, tensions had been high to begin with before everything started collapsing.
Thankfully it wasn''t too hard to get in, his credentials worked, and the dumb machines meant to catch invisible intruders were unperturbed.
There. That was a secure client with access to satellite internet.
Grim''s plan, at least a few days back when he''d first thought of using Midas, had been to just buy an Anchor, but to his immense dismay, he''d found the quote of "a billion dollars" remarked off the cuff by that Chinese official had been out of date for years, even before his recent actions.
That conversation (or interrogation) had been back when they could actually make more of the damn things, he wasn''t sure what had gone wrong, his BLUE clearance was insufficient, but China had initially hiked prices to eye-watering levels, then outright stopped selling them. The forms a CCP website asked him to fill to express interest clearly assumed he was an agent of a different nation, there didn''t seem to be any route for a humble quadrillionaire to order it by mail.
No, he''d prepared for this. Buying it with UN creds was off the table, they didn''t even sell or loan to them. But there were Anchors out there, ones previously sold, even if most had been quickly bought back by the Chinese before people realized what was up. The average owner these days wouldn''t part with them for love or money, but while the infinite love he felt for his daughter wasn''t hard currency, he figured he still had plenty of the latter. And people who wouldn''t just take the money could be compelled by other means.
Making sure the system wasn''t being logged, he downloaded a particularly advanced intrusion toolkit from Mossad. The installer told him it was already present in the network, and he sighed and just booted it up.
Rainwater was a good crew, or at least they paid their operators well. He''d considered joining them, after his discharge, but ended up opting for UNSEEN since he could ensure more time close to his family. But they, believe it or not, had scruples, or at least standards expected of would be customers.
No, there was a different PMC, one that asked fewer questions, that only cared if your money was good and not who they might have to kill. Sure the number of billionaires and trillionaires on the planet had gone up by an order of magnitude or two, but to Grim, that was pocket change.
You wanted someone who did as you asked, even if that risked pissing off the CCP or the kind of people in their good graces? Took anonymous payment from the Dark Web and wouldn''t rat you out even if a Clairvoyant grilled them?
You wanted the MDF.
Grim sent them a few billion. Just as a token of interest, yesterday a few million might have sufficed. There, they bit. He went on to outline his particular requirements to the agent, both of them behind a veil of anonymity, only USDE and not particularly pointed questions crossing it.
This was going to be expensive, but by now, Grim''s horizons had begun to expand, an inkling of just how much power he held. What was metahumanity next to fuck-everyone money?
Fuck. He had to find out what happened to Midas, and potentially bail the kid out. That was beneath the line that he considered the least he could do. Another wince at what that might cost him. Maybe he''d have to do so for Adat too.
A digital handshake, then a transaction. Sergeant Grim now had an army.
Interlude 3.0: Christmas
"Santa Claus?" The portly man in the exact costume you''d expect asked hopefully as he sat opposite me in the containment cell.
"Sorry, taken." I said, utterly bored, wishing I hadn''t drawn the short straw when it came to who had to run the office during the holidays.
"Saint Nicholas?" He straightened up, then leant forward as far as the restraints would let him.
"Taken too. So is "Saint Nick" and just "Nick", buddy, you''re not the first supe to LARP as Santa, and most of them are better at the job than you." I replied pointedly, drawing up a register of known Santa impersonators (the ones with superpowers).
He looked distraught at the sheer length, the display helpfully going into a scrolling feed that ended up resembling the credit roll for an old movie, before one dude and a dog could make them.
Frankly speaking this was the saddest I''d seen him, he''d been entirely nonchalant about the "customizations" he''d performed on human and animal alike to make his elves and reindeer.
"Look, we''re just going to use your real name for now, Mr. Smith. You''ll have plenty of time to think of a more appropriate pseudonym or cape name later." I explained, getting up to stretch my aching back. I was severely regretting the display of machismo that had me hauling our Christmas tree up a flight of stairs without assistance, this was before I had serious augments.
"But- but.. Look, I''ll pay, I''ll leave you a present!" He wheedled. I quickly checked the machine that confirmed he wasn''t using his powers. I wasn''t in range, he had to touch me, but I liked my nose and didn''t want anything close to the tumor he''d given his ''reindeer''.
"I''m in a bad mood, and this can be easily construed as an attempt to bribe a UN official. Look, "Santa", the only reason you''re not in real trouble, is because we think you can potentially reverse what you did to those poor kids. The animals, well, they''ve already been put down, those charges will stick."
"It''s not fair! I paid them, even drew up employment documents, it was above minimum wage!" He cried out, tugging at his matted beard.
I felt an alert pop up, the sound of heavy boots barely audible as a Rapid Response Team went by. But it was for an adjacent cell, not my headache yet.
I already have one, thanks.
"You should have used a better AI, it would have helpfully pointed out that gross body modification in a minor requires parental assent, as well as medical oversight. Seriously, elves? If you want to be a proper, licensed Santa, then you need temporal manipulation to ensure gross coverage of your geographical remit, ideally Ex Nihilo powers to make the presents, and if you''re making moral judgements about who''s naughty or nice, IRB oversight. You used to be a biochemist, you ought to know that."
He sagged further, looking as if all his hopes and dreams had been dashed. Dasher had been put down by a FEMA official.
"I have money. I could buy presents. I know it''s not ideal, but it''s in the spirit of things, right?"
"You should have used some of that money for a pilot''s license, or for getting approval for the illegal modifications you made to a sleigh. An unprotected graviton engine causes brain damage, your animals were concussed and half of them had prion diseases. What were you thinking?"
He started sobbing, great big heaves that made him shake, tears dripping down into his beard. Against my better judgment, I felt sorry for him, and stood up to walk closer and pat him on the back.
"Hey. It''s going to be okay, the Legal team says they''ll let you off with a warning and a slap drone if you manage to fix the kids."
He wiped himself using the tissues proferred. I made sure he threw them in the biohazard basket.Stolen story; please report.
"It''s what Drew would have wanted. Christmas was always what he looked forward to. I couldn''t be there for him when he passed, I couldn''t be there-"
He started crying again, I stood there helplessly, in other circumstances I''d have considered calling our staff psychic over to give him a mood boost, but the rules were clear, psychic modification wasn''t allowed for suspects in processing, something something due process and compos mentes.
"I''ll try and have you discharged as soon as possible. Your psych eval didn''t go too poorly, but you need to get an automated med dispenser and make sure you listen to the alerts, alright?"
He nodded quietly.
"Let''s go over the charges one last time, I''m going to knock off as many as I can."
Terence Smith
Registered Biomancer
Class 2
Charges (in order of severity):
1) Unlawful physical modification of minors using metahuman powers.
2) Use of an illegally modified antigrav engine in residential areas.
3) Unregistered and reckless modification of sub-sapient animals.
4) Insufficient adherence to biohazard protocols, second violation.
5) Metahuman synthesis of controlled substances.
6) Unlawful distribution of controlled substances to minors-
"You gave the elves, sorry, the children, coke?" I asked incredulously.
"He asked for it! Then the others all wanted some, I didn''t want to object, they worked harder."
7) Failure to acquire updated FAA certification, previously approved only for ultralight and small drones.
8) Willful failure to adhere to mandated medication regime (Metahuman)
"Did the drugs cause side effects? Why did you stop taking them?" I asked him.
"They made me sleepy, I was getting fat too. I know, you''re wondering about that, but this-" He pointed at his belly- "is after I lost some weight."
"I''ll update your script, but please, for the love of God, just talk to a doctor or a licensed AI next time."
He nodded again, looking contrite. Good, that gave me the excuse of using "has insight into his disease" as a justification for applying for a reduced sentence.
I made a big show of striking off the last entry, and then reducing the severity of several others. Still not enough to get rid of the slap drone, but at least he wouldn''t be held in prison for more than a few weeks. Presuming he could actually turn the elves back into normal children, without giving them more prion diseases.
A few minutes later, and we were done, I sent Mr. Smith off to a minimum security holding cell, and wandered outside.
NO FURTHER CASES
Fucking finally, it was almost 10 pm. Shit, no, I''d have been done in ten minutes, I began to seethe at the waste of a perfectly good Christmas but then-
She popped into existence, looking at my frustrated expression with amusement.
"Sweetheart, it''s still Christmas! Lighten up, it didn''t get too late, or else I''d have taken us to a time zone where it wasn''t over yet."
I tugged my scowl into something approximating a smile, and then gave her a proper hug. She immediately popped us back over home, with that blighted Christmas tree looming overhead.
The wall screen was displaying NORAD''s Santa Tracker, which actually tracked several hundred of them in real time. Man, the guy on the East Coast must have been new, looks like he''s a Speedster, the old one my parents used relied on temporary teleportation beacons.
There was a pyramid of presents ready, almost sufficient for a minor Pharaoh, and I grabbed a waiting cup of cocoa and joined her in unwrapping them. Truth be told, it used to be more fun as a kid, the joy of it was lost when I could have just ordered half of the shit myself with next day shipping.
Anjana gasped. "You didn''t! I had my eye on that for so long!"
I chuckled, "Yeah, I thought you might like it". She spun around in the new dress, that sight (and the short glimpse of her as she changed into it) certainly helped cheer me up a bit.
I didn''t tell her I had recruited her mom (and AI) in helping me pick that particular one out, let''s not spoil the Christmas spirit.
I opened my first present, I could tell she''d wrapped this one.
"Cuban? Hell yeah!" I was about to light one up when I remembered her stance on smoking indoors. She smiled, placing a hand on my chest.
"Wait, are these authentic Santa presents? From a licensed Santa?" I pointed at the next one.
"Yup, thought it would be fun! He''s newly licensed for Atlantis and Hawaii."
I was going to grumble about the unnecessary expense, but then decided to say fuck it, and unwrapped the one with my name on it.
A great big lump of coal. Several kilos worth, enough to restart Global Warming.
Motherfucker, next time I''m going to make sure she gets the Amazon-affiliated Santa.
28.0 Term Limits
Chang woke screaming, his cries coming out as gurgling bubbles in the amniotic fluid he was immersed in.
It was only a moment of disorientation, they''d worked out a few kinks, he no longer felt like he was being waterboarded as had been the case the first dozen times.
He felt the throb of distant klaxons, then the breath of warm air against his sodden skin as the rapid decanting began, a dozen aides and assistants hurriedly preparing to make him presentable.
He stood there for a moment, glad that he had the strength to stand at all, sometimes the muscle stimulation didn''t work as well as could be desired. But no, vision was fine, the ringing in his ears began to resolve into tinny voices and then the bassy rumbling of his secretary as he handed him a towel.
Chang wrapped it around himself, they could easily have dressed him before he''d awoken, but he preferred not to waste a single more second than he already had. Being dead can take up a lot of your life.
"How long has it been?" He growled, new vocal cords still finding their timbre. Not a big deal, he could always have that fixed in post.
"Three hours, Dr. President. We had this body ready and prepped since last week, and in the case of repetition of today''s event, the tertiary and quaternary have been warmed up already." The tall black man informed him, the familiar baritone voice soothing on his frayed nerves.
Making sure the towel was secure, Chang took firm strides to where a nervous young woman stood, she''d shyly turned away as soon as the application of her powers was complete. He tapped her once on the shoulder, and when she turned around, shook her hand firmly.
Good. Proper grip strength. That still mattered to some.
"I''m grateful as always. Talk to Sam, he''ll make sure you''re rewarded for going above and beyond."
"I''m just doing my duty, sir. I only hope you don''t need me again." She replied quietly, her white pupils glowing softly as she double checked that her work had gone according to plan.
"I believed I wouldn''t the third time. Get some rest, it''ll be on the clock." He told her nonchalantly, once again practicing getting his nerves under control. It was an annoyance to pilot a baseline body, the lace couldn''t be inserted until after the reanimation was done, her powers didn''t work well when cybernetics were involved. No matter, there were more flexible Healers around, even if none of them were quite as outstanding in this particular field.
His corpse was on an operating table, the glass temporarily losing opacity when he stopped to ponder it. Nothing too obvious, if he''d died for good they could have arranged an open casket. He nodded at the Clairvoyants waiting discreetly in the wings, they''d be welcome to poke and prod at it for insight, though he''d been informed of the culprit shortly before he''d begun to die.
He walked out of the subterranean lab, choosing to dress himself properly, a few minutes to think, make sure that the battery of tests hadn''t missed something. Yes, an identical suit, perceptually indistinguishable from the one that had been ruined. A sachet of probiotics and immune nanites so his sterile gut didn''t get the runs. The usual pills. It would help when the nerves kicked in, just in case the supe shrinks couldn''t calm them.
He wished his body and mind would get with the program, why was he still afraid of death? He''d been through it more times than he could count, PTSD was the last thing he needed.
An android, featureless and sleek, helped adjust the expensive suit to his slightly altered proportions. Something else to fix in post, most people were blind to such subtle details, but others were more observant.
Yes, the pills were working, he normally felt a great deal more dread about the next part. He found his stride as he crossed through a portal disguised behind a hologram, feeling the pop of changing pressure in his ears. A quick nod at the impassive pair of SS agents on the other side, who were too well disciplined to react at all.
He could talk to the rest of the Cabinet later, they didn''t even know about his temporary demise, but the true bosses were both better informed and less patient.
The meeting room was empty, almost mundane. His waiting secretary gave him a look of encouragement, and he did his best to look like he didn''t appreciate it. Then he took a seat and settled in, as steady as a rock that bore the weight of a nation.
Heat. Cold. A touch of lightning. They weren''t using the mundane projectors today, or VR for the matter. Maybe a courtesy given how underequipped he was after revival.
"President Chang. We are glad to see you well." He did his best to look the shimmering ghosts in the eye, his best Presidential smile on his lips. Ignore the endless void that should have been a face, the gash in reality that was the aperture for inhuman eyes.
"And so am I, if only because I can resume my duties." Surely they tired of the platitudes? He knew, and they knew he knew, that even his permanent death would be no major setback. He had backup bodies, they had a long, long list of acceptable replacements. Some might even wear his skin.
There was no point in counting them. They were but a handful, and yet you felt like you''d skipped over numbers that couldn''t possibly exist when you tried.
"We see you have not sought to punish the culprit behind the assassination. We would appreciate an explanation."
He sighed deeply. "It was a considered decision, and not a sentimental one. Nothing strikes more terror into our enemies hearts than to see the target of their most fearsome attacks walk away unscathed, and even worse, not even seem to notice. The precogs assure me that this has more of an effect on deterring future attempts than even swift and effective retribution. They often come to the table of their own accord." He stressed our, emphasizing that his interests could only be aligned with theirs.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
"We appreciate the insight. An interesting perspective, we will mull/consider/meditate upon it. Preliminary hypothesis, high confidence, is that it is irrelevant in our case. To pre-empt your expected query, this is because you are the representative/figurehead/puppet, we do not attract attention/fear/rage."
That was indeed what he was going to ask, so he shut his mouth just as soon as he''d opened it. Fuck, the headaches were beginning, despite the pills. He hated these conversations, all this verbosity was only a polite pretext for what was going on inside his new skull. They''d need a moment to peer into it themselves, till they were satisfied that their "representative" was fit for their tasks.
"To pre-empt the second question/query/idle thought, such attempts would not hurt us."
Yeah, they were taking a moment to adjust too, he''d never have bothered asking that question, he knew that they were untouchable.
"We do not mind your contemplation. We appreciate a degree of independence in our primary representative. You do not need to use cybernetic or psychic means to dampen what you consider disloyal thoughts. We understand they are mere errata in your human mind. We know/expect/have justified true belief that you will never act on them."
He nodded, feeling genuine gratitude. The kind of lace he usually wore was more than capable of quenching sedition, but it was still a relief to be allowed to go without it. It truncated his consciousness, made him less flexible. And they were correct, even in his seemingly unchallenged position as the most powerful non-metahuman individual on the planet, he could never hope to shake them. He wouldn''t make the same mistake that Winters did.
"I seek your advice. The emergency meeting with the Oversight Board is still scheduled for tonight."
He felt a touch of distant amusement.
"Do as you wish. Speak as you will. You may make the necessary concessions. Mere formalities, we are negotiating with our peers in Turing."
It was heartening to know that they had peers. He dismissed the notion they would lie, they had no reason to, not to him. If he ever outlived his usefulness, they would tell him, they considered it a matter of courtesy.
They left him in silence, quietly watching. An indeterminate amount of time passed, and eventually he felt his guts rumble, and his gorge rise. He stood up, and did his best to maintain his poise till he reached the edge of the endless abyss that surrounded him, hurling the bile that had accumulated in his new guts to who knows where.
"Not our doing. Side effects of your reanimation. We suggest you reconsider your stance on uploading your consciousness, instead of this particular route to immortality."
He stood up, controlling his shaking knees with sheer force of will. "I must demur. A biological form polls better, and it allows me to avail of certain metahuman enhancements that do not work on uploads."
"We see the probity in your claim. In that case, please consider using a discarded body/brain/neural architecture next time, so as to maintain biological form while having an upload running. While we prefer having you around in the flesh, there is merit to the continuity of government"
He wiped his face, making sure that nothing got on the suit. "REGENT is more than capable of operating in my absence. Some might say it does a better job when it''s not slowed down by me. But, as you wish. It was something I considered myself." He felt their mild distaste when he referred to the AI, was it because they found it harder to control? Or was it because of their own origins? They wouldn''t lie if he were to ask them directly, merely refuse to answer. It didn''t really matter, most places still liked to pretend that the humans were in charge, and his particular benefactors were hardly the powers behind every throne.
So be it. The next time someone teleported half his brain out of his skull or tore him apart with their mind, he''d approve of the attempt at fishing the pieces back together and then destructively scanning them for an upload. He wouldn''t do so for no reason, while the unique Class 6 he had access to could revive a copy of him from the merest trace, she did have a small but non-negligible failure rate. Every death, however trivially reversed, was a failure in itself, and could well be the last. Or worse, someone might kill her.
"All this time, and you still fear death. We will admit a secret to you. So do we."
"It would take a great deal more effort to kill you, wouldn''t it?" He couldn''t help but grin, deflecting some of his desperation with humor. A bad habit he''d picked up on campaign trails decades back.
No reply was forthcoming. Only the recession of the void, and his lonely presence in a room that now pretended to be mostly euclidean.
Right. He was expected to sit on the Oversight Board, rub elbows with his so called peers. How many of them were truly free? Only those who simply didn''t matter enough to be worth recruiting, he wagered.
His secretary handed him a slate with a condensed list of updates, a prelude to the more detailed dump when he would quickly go under for the insertion of a lace and other more subtle implants. Some minor ruckus on Mars, a slight escalation on what the precogs had considered to be the modal outcome. The economic collapse was still ongoing; sadly, while money was the blood of industry, like too much real blood in an unenhanced vasculature, it was prone to cause a burst vessel or two. An inconvenience, he preferred to trade in harder currency, like favors, and those were immune to inflation. He quietly approved a few pending kill orders, requisitions from the black budget and other necessary minutiae that required his personal attention. As always, he could find no flaw in REGENT''s decisions, and where he felt mild doubt, long experience had taught him to go with the flow.
Let''s see what''s on the agenda. Invasive neurosurgery, the gentle ministrations of the best Healers who didn''t work with corpses, and he would be as good as new.
29.0 Not Quite Dead
CASUALTY UPDATES:
1x Class 6 Metahuman: Anita Duval aka Miss Magnifique (Miscellaneous, enhanced strength, telekinesis)
Cause of death: Blunt force trauma, immolation
Life insurance payout?
Denied.
Miss Duval disobeyed direct orders and engaged Consul on her own, without the waiting for support from Teams Iota and Epsilon. For PR purposes, she will be interred with the Honored Dead, pending recovery of her corpse (priority minimal). We do not expect legal action from her nominees, given that they died on the ONS Third Moon.
1x Class 3 Metahuman: Sergeant 67#Ur, no alias (Biomancer)
Cause of death: Unknown, potential type 1 hypersensitivity reaction to treatment by other Healers
Life insurance payout?
Approved.
This automated system (Hydrogen equivalent), suggests further investigation into the abnormal, abrupt and hyperacute response seen in Sergeant Ur after he awoke from standard sedatives after being treated by a Healer on the Agnimatajay. Statements made by him in the short period of seconds from awakening to acute anaphylactic shock unresponsive to autodoc treatment or the supplementary Class 2 Healer (unrelated to primary) as well as involuntary self-mutilation have been appended below, a ticket has been raised with the Agnimatajay''s Polonium AGI Bahadur, at recommended priority medium. The technician Afzal Ali has testified to the initial resuscitative autodoc working as intended. We wish to note a potential conflict of interest due to his conjugal ties to the primary Healer, but that is diminished by the fact he is not believed to be aware of her involvement with this particular case. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
The body has been preserved for autopsy when feasible, pending availability of a tertiary autodoc. Another ticket has been raised with Metahuman Resources and Legal, to discuss potential ambiguity in which of the other 111 clones in the Jovian colonies he was referencing as his "brother" in the initial nominee field at the time of induction and creation of the life insurance and reimbursement scheme. Given the ambiguous and idiosyncratic nature of his demise and the otherwise acceptable successful treatment rate of the primary Healer, we continue recommending her deployment for acute and critical care, with additional supervision if it can be spared (unlikely).
TEXT TRANSCRIPT OF FINAL UTTERANCES:
THEY''RE IN MY SKULL! THEY''RE IN MY FUCKING HEAD! IT WON''T BE ME! DO SOMETHING! I CAN''T..
Please follow the link to the full autopsy for further recordings, including uncontrolled application of powers post-mortem, in what seems to be an attempt to sever his own nervous system at the cervical level. Given his mental condition, and ongoing illness, we do not rule his death as a suicide. Cardiac arrest and brain-death (irrecoverable) happened before the spasmodic events and internal decapitation.
Interlude 4.0: Paint the Town Red
St. Thomas Hospital, in the heart of London, had never been a quiet place, especially the paediatric section, the Evelina London Children''s Hospital.
The security guards, modestly obese looking chaps, but having recently been upgraded with augments (some of the bulk was battery fat for said augments, the rest, you can lay the blame on the cheap and cheerful chippie down the road), had become accustomed to a revolving door spinning itself nearly off the hinges as a torrent of harried doctors entered and left, let alone the kids and their parents; though these days, with the visiting Class 2 Healer available, the guards felt their moods slightly uplifted on seeing more kids than usual skipping out the door, not that the place''s reputation had been undeserved even before the recent installation of multiple autodocs and the odd metahuman or two.
The other wards were busier, the line to get urgent boosters for a newly resurgent strain of Madagascar Flu were lengthy indeed, but nobody particularly complained as a tall doctor wearing a respirator cut right through, though his unusual red doctor''s coat drew a few eyes and comments. Some held their noses, he seemed to stink more of formaldehyde than was usual, though to be fair he''d emerged from a discreet door on the other side of the emergency vehicle parking lot, one that lead to the morgue. One of the guards had received a low priority ping, London''s panopticon had already noted his presence as anomalous, but the man dismissed it without a second thought, the newly installed Watchers were unusually glitchy and still on a hair trigger after the ecoterrorists had released an engineered prion disease into the water supply, one that made consumers intolerant of red meat. Not an issue, one chortled to the other, we''re too fond of fish and chips.
The door complained a little as he approached. Something was off about his biosignatures, but the tall man, most of his figure hidden beneath the coat, only stopped for a moment to fish out an access card. A quick slide, and the beeping stopped, and he was in, waved through by another harried receptionist.
PRIORITY LOW: SYSTEM ERROR PROBABILITY >45%
He stalked through the halls, drawing curious glances from other doctors, especially since infection control had forbidden white coats for decades by that point. Did they let him go because he dyed his red? Worth a shot, they reckoned.
He was at the preoperative ward in a minute, where an actual busybody, an Infection Control Nurse herself, accosted him.
"Doctor! You know that''s not allowed right? Just think of the children!"
"Madame, the children are all I think about anyway. Is there an issue?"
She peered at him, trying to spot a name tag, but he wasn''t so kind as to offer.
"I apologize. I''m new here. Visiting, you could say, and I have a whole host of urgent procedures scheduled. If you have a problem with my outfit, I''m all ears, but only once the actual work is done." He strode past her, leaving her pursing her lips. Well, he did smell well sanitized, practically doused in the stuff, so she was inclined to let it slide, having just spotted a more junior doctor with a ring that she couldn''t excuse as a marker of matrimony. Time to fuck with her instead.
The smart systems had resigned themselves to being accommodating, so he entered the actual ward and cast a practised eye over the kids.
The kids, they weren''t doing alright. You''d think that with a Healer aboard, the nominally inoperable cancers would have been dealt with, but the way her powers worked only made them multiply.
"Doctor..." Another nurse asked him, perplexed as her AR glasses drew a blank, but she too was used to NHS systems being less than reliable.
"Sheena Ahmed. Six years old. Is the OT clear?" He asked.
"Let me check just a moment, uh, yes, but I was told she was going to be sent for palliative radiotherapy? I''m afraid that no procedures are planned." She shook the glasses to sleep and tapped at an old tablet, confused by the discrepancy.
"I had really hoped the NHS had cleaned up their act by now. Had to fly quite a distance, only to find that you lot are as tardy and lackadaisical as ever."
She would have bristled at the insult, but something about his voice was gentle, soothing even, though there was just a hint of sussuration underneath, which she attributed to the unfamiliar make of N100 mask. He did carry himself like a surgeon. Evidently a neurosurgeon, given that the poor girl had glioblastoma. His accent, she couldn''t quite place it, but she supposed he was from across the pond.
"Give that to me please." A little more polite, but an order nonetheless. She handed it over reflexively.
The tablet spazzed out for a moment, but he kept staring at it, and it spun back into action. OT 7, reserved. Doctor Red. Multiple cases, high priority.
"How''d you do that?" She asked, a little flustered.
"I''m trying out a new neural implant. Put it in myself. I wouldn''t trust anyone else with the task." He replied blandly, handing it back.
Neurosurgeon confirmed, the ego matched. She sighed and began calling ahead.
He paced through the ward, and the odd child who wasn''t moribund looked curiously at him, but he did have a calming air about him, their eyes glazed over, and besides, the new Peppa Pig episode was far more important than another nameless, faceless doctor. For all their youth, they''d seen far too many.
Another junior doctor rushed into the ward, concerned they''d been slow with the clerking, but Dr. Red merely waved them away. They fled, merely thankful that he didn''t need their help, they had enough on their plate in the first place.
PRIORITY LOW: PROBABILITY OF SYSTEM ERROR >25%
"Wait. Right now?" The nurse asked, bemused.
"She''s not getting better while I wait. I know the place, called ahead. The autodoc has yet to be installed, and Mr. Khan, he''s preoccupied. I believe he thinks this is beyond his abilities."
She blinked, but decided that a catfight between neurosurgeons, while always interesting to watch, wasn''t the highest priority. Besides, this Dr. Red, he was correct, that OR was still fully furnished for human operation, though that was getting ever more rare.
"The notes say to contact the MDT before making surgical decisions, doctor-"
"The decision is made. Wheel the patient out, now."
She was shocked, but the autonomous unit rolled itself out, accepting his orders. The ego, this was ridiculous. Words would be had later, she swore.
Dr. Red followed the stretcher, whistling a jaunty tune. For all his previous commentary, he was impressed by the efficiency of the OT staff, though he still frowned at the excessive use of automation. Ah, to wield the saw and drill himself, use a scalpel, it had been days since he had the pleasure.
The neurosurgery resident was summarily dismissed, though even he was flabbergasted at Dr. Red''s claim that he was perfectly fine operating alone. Well, at least he wouldn''t be to blame if the surgery went poorly, he''d gulped as he''d first reviewed little Ms. Ahmed, they weren''t kidding about unresectable. And he could use a quick nap, his own Neuralink would jolt him awake should this smug cunt come to regret it.
PRIORITY MEDIUM: SYSTEM ERROR PROBABILITY <10%
THIS AUTOMATED SYSTEM REQUESTS HUMAN INTERVENTION
"Bloody hell, what''s gotten into this thing?" Steve asked, standing up with a sigh.
"Dunno, he seemed like an alright bloke to me, but bit of a stinker ain''t he?" Andrew replied, shaking his head as he swiped on his end of the console, a medium priority request needed both of them to dismiss.If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Somewhere far away, a bored officer in the Met looked at the case, frowned a little, but resumed his previous task of finding the culprits behind a female genital mutilation ring. He shouldn''t have married a lady from out of the country, he thought with a sigh, if he''d been less on the ball, she''d have snuck their daughter out with her, thank god the other guy that day had raised hell about the sudden trip to Nigeria while she had the visitation rights.
About an hour later, Ms. Ahmed was wheeled out. Still heavily sedated, but her parents, who had rushed over the moment they''d heard about the surgery, only to be delayed by London traffic, were shocked to see the improvement reported by the automated systems. They stood by her bedside, clutching her hands, weeping again. Unresectable my arse, they thought, the post-op scans had been re-reported by three AI systems, and then another human radiologist, who had let his sheer amazement leak through in his review. They couldn''t find Dr. Red''s name anywhere on Google, but they resolved to stay put by her side in the hopes that he''d pay her a visit again, they were so thankful they could weep.
Three more cases rolled in, the nurses confused as to how the dumb systems were suddenly so obedient. They were wheeled out very quickly, none of them had been quite as bad as Ms. Ahmed.
The Healer, a modestly successful skincare influencer before she found her true calling, paid a visit. She was shocked herself. Then a few consultants began calling, askance that someone had dared operate on their cases, and pleading ignorance when asked if they''d been the ones to request Dr. Red.
PRIORITY HIGH: PROBABILITY OF SYSTEM ERROR NEGLIGIBLE
HUMAN INTERVENTION IS NON-NEGOTIABLE.
"Steve? What in the blazes? Can you take a gander, like a good bloke?" Andrew sighed.
"Fuck''s sake. Alright."
Steve jogged over, to find a horde of angry doctors practically banging on the OT door, concerns about sterility dispelled by justified anger at this upstart''s meddling.
"Oi. Get him to open up. My card isn''t working. What the hell is this?" Mr. Khan demanded, taking out his ire on Steve, who was sweating a little at the unaccustomed exertion.
"On it Mr. Khan, I''m sure he must be busy, are you sure this isn''t a bad time, he might be like, deep in the guts or something maybe?" Steve asked in a conciliatory tone, his own systems pinging him to inform him that multiple members of the administration were rushing over themselves.
"I''m not going to stand for this. Open the fucking door, you little shit, I''m going to drag your license into the dirt, if you don''t let me in right now, I don''t care how good you think you are, they won''t let you use a knife outside Somalia." Khan yelled into the intercom.
A marked buzzing note began. Followed by a somber, yet staticky voice.
"I fully admit you know your craft, Mr. Khan. Please, do step inside. I can use your assistance. No, not your junior. We can talk inside. Alone."
Khan barged right ahead as the airlock opened, grabbing the gown with hands that could operate in his sleep.
Steve sighed with relief, hoping he didn''t have to get involved. But the OT, while soundproofed, wasn''t nearly enough to contain the screaming. And it was much louder over the intercom. He could tell it was Khan''s voice, the man did love to scream, but this time, it was sheer terror, a sound that nearly made the 6''5" former bouncer piss himself.
"Code White! What the absolute fuck! Andie, now!"
He didn''t wait. He didn''t let the scanner rejecting his card stop him, he used that heft of his, concealing some barely legal augments, to cave the door in and hauled ass right through.
The inner door, while fire-proofed, was far more flimsy. He ripped it off the hinges, but stopped, jaw nearly hitting the floor.
Which was coated red. As were the walls. And the ceiling. Only the small child and the surgeon that dwarfed him remained untouched, though one was already crimson.
"What.. What the fuck?" He reached for his stun baton, shakily taking a step back, only to feel his broad back hit something stuck to the wall behind him.
"You seem decent enough. I''ll count to five. You ought to know better than to interrupt me when I''m operating, but don''t make the same mistake Mr. Khan did. Delicious, however, I might wear that skin till it''s tattered."
There was enough distance between him and Dr. Red that he turned to see what he''d bumped into, and then indeed pissed himself for real, as he realized it was the skinless face of a certain famous paediatric neurosurgeon, embedded at eye level, thanks to a scalpel long enough to be called a knife. He needed the lift, Khan had been a meagre 5''8", it was only the blade stuck through his throat that let them see eye to eye. Or he would have, if the sockets weren''t empty and oozing.
Don''t blame him. He''d snuck a beer in on duty, and his bladder wasn''t as taut as it used to be after too much ket in Glasgow.
Still, he was a brave man. Braver than he ought to have been, because he raised his baton and rushed in, his boots almost skidding on the sodden floor. Andrew had his back, he''d be here in seconds.
The baton smacked into Red''s face, smashing the mask, but leaving the man unfazed even as it dug into his flesh and discharged all its voltage.
"I didn''t even finish counting. Your loss." His breath stank of ozone, and he languidly drew the far smaller scalpel as if it were a toy, stepping daintily aside as a gush of blood leapt from the severed carotid.
Steve staggered back, clutching his neck. Press, press harder you bastard. He was built different, he let his augments take the wheel even as his vision dimmed, raising the baton again and bringing it crashing down with all the force his enhanced musculature could bear.
Red caught it. One handed. The residual charge charred his gloves.
"I''m bored."
Steve was flung twenty feet, taking the other half of the doors off their hinges, smashing into Andrew and sending him flying too. The last image seared by the sheer actinic light of his baton''s discharge as he lay there exsanguinating, was Mr. Khan''s eyes now placed in a far too unfamiliar face. His last thoughts were that he should really have married Lucy, his favorite at the strip club, when he had a chance. Oh, and called his mom more. She picked up the call as he died, but only to scream herself hoarse as she heard his gurgled goodbyes.
It didn''t take a degree in medicine for the other doctors to take the hint that their presence was unwelcome. Klaxons, unused in years, began blaring, and emergency evacuation protocols that they''d slept through when taught began to be enacted.
Red didn''t emerge from the OT even as the hospital emptied, and the first of many RRT SUVs showed up, sirens drowning out those of the ambulances.
They disgorged a score of hard men. Members of the Tactical Firearms Group, looking good in black, visors on and exoskeletons ready. One of them was even a Class 1 Bruiser, his exo was meant mostly for carrying firearms and heavy ordinance to solve what his fists couldn''t.
"We have a hostage. A child. Last seen in an operating room, number seven, second floor, last feed image before the system crashed was that this mad bastard was wheeling them out to a ward." A sergeant grunted out, over their comms. They were dead silent outside barring the sharp whine of exos.
The breach was uneventful. There had been a jam as too many stretchers flooded the lobbies, but the patients had been carried out in arms, and these men at arms simply crushed the flimsy things as they swept through the foyer, guns sweeping the building.
"Entrance clear. Do we have bot support?" The man barked again, his IR laser visible only through the inbuilt night vision. They''d killed the lights, it was entirely possible this rogue metahuman lacked enhanced night vision.
"Negative. ETA 16 minutes till we can get you a big boy, but be advised, wrap this up quick, Hereford woke up, take too long and the SAS-sy lads will steal your thunder. Remember enhanced strength, potential low level reality warping. Stick to your training." His boss ordered, eyes glued to the feed.
The team, one of four sweeping at once, moved like panthers in the dark. Only the odd ancient life support unit that wasn''t hooked up to the smart systems still bleeped and lit up the odd ward or ICU. The odd cellphone, lost in the mad rush to evacuate. An iPad, with Peppa Pig playing but thankfully on earphones left on the floor.
"Movement. On sensors. Second floor. Did it take her to the ward?"
"Got a feed. Leftover cellphone, we hooked in. Wait, she''s alone, she''s waking up from the sedation, I don''t see-"
"Hello officers. I''m just here to do my job."
Sergeant Lewis hadn''t made his rank for no reason, his carbine was up and firing before the first syllables had left Red''s mouth, now freshly masked. His team was almost as quick, shooting depleted uranium slugs from shotguns, hitting the monster in the face with the grandfather of all tasers, the ultracaps dropping almost a thousand joules of energy into the eye where the dart had embedded itself, blowing it up.
"I can''t operate like this. And you''ve emptied the place, very well, you''ll have to do."
Lewis had dumped his mag and the mere seconds it took informed him the effect was less than could be desired. He swung, a serrated monoblade whispering out of its sheath and into the man''s guts, and was heartened to see that unlike the bullets, it sank in. Deep.
He was disheartened, quite literally, when the yawning man struck like a cobra, breaking ribs coated with bleeding edge subdermal titanium plating, and pulled out his still beating heart.
The visors tinted over, even harder, as someone fired a flashbang from an underbarrel grenade launcher. It lit up the corridor, but not the doctor. Who had vanished without a trace.
"Motherfucker! We need backup, Lewis is down-" The new pointman yelled, before he found himself wrenched off his feet and then embedded in a wall.
Wallace, the supe, was third, and threw away the shotgun he wielded, almost verging on a cannon, when the Doctor appeared behind him. The scattershot was too risky, it would have taken out the other members of the team struggling not to flag each other with their muzzles. Instead, he swung, not seemingly faster than a normal man, but with the force of a semitruck behind it.
It smashed into the wall, Red had sidestepped again, and the man sighed deeply as the hidden load bearing column broke apart, caving in the roof.
This was going to be fun. He loved surgery in the dark. Speakers only accustomed to bored public service announcements began playing Mozart. He''d missed this so bloody much.
Interlude 4.1: All Dogs Take You To Heaven
The control room was anything but controlled.
"Wallace? Wallace? Check in?"
There was a pause, leaving only heavy breathing and grunting coming through, then strained words could be heard.
"Online. Status red. Lewis is KIA. I don''t know about Will. Fucking hell, I can''t hold this up for much longer." Wallace moaned, his muscles buckling as he held up several tons of ceiling. His exo had already given out, more dead weight.
"Your tac feed is cutting out. Hang on, the others are on their way, will it hurt if you let go?"
"Phil, Adit, fucking clear off. Yes, good lads. Uh, yes, it''ll fucking hurt boss, if I let this land on me, but I don''t think I''ve got a choice."
The two other survivors of the team stepped forward, the corridor would be blocked for good the moment Wallace couldn''t keep it up, but they needed to check on Will. More like last will and testament, amirite? Of course I am, that''s one of the perks of being an omniscient narrator. Sadly, he was one with the walls, the blow had pancaked him.
The two of them stood well clear, until Wallace nodded and let go, letting the upper floor cave in on his head. A cloud of dust filled the floor, with them careful to keep their balance with saline bottles, needles and spare clothing littering the floor. They kept their guns up, though visibility was too poor to piss in and hit a target.
Hold your ground. He''s only got one route to approach you.
After a period of time just long enough to be concerning, they heard the crackling of plaster, concrete and screeching of metal once more, as a battered Wallace emerged from the debris. He wasn''t looking good, but they''d seen him walk off worse, so a quick nod and a moment for him to scavenge some of his own gear and that of Lewis, who very much didn''t need anything but a heart transplant (and the only surgeon around wasn''t obliging), he was armed and ready. Trickles of blood ran down dozens of lacerations, and he pulled out a particular long piece of rebar that had impaled him through his biceps and threw it aside with a grunt.
He had some degree of enhanced healing. Not enough that he wouldn''t need medical care, but that could wait for a hospital. Preferably not this one.
"Boss. We''re up. No bead on the bastard. Orders?"
"Scanning. Oh fuck, wait-"
Wallace looked at the other two men, who he knew were just as askance as he was, they''d been putting down fools long enough that he could read their body language despite the mirrored visors. He couldn''t see in the dark himself, but luckily Lewis''s helmet had fit; he''d taken a moment to look at the man''s unseeing eyes before drawing them shut with a deep sigh.
"We had an incident. Our Clairvoyant is down. Seizure. This isn''t good, the autodoc is saying she''s missing a fucking chunk of her brain. Wait one. Bravo went down to check the morgue. Charlie, they''re on the other side, but they''re moving to back you up. Last thing Elise managed to say was that the cunt is everywhere, watch your backs. Shit''s been escalated. Combat bots are inbound, hold your ground, you know the Dreadnought is too big to airlift; we''re having it brought over as fast as we can. The SAS, they''re coming too, bringing metas. Just hang in there Alpha."
"Gotcha boss. This asshole is strong. I''m guessing Class 3 at a minimum. I don''t know if he''s teleporting, but add super speed and strength to the list. I don''t know if he dodged me because I was too slow, or because it woulda hurt. Priority note, he''s vulnerable to blades, Lewis got one good in his guts, and I think that hurt. Fuck, I''m better with my fists but I''ve got something."
Wallace unsheathed an ugly hunk of metal. Too blunt to be called a blade, more a heap of raw iron. He was a fan of Guts, had the same hairstyle before the balding began, but since the missus didn''t complain, he was cool with it. But it was deceptively dull; a Crafter buddy of his had forged it himself, and Wallace had cut speeding vans in half with it, as well as the hajis inside. It felt good to hold, he controlled his breathing, a decade of training kicking in. He could have gone SAS, or SBS, you know, he just stuck with the Met because that''s where his family lived. And he didn''t want this insane monster depressing properly values. He shuddered a little, remembering that Lisa had been due her shots, considering it lucky for once that both he and her mom had been too busy to take her today.
"This is Bravo. Morgue clear. Nothing moving that shouldn''t be. Holding the exit, until further orders."
"Charlie. ICU Three clear. Moving to the Memorial Ward."
The groaning of the remaining ceiling grew louder, the building shook, prompting the three remaining members of Alpha to get moving. The dust hadn''t settled, the ventilation had been shut off too, though HQ had wrested back control of the systems.
Wallace held the blade with his right hand, and his shotgun with the other, taking point and letting Phillip and Aditya shelter behind his gigantic frame. They had IR flashlights on, but they didn''t help, though walking forward did, as more of the corridor crashed down behind them.
Slow and steady. Sweep the corners. Pie the rooms. They were quick on the take, because after walking forward for less than a minute, they realized that by no means should this corridor have been that long.
"Boss. Bad juju. Spatial warping, this corridor isn''t ending, and the dust isn''t settling. Requesting advice?"
"Wallace, what do you see? Signs? Dead reckoning systems online?"
"Dame Bhattacharya NICU. We passed that already and systems say we went as straight as we could go. Should I bust through?"
"Affirmative. You''re not in an isolated space, signal''s strong. There''s nothing important behind the wall to your right, but be careful."
Wallace grunted, and stabbed the blade into the wall with ease. A couple slices, as easy as cutting into cheesecake, and he''d opened up a hole big enough to clamber through.
To his relief, it was a changing room, with an exit in clear view.
"This is Charlie. Can someone kill the fucking music? It''s giving me a headache."
"Negative. Our technomancer has enough to tackle. Filter it out on your end."
The speakers sighed again. "I''m not the kind that plays jazz, or hip-hop, when I''m working. But you lot are colleagues, at least when it comes to butchering people. Recommend something, please, Mr. Khan had a Spotify subscription and now, I have all the passwords.."
Wallace had to resist clenching his blade or the gun any harder, or they''d break. "Hey Alexa, play, Fuck You. Let the girl go, you coward."
"Such vulgarity, sadly, the classics will have to do. I was born to Mozart, you know. I remember it so clearly, all the red. The girl is safe. You think I''d undo all my hard work so quickly by killing her? No, she''ll be better than brand new." Doctor Red whispered, making the music distort and rewind as he spoke.
Wallace''s blood ran cold. "What the fuck did you do to her?"
"Cured her. Made her slightly better than human. She''s a metahuman too, you know. Almost ready to manifest. Bad MRS coming up. So I took the liberty of putting in the best implants your sorry hospital had to offer, she won''t have another chance. Don''t worry, her parents signed the consent forms. I''m quite convincing."
Wallace shook his head, and walked through the changing room. It was cold. Far colder than it ought to be.
"All I ever wanted was to be made welcome. To have my talents appreciated. Would you believe it if I said I did show up here to help?"
He didn''t respond, already annoyed at letting this psycho get to him.
"Strong and silent type, huh? I could use a minion. Or a marionette. Not too late to choose, or else, I guess I haven''t had the time for lunch.."
"This is Bravo. Temperature''s dropping. Minus twenty-five. Not the morgue chiller, we shot it up. Oh what the hell-"
Gunfire. Grenades. He felt it through his boots.
"Felix, falling back. They''re not staying fucking DEAD."
"I love finger food.."
Wallace and the others double timed it, not waiting for HQ''s orders, they knew there was a way down to the morgue, and the endless corridor had to be avoided anyway. In their haste, they almost missed the sturdy looking man standing there, holding a cap in his hands, his back turned their way.
He had a hospital security uniform on, so he wasn''t immediately perforated, the TFG weren''t trigger happy, they''d been trained out of it.
"On your knees!" Adit yelled, bringing his assault rifle up.
The only response was a low groan, almost guttural.
"Andrew? Are you okay lad?" Wallace asked, with genuine concern. He still didn''t let his monstrous shotgun waver for a moment, despite the hole in his arm. He knew Andie. He''d been on the beat before he''d decided that life wasn''t for him.
In response, the hulking man turned around. His eyes were dazzling in the false color of their cutting edge lenses, the successor to the American IVAS doing its best to reproduce an approximation of reality. Human eyes didn''t glow like that in IR lighting, he looked like a tiger caught in headlights but shining back enough to blind a driver. The thermals showed him blazing hot, yet cold as the dead at the extremities. Arteries and veins undulated under pallid skin as seen by their terahertz imaging. And he was packing, muscles grafted onto an already bulky frame, neat lines of sutures and surgical glue showing where the Doctor had found some of the implants too annoying or useless for his purposes and taken them out. He could do better, with meat alone.
Wallace didn''t even need to verbalize the command to open fire. Andie was gone. His shotgun, dwarfing even the KS-23 occasionally found in Spetznaz use, fired a hail of pellets that would have been offended if you''d called them buckshot. Closer to something you''d use to put down an elephant.
Behind him, Adit and Phil let their rifles roar, the two of them backpedaling to get a clear bead on the monster without catching Wally in the crossfire.
Unlike Red, Andie Mk. 2 wasn''t entirely immune to bullet wounds. He convulsed as the cone of titanium shot blew off half his jaw, though it would normally have been enough to turn a charging bull into ground beef. The rifle rounds punched into him, but only thick and viscous ichor dripped out, not the normal arterial spray.
It roared, lumbering forward. An arm was replaced with a sawblade, whirring to life and spraying blood of unknown provenance in all directions, itself white hot in thermals. Likely his own, the graft was rushed, not Red''s best work.
Wallace howled back, dropping his shotgun again and standing wide, blade raised. He was a HEMA fan, or at least he had been before everyone stopped sparring with him out of sheer fear of his strength. The androids weren''t as much fun.
Andie picked up speed, his footsteps shaking the ground, legs too thick to wrap around capable of both stomping and running. He swung his saw, only to have it batted aside by a an enraged Wallace. A shower of sparks lit up the corridor, but whatever had Red had done to the tool employed by his minion, it held up to a blow that would have shattered mundane materials.
Wallace swung a left hook, the beast too close to properly bludgeon with the blade, and was gratified by the feeling of a nasal bridge and bone giving way. But Jesus Christ he''d expected more, what the hell had been done to Andie?
Andy spat blood in his face, so hot that it sizzled against the visor, but Wallace headbutted him in retaliation, so hard one of the cameras broke. He hated how he was often stronger than the hardware he relied on. The impact glazed the visor, but sent Andie reeling, neck clearly broken, head lolling at an angle.
The other two took a knee and lit him up, dumping another mag into him, aiming for the face as best they could. But even with his face caved in and mandibles separated and held together by strings of flesh, his head practically resting on bulging shoulders, Andie kept advancing.
Wallace kicked down a door and let the others move first, before taking down the frame as he crammed through. There, he held up his blade as Andie careened around the corner, and stabbed, the blade going straight through the ribcage and impaling what should have been the heart. It may well have been, but being skewered like a pig didn''t slow down Andie, who pushed straight through and jammed his circular saw into Wallace''s side, sending true blood and bits of shattered bone flying, with only the latter''s desperate heave, that lifted Andie a good foot off the ground, saving him from being bisected.
"Toxin! Now!" Wallace yelled, doing his best not to let Andie drag himself closer, which he was trying to do with the one hand that wasn''t weaponized. It was still massive, closer to a bear''s paw, the nails long and sticking right out from the bone. Even with Wallace''s own strength, it was difficult to keep him in the air, especially with the lack of leverage.
Phil dodged a swipe, and fired a neurotoxin dart from a sidearm, which impaled itself in exposed meat and squirted its contents. Whatever the hell had been done to Andie, it didn''t make him entirely resistant to this potent toxin, a distant relative of what Adat could spit out of his gullet. But the dose was intended to be less than lethal, or at least to cause respiratory paralysis that could be overcome with EMT support. Thus, Phil fired three more, before drawing his karambit and slamming it into an eye socket.
This time, he didn''t quite manage to avoid retaliation, he''d had to let himself get quite close to have a good shot, the dart gun wasn''t particularly powerful and he had to aim carefully to hit an exposed spot. The backhand threw him across the room, skidding on his ass.
Andie was struggling, but with a convulsive effort, he raised his arms and shoved the ceiling, forcing himself down and Wallace up off his feet. The sword cut clean through, but even that seemed like a minor inconvenience.Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
Wallace wisely let go, not being literally attached to the blade, and tackled Red''s pet and sent him rolling on the ground, saw barely kept pinned beneath a knee.
Aditya ran up, pulling out a block of C4 intended for use as a breaching charge, and then, as Wallace got the idea and flipped Andie to the side, he shoved the thing through the gaping wound in the flank, rolled himself barely clear and pulled the trigger on his detonator.
This had immediate results. The directed charge tore Andie apart, bisecting him entirely. His struggle grew feebler, and Wallace shifted position, using his training in jujitsu to pin the other arm, headless of it raking his back, before pulling, tearing the saw off, so well attached it took the arm with it at the shoulder.
Then he jumped clear, before kicking Andie''s lower half aside. It had been sprouting tendrils of meat, as had the top, and he wasn''t taking any chances when it came to the opportunity for the two to reunite.
Andie groaned, coughing up what seemed like tar, but didn''t manage to resist further as Wallace picked up his blade and sank it straight through his skull. That did the trick.
He stood there panting, resting his weight on the blade, heedless as it stabbed through the floor. His back hurt, what the fuck kind of claws got through woven graphene under armor?
"Boss. It''s dead." He sighed, before taking another swing and decapitating the creature. Never could be too sure, he thought, punting the head down the hall.
"Bravo has taken casualties. Charlie has moved up to reinforce. Engaging zombies. They''re not as tough as that thing you took down, but they were very wrong about everything down there being dead. Hold your position, I''m not risking all of you for a single girl, even if we believe the nutter about her being a supe."
Wallace grunted, tired to the bone. He walked over to Phil and gave him a hand, drawing him to his feet effortlessly. Thankfully, the far less sturdy man had only broken a rib, and with his own augments, wasn''t too hard done.
"We have drones inbound. Controlled demolition of the outer walls, it seems that blowing holes in the place is the only way to stop him from warping space as he pleases. Dreadnought, it''s about there."
The lights were back on. HQ had decided that it seemed the Doctor wasn''t hampered in the least by the lack of illumination.
They could hear sirens and gunfire. Then explosion as the cops outside started tearing down walls. Sunlight, while not literally the best disinfectant, might help.
A drone came flying in, its own little carbine was anemic, but it carried cargo. Goodies sorely appreciated by the survivors of Alpha. Command had brought out the toys.
"Jesus. I wanted one of these so bad.." Aditya said, picking up a bolter. Or a Mk. 1 Enhanced Gyrojet Pistol, even Accuracy International was wary of copyright violations.
"Remember, it''s closer to an RPG than a rifle. Less recoil than you''d expect, but don''t worry about accuracy, aim center mass and shoot till they stop moving." Phil told him, expert hands grabbing grenades and charges, far more potent than what they''d brought in.
"HQ, do we move to help Bravo-"
"I''m disappointed. I accept the corpses were rushjobs, but I expected more from Andrew and Steve. But I guess you can''t ask for much more from two gammons stitched together. I really dislike being rushed, that''s a very avoidable form of surgical error.."
Aditya shot the speaker with the bolter. The resulting explosion was cathartic.
Red''s voice was notably more British. If the members of Alpha had been familiar with a certain neurosurgeon, they''d have recognized elements of Khan seeping in. As it was, they spat in contempt of this posh poof putting it on thick.
"Negative. Dreadnought''s here. Sending it in with a wave of bots. Let them take point, we can''t lose more good men."
HQ sounded resigned, but they had their orders. St. Thomas was state of the art, hundreds of millions had been spent upgrading its systems, and while men and machines were expensive, their bosses were willing to throw much more their way before accepting surrender. The sheer PR hit, with the legitimacy of the government already being called into question? Unacceptable.
They stepped off for a moment, almost making it to a cafeteria ahead.
Phil stopped. Movement from the rear motion detectors they''d left in their wake.
"Hold the front. I''m checking back." He moved, swearing furiously as he saw that the massive corpse had vanished. All that was left was the rebar and smeared and congealing brains in the crater on the floor.
"Too good to waste. I do have a spare brain handy, almost good as new, barely used.." That fucking speaker they''d shot. It was back. He impaled it with the rebar and stomped the thing to pieces.
Thankfully, Phil and Andie hadn''t run into anything, though the sounds of gunfire only grew louder, as did the whine of tiltrotors as both helicopters and large drones circled the premises.
The came the sound of walls being smashed into rubble. A distant stomping, but one that made them whoop instead of shudder in terror.
The Dread was here.
They heard the chainguns opening up, a bolus dose of hot lead helping out Bravo and Charlie with the shamblers, those creatures too dumb to hit the deck and thus bisected or disintegrated by way of bullet.
"Hold your ground. Link up and move in force." HQ ordered, sounding suitably smug.
The wait as the other elements mopped up and then made their way up seemed interminable, but then the cafeteria doors were ripped apart by a massive gauntlet, and the Dreadnought was before them, flanked by the remnants of Bravo and Charlie, as well as smaller but well equipped combat androids.
The Rolls-Royce Mechanized Super Heavy Infantry was a behemoth and a half. Any resemblance to a certain intellectual property of James Workshop is purely coincidental, or so this narrator studiously claims. Didn''t stop everyone and their dog from calling it a Dreadnought.
Even the relatively tall corridors of the hospital barely contained it, it was just about the maximum height and weight the Met could expect to send into a building without the floor collapsing under it. An arm had an integrated chaingun, a model that wouldn''t have looked out of place on an Apache. The other had a mounted grenade launcher, full of all kinds of ordnance to lay down the ordinance. Right now, the magazine was filled with HEDP, each 40mm grenade able to disable an APC on a direct hit. A shoulder carried a missile launcher, trading out the larger warheads of a military mech for a swarm of micro missiles, capable of navigating twisting corridors and taking out targets where the sheer bulk of the Dread made navigation impossible. Another shoulder carried a laser dazzler, a concession to crowd control, not that any crowd stuck around for long when this lumbering murder machine came out to read the Riot Act.
It was coated in blood, and, to Wallace''s mild concern, claw marks. An arm clung to its squat legs, clamped tight despite having been torn off a zombie, and then fried by the discharge of supercaps embedded in the armor of the mech. You really didn''t want to get into melee with it.
"All units. Move in force, we''ve got a window of 5 minutes till the SAS arrive, and I want this wrapped up with a bowtie. Recover the child at all costs, an MI-5 Clairvoyant confirmed the entity''s reports of her being of extreme value. Potentially Class 5 or above. Make it work."
Wallace whistled. A Class 5? He''d never met one, the odd 3s and 4s he''d encountered personally had been more than impressive, making him sigh at his relative weakness. Then again, he didn''t mind too much, he''d heard concerning rumors about far too many of the heavy hitters being drafted and never coming home. At least he got to stick around with his loved ones.
The combined TFG unit moved out, letting the Dread take point and the androids guard the rear. It was quiet. Too quiet. He''d heard the charges going off, the exterior of the structure being torn apart, the hospital wasn''t nearly dense enough that the whine of half a dozen tiltrotors and massive emergency VTOL drones wouldn''t have been audible.
"HQ. More spatial warping. Please advise." He heard Adeboye chirp. The leader of Charlie was was a Class 1 himself, enhanced reflexes and agility, hardly out of the realm that was now possible with the latest cybernetic enhancements, but hey, the more metas the Met had, the better the optics.
"The Dread has demo charges. Use them. Sparingly-"
"Goodness. I understand that you perceive me as an unwelcome guest, but let''s be frank here, you''ve done a number on the place. I''d wager I''ve only racked up several thousand pounds of simple carpentry work and a few times more in disposable muscle. You''re to blame for the untenable increase in the running costs of the NHS."
The Dreadnought buzzed, e-war systems engaged. Wallace shook his head as distorted static squealed through his headset, the suit''s own defenses not quite up to the task of retaining full functionality as the mech did its best to contest control of all nearby electronics.
He didn''t look at the signboard they passed, which showed a glitching overview of the hospital, dumb systems very unhappy about the conflicting reports being received from the thousands of sensors strewn throughout the facility. Nobody noticed that a door tucked away in the corner, helpfully labeled as the "Kennel", switched over to open.
This is about as good a time as any to mention that St. Thomas had more than it''s fair share of furry friends. After all, the psychological benefits of pets were well established, a lovely cuddly Golden Retriever couldn''t quite cure cancer, but they made you feel much better all the same. A recent funding campaign had even splurged for several miniphants and more exotic GMOs. It was great PR.
HQ had wrangled several Technomancers together, and their tenuous control over the hospital was bolstered. Most of the systems were displaying gibberish, but they''d augmented the motion trackers left by the TFG and drones with wall hacks, repurposing frankly outdated 2.4 Ghz wifi modems to track entities even through walls. With surprising resolution to boot.
"Movement. Next corridor. Mid-sized, quadrupedal. What the fuck could that-" Wallace called out over comms before the Dread''s AI decided that it wasn''t an accurate descriptor of the HVT or their eliminate-at-all-costs adversary. The frigid air heated up as the chain guns let loose, and Wallace, almost a dozen feet away, ducked to avoid an avalanche of sizzling brass.
"Stop fucking the comms!" Someone yelled at the Dread, which ended its auditory assault through their speakers and only raised the rate of fire on the cannons.
They stood there, for a moment, helmets struggling to see through the thick smoke, before the Dread helpfully patched them into its sensors.
MULTIPLE THREATS NEUTRALIZED. BE ADVISED, LESS THAN 27% OF EXPECTED LETHALITY FROM ORDNANCE.
REQUESTING PERMISSION TO PROGRESS UP THE KILL CHAIN. INCOMING THREATS, BEST CLASSIFIED AS MODIFIED CANIDS, IN T-3 SECONDS-
"Light them up, you fat bastard-" Wallace managed to scream before the walls crumbled as something as divorced from dog as a wolf was from a Chihuahua smashed through a window and was upon them.
It was hairless. Bloody, from both bullet holes and hasty incisions. And the size of an adolescent rhino. It would almost certainly have been inaudible over the Dread''s guns, but it was as silent as the grave, vocal cords being considered unnecessary by the Doctor. At least he hadn''t docked their tails.
It came down the impossibly long corridor, the Doctor''s meddling being in the favor of the TFG for once, as the Dread took Wallace''s orders to heart and let loose with the grenade launcher.
High Explosive Dual Purpose grenades. For when you aren''t quite sure if you''re in the mood to fuck up an armored car or a squad of troops hiding behind a seemingly robust wall.
The first grenade hit the beast in the forelimbs, blowing a chunk the size of Wallace''s torso out of it and sending it sliding towards them. Still far from dead, the Dread managed to get another hit on its shoulder, almost tearing it off entirely, before it smashed into it. It snarled voicelessly, attempting to lunge up and snap at the mech, only to be literally battered back by the sheer momentum of high caliber shells sent directly down its throat.
INCOMING
It was far from alone. Wallace saw the rearguard droids swivel at the torso to engage yet more hounds smashing themselves loose from the walls, and felt the ground shake as something did its best to batter down the ceiling above them.
Three of them broke through, the android''s armaments unable to check their advance, the Dread unable to fire without wiping out the dozen men behind it. A paw big enough to serve dinner on bowled a bot aside, another hound biting another in half, headless of the internal power pack detonating in its mouth. It sprang ahead, missing half its teeth, only to meet Wallace swinging his sword, a sweep that cut through wall before he lopped off the creature''s head, which was still massive enough to knock him off his feet.
More. They were attacking from all angles. Clawing and biting through brick.
Aditya''s bolter roared, firing an entire magazine and sending bone shrapnel into a massive skull. It wasn''t enough, a member of Charlie had only a moment to begin unloading his rifle before claws the size of a steak knife eviscerated him, then a heavy foot crushed him without losing its stride.
It made the mistake of trying to walk over Wallace, his Highlander ancestors might not have been alive to see it, but he did them proud by stabbing upwards with his claymore and spitting the beast. He heaved, standing up despite the half ton of weight he was shouldering, the wound so large and the creature so heavy that it slid down the blade and submerged his face in its guts. He let go of the hilt and tore, ripping the snarling thing into two, heedless of it clawing into his hairy chest and only barely being checked by his ribs as hard as diamond.
Aditya noticed the front half still moving, and quickly reloaded with armor piercing bolts before sending several shots into its eye socket. That did the trick, but before he had a moment to exhale, the ceiling split open, and a massive trunk reached down and yanked him off his feet and to the floor above.
Wallace howled, tearing off his ruined helmet again, spitting up boiling blood and viscera that charred his mouth.
He had one smart contact lens still in place, and he could only grimace as he saw it report that the integrity of Aditya''s chest plating was "irrevocably compromised" before his vitals flatlined. He''d been squeezed into paste.
The trunk came out again, lamprey-like with sharp teeth aching to swallow and mulch a skull. Luckily, it aimed for Adeboye, his powers letting him duck barely in time before it could yank his head off his shoulders. Wallace was seeing red, he grabbed the proboscis with one arm, and screamed as it coiled around his forearm and yanked him up too. The teeth bit into him, almost vacuuming up his flesh before giving up at its sheer intransigence. His head bashed into the ceiling, and he starfished himself in a panic, fighting against the force that threatened to pull him through the hole. His other arm was still intact, and Adeboye, almost collapsing under the weight, managed to pass him his sword. He didn''t have much room to move, but still stabbed it straight through nonetheless, hearing an elephantine scream as it cut through.
"Skewered the bastard. Be QUICK!" He gurgled through swollen lips, as Adeboye grabbed a missile launcher and fired it point blank. Not the best idea, back blast was no joke in confined spaces, but it got the job done, the trunk going slack and letting Wallace fall to the floor, his landing broken by the slack body of a dog.
He lay there for a moment, feeling more than hearing the continuous roaring off the Dread''s guns. His eardrums were done for, he could barely turn his head without the world turning into a smear. He did so nonetheless, and was rewarded for his effort by his stomach hurling up everything he''d had his dinner, including a bit of oversized dog.
He laid there for what seemed an eternity, until the rumbling ceased and merciful silence reigned. Or he presumed it was silence, the tinnitus in his skull threatened to make him bash it in.
He could feel his body healing. Slowly. It itched abominably.
"Hey. Wally?" Or so he presumed Phil was telling him, he''d taken off his own helmet for just a second, and he was doing his best to read lips through his concussion.
He raised a hand, the one that wasn''t practically fused to his sword, and circled a finger around his ear. Phil fished out an earpiece, before kneeling next to Wally and shoving it none too gently into his bleeding ear canal. A sharp pinch, it wasn''t an ordinary one, it unspooled a line of cabling and did its best to hook into the cochlea, only to be ignored by the MRS.
"Didn''t work, eh?" he imagined Phil saying. He turned back and yelled something to the survivors out of sight, and Adeboye walked into view, fishing out smart contacts. Wallace did his best not to blink as it slithered over his eyes. Closed captioning. Better than deafness, though the tinnitus was beginning to subside.
"Get up, you fat oaf. And thank you." The other team leader told him, words overlaid, offering his hand for a moment before sheepishly withdrawing it when he realized that it would only have him pulled off his feet.
Wallace shook his head, decided that the world wasn''t swaying more than he was accustomed to walking off after a bender, and stood to his feet, grabbing hold of the dangling trunk and hoisting himself up.
It was a charnel house. He turned numb eyes at the scene, flitting over the dead dogs and momentarily resting on the corpses of his comrades. His friends. His drinking buddies.
Terry. A good lad. Barely out of his teens but so goddamn good that he''s been fast tracked into the TFG. He almost looked peaceful, as if he was hugging an oversized terrier to his chest, ignoring the fangs that laid open his ribs.
Boris. Or he presumed it was Boris. Who else in the team carried a bandolier of incendiary grenades, and had the balls to shove it down a throat while it took his arm with with him?
Otto. Mills. Henry. They''d all had kids. They''d all suited up to keep them safe. He thought of his own.
"Is it just us?" He whispered, his own words wavering a foot away.
"I''m sorry. We''re all that''s left. And that tin can." The Dread stood impassive, barrels of a cannon still spinning down, misting the room as the cold fought with the gently smoldering fires from the incendiaries. The approach was choked with more carcasses. It had let loose its own dogs of war, and put many more to sleep.
Orders from HQ manifested. His commander seemed like a broken man doing his best not to show it. They''d taken him for a posh poof at the start, but he''d won them over. And he seemed ashamed at having spent their lives.
"Stand down. No contacts in the immediate vicinity. You''re not moving an inch till the SAS gets here, I''d pull you out right fucking now, but my hands are tied boys. Let them handle the rest.." He turned his head away, dabbing at his dapper mustache, before cutting the video feed.
Wallace, leaning on his sword like a crutch, found the head of a dog and kicked. And kicked. And kicked again, until Phil grabbed him and moved him gently aside. His contacts wicked away the tears before they froze over on his face.
Interlude 5.0: With Friends Like These..
It wasn''t very often that officers in a navy fought hard to get assigned to a worse class of ship. Looking at the raw specs for the UNSC Fenrir, one might easily mistake it for a superannuated model, reminiscent of the Mjolnir-class frigates that had last left the dockyards of Jove in 2034, and these days, were only seen limping back to boneyards to be scrapped for parts.
The Fenrir boasted a maximum acceleration of 12 gees, seeming impressive only till you remembered that more modern ships could pull several dozen. Its armaments seemed anemic, sure, it was up to the task of sterilizing the surface of a small moon, but it lacked the ability to punch right through the crust and sprinkle mantle like a proper planet-killer. Even when the raw output of a weapon-system might sound impressive, the tracking and Effective Terminal Effect of its weaponry seemed paltry.
Its AI system was antiquated, almost stupid. It was one of the rare craft where the human captain held more than nominal command. Were they the old-fashioned type, loathe to trust lives to a machine that thought faster and lived harder than they did? No.
Maybe you might mistake its crew for cowards who wanted an easy berth. After all, while offense wasn''t its strong-suit, it could certainly hold up to a beating. The demand for Crafter tech strongly outstripped supply, yet the Fenrir had a hull with enormous amounts of the stuff. The pseudo-material was impressive stuff, soaking up and distributing kinetic force and thermal energy far more capably than mere matter could. (It would be nice to call such products meta-materials, but the term was already reserved for engineered and entirely mundane stuff well before SAMSARA brought about metahumans in its wake)
It had layers upon layers of force-fields, once again pure Crafter handiwork, and in conjunction with its hull, it could withstand the full firepower of a Centauri Dreadnought for a minute at near point-blank range. For more typical engagement distances, measured in light minutes, the Fenrir could survive nigh-indefinitely.
I did mention you''d be mistaken if you considered the crew cowards. The Fenrir used its ludicrous durability not to linger at the edge of combat effectiveness like a glorified missile boat, but rather to ensure that a very expensive payload made it to the thick of the fight.
For it was made part and parcel to carry some of the best metahumans that money could buy. Or well, not money, but national might enlisted in a conscription drive. A typical manned UNSC ship had 2-4 metahumans on board, a capital ship might have a few dozen. Numbers weren''t everything, a ship with a single good Class 4 could often best one with half a dozen class 3s, and a large fraction of ships had no metahuman crew at all, leaving aside the substantial number of fully automated craft filling out the ranks. The Fenrir and it''s kin were positive opulent, housing a single Class 6 and a dozen class 5s, and anywhere from fifty to a hundred Class 4s and below.
In this light, some of the design decisions make more sense. An unfortunate fact of the matter is that in the AC system, advanced AI could often be a hindrance as much as a help. Even Turing couldn''t make promises that the best models were immune to Centauri insubordination, a bigger mind often equated a larger surface area for subversion.
Sometimes, it really was a blessing to be a mind too small for doubt.
The Proton class AGI (barely meriting the general in Artificial General Intelligence) was simple. Pared down, optimized for speed and resilience over thinking galaxy-brained thoughts. Not that it wasn''t dangerous, a chimpanzee with a baseball bat means someone''s going to get hurt. Protons were the absolute go-to for sheer intransigence and near-immunity to electronic warfare. Turing had adversarially tested it with nearly every possible input its tiny electronic mind could hold, and proven that it would not waver. This was computationally intractable for anything significantly larger, the latent space became too large to explore. It did carry a quite recently released and relatively respectable Radon AGI, but by default the system was disconnected and air-gapped, meant to be activated in the unlikely scenario humans on board had been taken out of the loop (usually in a irreversible terminal manner).
The hard thinking and strategizing was done by the human captain, who in this case was one of the rare supes who had powers that directly improved their cognition. This was a headache, especially today when even wracking his brain to the point it felt like it would explode showed him few options but imminent death in his immediate future.
"Bulldog, status report?" He demanded, using an antiquated AR HUD that had a millionth the bandwidth of a neural throne. Metahuman Rejection Syndrome sucked, a tiny thought of thousands whispered in the background noise of his expanded mind.
"WEAPONS ORANGE. SHIELDS YELLOW. HULL GREEN. METAHUMAN PAYLOAD AT 78% OF NOMINAL" Bulldog replied, as stubbornly unflappable as the real deal. Captain Johann Yossarian had never cared for the human touch in a machine, Bulldog was always blunt and slightly mechanical in its manner, though it certainly wasn''t so dumb as to not be capable of typical speech.
One of the Yossarians sighed, out of the thousands sitting in their collective Mind Palace. It was how his/their brain envisioned itself, a collective consciousness run by democracy and far more cognitive capacity than could reasonably be expected within the confines of a human skull. He knew that being down to mere 78% of their payload was a bloodless way of saying that almost a dozen of his crew had died. It had merely been an hour into the engagement, another at this rate of attrition, and command would likely yank them back, mission scrubbed, forced to limp home and lick their wounds at the colossal speed three dedicated Teleporters afforded.
Those three were fine. All alive and untouched, though one of them was distressingly close to burning out from overuse, which could always get messy. Yossarian 551 had no choice but to burn her candles at both ends, this Teleporter had limited range and payload but a rapid cooldown, and without her, the supes fighting in the periphery of the ship would quickly find themselves isolated and picked off by the seemingly endless waves of Centaur drones and spaceforms. It helped prevent Yossarian Totality''s own burnout that the emotional cost of sending his men and women to their death could often be borne by more mental forks, each wiped clean when the burden of conscience grew too much to bear. Was it any consolation to those who died that a little bit of himself died with them?
Yossarian 1723 wept and rocked in place, not noticing the grim looks on his clones faces as a few of them surrounded him, and then rent him limb from limb, reforming the spare cognition into a new, unblemished copy. The new Yossarian, quickly self-assigning themselves the number 3302, shook his head and immediately jumped into work micromanaging another set of jump parameters. All of this elapsed in significantly faster than real time, Yossarian-in-toto could trade-off fewer mental forks for faster runtime, but given the sheer velocity of orbital combat, had opted for a slower speed per thread in favor of having many, many more of them.
Yossarian had opted to be awake for the entire year long journey, with only Bulldog keeping watch beside him. He didn''t need anyone to talk to really, he had more than enough company in his head. It was an extended vacation as far as he was concerned, a year of rest was far longer than he would have gotten if he''d stayed back on shore leave. It could have felt like decades if he''d let himself involute, running only a few copies at lightning speed.
He''d wandered the halls of his ship, whistling to the coil whine of the few spots that were using non-superconducting cables. At the very core of the ship, he often stood to lay eyes on the Radon AGI''s containment chamber. A waste of space, as far as he was concerned, he considered the efforts to keep it that airgapped paranoid. The AI was housed in a black-box the size of an apartment complex, with the umbilicals offering the gigawatts of power it needed kept spooled and far from the suggestive sockets they''d mate with.
Sometimes, he felt tempted to plug it in. It would make for better conversation than Bulldog, he''d wondered idly, before continuing his patrol to the crew quarters. They were capacious, meant to keep his metahuman subordinates from going stir-crazy, especially the ones with MRS so bad they couldn''t use full-immersion VR. Right now, anyone else would have been either confused or pissed off by the odd droning static that filled the air, but that was an intentional move by Yossarian. Three hundred different songs, played at different speeds, each teased out and appreciated by a strand of his psyche. He found the exercise oddly relaxing, and in a way, good practice for the cacophony of war.
He kept walking, finding himself in the slightly chilly environs of the cold-storage facility where the majority of his crew lay dormant.
Ryan Chungho
A Class 5 Cryomancer. The irony of being frozen wasn''t lost on him or Yossarian, though only the latter was awake to appreciate it right now.
Yosef Garamond
Another Class 5. Yossarian hadn''t actually met him while he was awake, the man had been delivered to Fenrir in cryosleep. He''d asked to be awoken a few weeks early, preferably in the company of his wife. Yossarian flicked through a display that concisely laid out the man''s rather unique set of powers, and resolved to make himself scarce when the time came. Still, he felt a tad bit miffed, considering it rude of Yosef to not introduce himself at all.
Anya Garamond
Class 4 and a speedster. And a friend. Yossarian laid a hand over her sarcophagus fondly, it was never a bore to chat with her, she could speed herself up to the point he''d struggle to keep up. Perhaps she''d opted for the taciturn Yosef as a husband because she wouldn''t have to bore herself listening to him, he thought slightly uncharitably. No matter, if they had things to speak about, his request for privacy would provide it.
This section of the ship held ten of the crew capsules. For the sake of redundancy and safety in transit, the rest were sequestered quite far apart in the safe interior of the vessel. Still, Yossarian''s word was law, and he''d gauged the risk to be low enough that he''d gathered those seeking an early awakening together. The Garamonds first, and then the long list of people who wanted extra time to unwind before combat nerves kicked in. The majority of the supes were veterans, and surprisingly, insisted on only being brought out at the last moment. He suspected that they hoped that they wouldn''t be needed at all, that the drones would mop it up, and would much rather come to in the relative safety of a dock.
He hesitated at a corner. On his left was quite clearly another containment zone, a high security enclosure that promised swift and painless death on an unauthorized breach. Unlike the cradle for the Radon, he felt that the security was warranted.
Still, it had been months since he''d visited, and he felt a need to gaze upon their most valuable cargo. It was also their most dangerous one.
He overrode the security systems, stepping into the Hraesvelgr''s den.
Even the access corridor hummed with the subsonic thrum of thirty-seven independent containment fields. Yossarian¡¯s teeth vibrated as he stepped through each successive layer ¨C molecular shears deactivating in perfect sequence, hermetic bulkheads sighing open like the petals of some infernal flower. Even here, at the edge of sleep, it pressed against his expanded consciousness. Not a presence. An absence. A singularity where reason curdled.
He steeled his nerves and stalked into the containment chamber thrummed with a basso profundo vibration that made his teeth ache. Even through the neural dampeners, he could feel the thing¡¯s dreams scratching at the edges of his mind-forks - half-formed equations about tidal forces and Roche limits, whispered in the language of shattered moons.
There was no hidden message in the audible noise. Or perhaps there was, if you were willing to set aside your sanity as the cost of entrance.
Hraesvelgr floated in a tank of amniotic fluid. Solid diamond walls, a gemstone flawless but for the horror it encased.
The fluid wasn¡¯t liquid at all, he''d realized on his first and penultimate visit. Bulldog¡¯s tersely worded manifest had called it ¡®non-Newtonian Bose-Einstein condensate (therapeutic/containment grade)¡¯, but up close, it moved like sentient mercury gifted with translucency. It chilled the room, and he swore he saw mangled cuneiform in the short-lived puffs of mist accompanying his labored breath. Thicker tendrils of the stuff coiled around Hraesvelgr¡¯s wrists and throat, pulsing in time to the chamber¡¯s containment fields. Every few seconds, the metallic pseudopod would flinch away from the Class 6¡¯s skin as if scalded, only to be dragged back by whatever dark energy kept the system in flux. Yossarian had met a few Class 6s in his day, as a 5 himself, he moved in exclusive circles. He wasn''t sure the number fit this abomination, but apparently the brass steadfastly refused to assign anyone a higher number. Maybe it let them pretend to themselves that the heroes were equal to the villains.
Hraesvelgr¡¯s form was a study in contradictions. From the neck down, its body resembled a mummified astronaut - desiccated limbs curled fetal, skin the color of comet ice mottled with burst capillaries where gravitational tides had ruptured capillaries. But the head... the head was all wrong. A smooth obsidian sphere replaced the skull, its surface crawling with impossible reflections - not light, but spacetime itself bent into a funhouse mirror. Yossarian caught fractured glimpses of his own death in those curves: his body spaghettified into a helix of meat and bone, the Fenrir crumpling like tinfoil around a singularity the size of a pinhead.
Unknowing to him, hundreds of himself huddled together for warmth in the confines of his skull.
Yossarian pressed a palm against the hyperdiamond. Frost bloomed where his capillaries burst. Idiocy. He managed to pull away, leaving a layer of ripped skin adherent to the walls. He shuddered, staining his suit with smeared blood as he reflexively wiped his hand clean.
Feeding protocols nominal, Bulldog intoned through the chamber¡¯s speakers. Causal dampeners at 89% efficiency. No bleedthrough detected since last maintenance cycle.
The captain didn¡¯t need the report. He could feel the wrongness in his molars, taste copper at the back of his throat. He felt his visits foolhardy, but necessary. If something as trivial as his presence could cause it to breach confinement, well, the mission had been doomed from the start. He owed his fellow crew the mercy of a swift and painless death while in stasis.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Mustering up his courage, he pulled on a set of gloves and then tapped the glass. An immediate reaction. The sphere¡¯s surface rippled like water, and suddenly Yossarian wasn¡¯t looking at a containment chamber anymore. He stood on a plain of black glass stretching to infinity, beneath a sky torn open to reveal the raw machinery of the cosmos¡ªgreat gears of plasma grinding stars to dust, fractal lightning that rewrote DNA with every strike. Hraesvelgr hung crucified at the nexus of it all, obsidian skull split open to vomit forth a nebula of dying worlds.
Yossarian retched, stomach acid tasting alkaline. Something injected him, a servo-arm dispensing pseudo-medication according to pre-arranged protocol. The bosses must have known that someone would be dumb enough to yank the chains. He came to, the world tossed sideways. Or rather, he must have fallen, and now, he struggled back on his feet with tinnitus for company.
Bulldog¡¯s voice cut through the static, colder than the void between galaxies.
¡°COGNITOHAZARD PROTOCOLS ENGAGED. MEMETIC FILTERS AT 100%. RECOMMEND IMMEDIATE RETREAT.¡±
Fucking idiot bot. He was all flesh and blood. He didn''t have the luxury of a lace and neural filters distorting consensus reality into something more palatable. He let his mind take the blow instead.
A hundred Yossarians screamed as their mental forks unraveled into redshifted screams. He wasn''t outright immune to coghazards, but he had his ways of dealing with them.
Backing away, Yossarian watched the containment chamber¡¯s stabilizers flare crimson. Hraesvelgr¡¯s fingers twitched in its artificial womb, and three decks below, the Fenrir¡¯s navigational array suddenly reported a 0.0003% deviation in local spacetime curvature. Enough to add five meters of error to every torpedo salvo. Enough to turn a clean kill into a glancing blow. Enough to get them all killed.
Good. He needed to know what it was capable even in undeath, locked down to mere fractions of its full power. A part of him, freshly spawned to replace the dead voices of the internal chorus, chastised him for his hubris, his demand for knowledge, for control over his ship and its crew.
Other parts of him yelled back that it was necessary. He didn''t know the enemy, so he needed to know himself. Then again, with friends like the Hraesvelgr..
He stumbled out of the facility in a fugue state, waving aside a robotic manifestation of Bulldog that stood by, watching quietly. He noticed the redness in his right eye reflected back on its mirrored surface.
To the crew quarters. To the comfortable, anachronistic sofa fresh out of a Parisian parlor. To spin up more copies and remind himself of what the Hraesvelgr was. What it did.
They''d found it buried in the ice. Hundreds of meters deep, at the northernmost reaches of Svalbard. A man-size anomaly in ice that by all rights should have been undisturbed since the last Ice Age maxima. The details of containment were vague, censored past his ULTRAVIOLET clearance, but he knew the process was costly.
That had been two years back. In all likelihood, it had been taken as a prize by some greedy nation-state, only for them to realize their mistake.
As far as he was concerned it was served to the UNSC in a silver stasis casket with a polite note: ¡°Please point away from Earth.¡±
He could connect some of the dots himself.
Looking back, what else could have caused the Ganymede Incident? Three UNSC dreadnoughts converted into non-Euclidean origami over the course of 13 seconds. Security footage showed crews walking into bulkheads that hadn¡¯t existed moments before, emerging as inverted tessellations of flesh and polymer.
They must have sent those Teleporters after it. The ones with terse obituaries only distributed to friends and family. They might even have sent Consul, he pondered. There had been a hole punched straight through the moon''s icy shell, back out the other end.
Whatever the reason had been, the UNSC must have agreed that it wasn''t for deployment anywhere near the vicinity of Sol. Hence here. Hence Hymir, where he had been granted discretion to abandon the damn thing (but only if absolutely necessary and mission critical to the task of killing the Centaurs, he couldn''t drop it off into orbit because he didn''t like it, sadly).
He shoved that thought to a rather displeased fork, and poured himself a cold brew, feeling inclined to mull over longer-term concerns, though they felt just as fatal.
The mission had been mutual suicide from the start. Humanity had vacillated, prevaricated even, in many of its strategic objectives when it came to how to handle the Centauri influx.
For a few happy years, it had been confidently assumed that while the initial fleet engagements around the system had been abject failures, the aliens had no ability to use FTL travel, and could be dealt with quite leasurely.
"They''re slowboating out of the system. As long as we keep the rate of expansion of their Von-Neumanns and antimatter fabs to below 300% per annum, we''ve got the time to build up critical mass of our own. Jump in a dozen fleets, blast the inner system, and then hunt down the survivors in deep space. Even if they coast out, it''ll be decades before they can re-establish themselves in the nearby systems, and we''ve already set up monitoring probes in a ten lightyear radius around AC. There''s no need to panic." A distant memory of some pundit pontificating on a stage far, far away. The nerd had the maths to back himself up, and besides, it was what the attendees wanted to hear.
A little bit of an alien threat? Frankly amazing. Just what the world needed to make individual nation states stop posturing and threatening to release world-ending arsenals of the mundane and metahuman kind at each other. Keep the masses afraid, find more excuses to keep the metahumans shackled in a manner that would win popular approval.
You could excuse a lot of dysfunction, and even outright suffering, if people were convinced it was for a good cause. Sure, everyone knew that most countries were building up strategic reserves as a power play against each other, but nobody was going to be the first to defect and start a war until the aliens were truly ground down, right? It would take a decade or two, but disaffection could be channeled, and perhaps false amity would foster a real one.
A Yossarian sighed. A mere year or two after that confident proclamation, the first RKVs were discovered, mostly by sheer dumb luck. The majority were neutralized at great expense, but a few struck true, battering the budding manufactories in the outer gas giants. Alarming, that the Centaurs had managed to fire some of them without obvious notice (Fleet Command had been happily tracking launches, gloating at their precognitive awareness of what they believed the Centauri considered hidden trump cards, unaware of the many that slipped their net). Greatly discomfiting, but once again, reassurance was sprayed like an aerosolized opiate that the inner system was safe, too many systems and failsafes in place to let a single damning strike wipe out the cradle of humanity. There was no real urgency.
Then the discovery that the aliens had long slipped past the AC containment lines. That while more pundits had been loudly proclaiming that there was "no stealth in space", hydrogen steamers had escaped to the edges of the Oort, building more hidden facilities and rapidly bootstrapping their alien tech. The stealth ships emitted targeted beams of neutrinos, nigh undetectable unless you were right in their path, and could achieve accelerations that rightly should have lit up the night sky.
Alright, that was concerning. $500T to the defense budget. Everyone felt the pinch of tightened belts that surveilling such a vastly widened volume entailed. You couldn''t just stick a probe in an oasis of sunlight, you had to check every cubic lightyear for lingering growth, planetisimals and ice-laden asteroids being snacked on for another generation of probes and weapons.
If only they had still been in the initial stages of growth..
The greatest lie humanity told itself was that war had boundaries. That containment zones meant something to creatures who carved shipyards from rogue planets'' frozen guts. While Terran analysts fixated on Alpha Centauri¡¯s dying binary embers, the Centauri bloomed like mold in the void¡¯s damp corners ¨C every ice-cloaked planetesimal a womb, each wandering super-Earth¡¯s mantle pregnant with fusion forges birthing dreadnoughts sleek as obsidian shards.
In those four years of human complacency, the Centauri had transformed these wandering worlds into a distributed, near-undetectable network of manufacturing and strategic nodes. Each planet became a fortress, a foundry, a seed of exponential growth - invisible until the moment of catastrophic emergence. Where humans saw empty darkness, the Centauri saw infinite potential, engineering entire civilizations into the frigid interstices between stars.
And the Dyson Swarm... God. The Swarm. Not some delicate constellation of mirrors, but a ravenous metallic epidermis devouring Rigil Kentaurus whole. We¡¯d mapped continent-sized panels drinking stellar fire to birth singularities ¨C temporary, screaming black holes spun up like lathes to forge hull alloys that laughed at teraton blasts. Gigatons of explosives detonated every few minutes, human strike craft hurling themselves against the nascent Swarm like insects against a windshield. The scale was incomprehensible¡ªhuman efforts reduced to the equivalent of trying to dismantle a hurricane with a flyswatter. Millions of lives, trillions of machines, were nothing more than momentary friction in the aliens'' relentless machinery of expansion.
As for Toliman¡¯s star-lifters? The Centauri didn¡¯t mine stars. They performed gravitational vivisection. Magnetic tendrils wider than Saturn¡¯s rings plunged into the star¡¯s heart, extracting heavy elements like surgeons plucking metastasized jewels. Their forges didn¡¯t construct warships ¨C they extruded them, kilometer-long killers coalescing from superfluid helium baths like obsidian nightmares given mathematical form. Each generation, their ships got bigger, faster and meaner, and even at the very start of the conflict, one of their warships could equal two of ours. Now, they often verged on the incomprehensible; how did they make nuclear pasta retain form when freed from the pressures of a neutron star? Was the fervent theorizing that the borderline-miraculous energy dissipation of their new hull coating an evidence they were somehow exploiting anyon-like particles and their topological phase? Who the fuck knows anymore.
Yossarian grimaced, forcing a few forks that had become side-tracked into grim daydreaming to focus on the here and now. They''d been to AC, but right now, this ''minor'' engagement a lightyear away deserved every bit of his concentration.
Hymir loomed before him on the Tac. A decade ago, there might have been little to see at all, the rogue Ice Giant had fled its cosmic nursery billions of years ago, too small to simmer on the edges of nuclear fusion like a brown dwarf, or retain enough formation heat like a super-Jupiter to be a slowly dying incandescent bulb in the night. The only light would have been the dim crackles of lightning, this far out both Sol and the three stars in AC were barely notable in the night sky. Perhaps the odd aurora, if a sudden influx of cosmic radiation had encountered the stagnant and receding magnetic field it clung onto like a tattered robe.
Now, Hymir shuddered in and out of view as actinic arcs of ship-to-ship combat lit up long dead space, but viewed in infrared, you could see suspicious streams of heat, the waste emissions of RKV launchers that had built themselves up in the clouds before disgorging their payload towards Sol. New splashes of false color joined them, debris and munitions hitting atmosphere, whalefalls from the heavens that would blaze against ammoniacal clouds amid hydrogen skies. Pinprick flashes, this time visible to the naked eye, not true lightning, but orbital defenses aiming unerringly at Terran ships. They might not have been built as weapons, but nothing screams ''dual-use technology'' like mass drivers thousands of kilometers long.
Hymir had awoken from its slumber a few years back. Or rather, it had given Sol a rude awakening when the thread of RKV trajectories had been back tracked, finally discovering the rogue planet. The aliens had used the sheer cold of the body to build up in force, content in enough thermal capacity to soak up their enormous waste heat and not raise temperatures more than a few milli-Kelvin. While UNSC High Command had been confident that the majority of RKVs already fired had been intercepted, or at least could be intercepted, eventually a small Task Force had been mustered up to deal with the problem at its source.
Task Force Sleipnir was hastily assembled, after half a decade of war, the remnants of many older fleets had limped back to the far end of the wormhole that opened at Sedna, battered beyond the point of combat effectiveness in-system, humans worn down to bundle of nerves. There was a lot that the Healers and Clairvoyants at the rearward fortresses and docks could do, but even they had to admit that a few months drinking one''s self into a stupor helped.
Yossarian cheated. One of the forks drew the short straw when it came to the hangover.
Ugh. He just couldn''t keep his mind on track(s), he''d barely been on R&R, only somewhat managing to squash the tremors that seemed to come back everytime he thought about going back in.
Hadn''t he agreed to this? His reprieve cut short for a short skirmish, a "mop up", in return for being kept safely planetside for a whole entire campaign. Not just agreed, jumped on wholeheartedly, as had most of his crew.
Maybe the brass had lied about Hymir. Maybe they hadn''t known the truth themselves.
Sleipnir had been quickly put together, surviving elements of Task Forces Yama, Alexander and Ragnarok sorted out, hulls rapidly refurbished to bring them up to fighting form. He''d been part of Ragnarok, hence the Fenrir''s status as almost state of the art when it came to metahuman carriers. The ships from Alexander hadn''t been too far behind either, but the Yama craft felt more like a liability than an asset. He could dimly smell the stench of desperation that they been sent into battle instead of being scrapped for parts and crews rotated.
This intuition hadn''t been wrong. They''d come under fire thousands of AU away from Hymir, they''d lacked the element of surprise in the first place, with the lack of enough FTL-capable Teleporters for the entire fleet entailing sublight speeds till their objective. It had taken almost a year to get there, and now it looked like the battle might be over in mere days. Bits of his consciousness chimed in that it was more likely to be hours now, unless they abandoned their mission and turned tail. Even that wasn''t likely to save them.
Hymir wasn''t alone. Whatever ancient cataclysm or minor gravitational perturbation had ejected the ancient planet into its lonely wandering, it had let it retain what seemed to be the bulk of its own assortment of moons. These had been far too small to image at all, even when the rough location of Hymir had been pinned down.
And they had served as excellent firing points for the aliens entrenching the system.
Sleipnir had come in roaring, a coterie of hundreds of drone-ships leading the charge, strung out dozens of AU ahead of the main fleet slowing down from nearly a third of c. They''d kept most of their velocity, with no regard for self-preservation, they aimed to fire off their considerable arsenals at point-blank range, and in the unlikely event that they somehow survived, primed to kinetically strike what targets they could instead of flying off into the interstellar void. A reminder to the aliens that RKVs could go both ways.
The drones had alerted them to antimatter minefields, lurking stealthed craft and graviton torpedoes, buying precious knowledge for the manned craft following. The UNSC informally called any starship without a human crew a ''drone'', but that encompassed ships that dwarfed Fenrir itself. During the seemingly endless fall into system, Yossarian had hoped against hope that the initial wave of several hundred craft had been enough, that they could declare Hymir neutralized, and the rest of them would continue their deceleration burn till it brought them hurtling back towards Sedna.
Alas, the drones charged bravely, fought well and died hard, but left a buzzing hornet''s nest for the rest of Sleipnir to fight. They''d fired their dust guns next, and that''s not something you''d see in Sol where collateral damage was a concern.
Imagine a blunderbuss firing quadrillions of grains of sand at relativistic speed. They hadn''t even really had to fire them, per se, rather asteroid-sized loosely held clumps of debris had been allowed to remain at maximum velocity while the fleet was slowing down, before fusion warheads detonated them and sent the a diffuse cloud of very angry pellets addressed to PO box Hymir.
This wouldn''t do much against hardened structures, such as the firing platforms dug into the moons. Even the atmosphere of Hymir was sufficient to cushion the blow, though he had enjoyed seeing it glow as a bugle cry for their charge. Instead, it was meant to clear their path, destroy the bulk of the floating minefields, or at least provide a cone several AU wide that they could freely maneuver in.
The aliens had their own response. They fired their own dust-guns, but with the benefit of having far more mass to throw at them courtesy of big balls of rock that nobody would miss. Yossarian had sighed in relief at the time, knowing that the Fenrir had the best defenses in their fleet. Even then, interstellar warships had their own systems for deflecting or surviving minor impacts at relativistic speed, it was a necessity if you didn''t want a stray micrometeor to end you rightly.
They''d taken only cosmetic damage by the time they entered the range of primary weapons, and the Fenrir had flared its shields frontally to shield dozens of other ships that followed in its wake.
By then, the crew had awoken. A few had asked about the Hraesvelgr. The little Yossarian could tell them made them stop asking. Initially, morale had been at an high, because victory entailed dropping off their radioactive cargo and flying home. Now, Yossarian was considering doing the former, and hoping that the fallout would be enough of a distraction for them to get clear before it all went to shit.
Interlude 5.1: Surface Detail
The fleet advanced under heavy fire, with only the mercy of distance reducing the attrition from Hymir''s defenses. Sleipnir¡¯s ships were strung out in a long, serpentine line, their formation dictated by the need to balance speed, firepower, and survivability. Perhaps a quarter of the vessels would thread the needle at a time, weathering the output of the alien defenses for longer than was comfortable before they were cleared to engage. It couldn''t be helped. The aliens had a distinct home field advantage, with the luxury of an entire planet and several minor moons as heatsinks and ammunition depots. The fleet (mostly) could only fire what they carried, and had to conserve ammunition till it was gauged to be effective. They had a few ex-Nihilists, and plenty of metahumans were theoretically ''renewable'', but in practice plagued by their cool downs.
The strategy was simple in theory, brutal in execution. The fleet was divided into waves, each wave consisting of roughly a quarter of the total force. As one wave completed its pass over Hymir, the next would begin its approach, creating a continuous cycle of engagement and withdrawal. The idea was to keep the Centauri defenses off balance, forcing them to divide their fire between multiple threats while minimizing the fleet¡¯s exposure to their most devastating weapons.
Each wave faced the discomfiting scenario of a rank of Napoleonic line infantry approaching another, unable to shoot at targets well within view. They were weathering the output of the alien defenses for longer than was comfortable before they were cleared to engage, almost close enough to see the whites of their eyes. It couldn''t be helped. The aliens had a distinct home field advantage, with the luxury of an entire planet and several minor moons as heatsinks and ammunition depots, let alone fuel for their ships. The fleet (mostly) could only fire what they carried, and had to conserve ammunition till it was gauged to be maximally effective. They had a few ex-Nihilists, and plenty of metahumans were theoretically ''renewable'', but in practice plagued by their cool downs.
It wasn''t all bad news. The alien defenses were mostly fixed in predictable orbits, mobile fleet defense was lacking. Yossarian and the other captains had all sighed in relief, the ships defending Hymir were nowhere near the peak of Centaur performance. Hymir had been bootstrapped from a non-existent industrial base by minimal Von Neumanns; the aliens had limits too, they had probably been working on the RKV launchers for years and only had another to move to a war footing. Not enough time for giga-factories and Dreadnought forges to be spooled up and birth their terrifying craft.
The ships they did see were daunting nonetheless. Only the barely outdated craft from Ragnarok were a match in a fair fight, but thankfully they''d only counted two hundred or so ships-of-the-line. The error bars, while large, were tolerable, and were being constrained quickly as the fleet Precogs and ESPers looked in places mundane sensors couldn''t.
Fenrir was part of the second wave, screaming in at 0.5% c hot on the heels of the first. They''d taken 10% losses already, his stomach sank as they passed through the debris fields, shattered hulls still white hot. He wondered if they''d be able to catch up with the vessels that had propulsion knocked out and were now helplessly drifting away.
The first wave had already paid the price. As the Fenrir and its companions approached, the wreckage of the vanguard ships littered the void, their shattered hulls glowing white hot. The Centauri had been waiting for them, their defenses primed and ready. The moment the first wave entered range, the void had erupted in a storm of fire. Kinetic impactors, particle beams, and antimatter warheads had torn through the fleet¡¯s forward elements, their shields and armor no match for the sheer volume of fire.
He''d wanted the Fenrir to lead the way, it was the most durable ship by far, but had been overruled. If the Centaurs had dirty tricks, better that more disposable ships reveal them.
Now it was the their turn, he''d have to see if his high hopes for their survivability were warranted.
Yossarian stood on the bridge, his mind-forks stretched thin as he monitored the fleet¡¯s progress. The tactical display showed the fleet¡¯s formation as a long, sinuous line, each ship a glowing icon against the dark backdrop of space. The mosty intact first wave was already pulling away, their trajectories, too open ended to called orbits, carrying them back out into the void. The second wave was just beginning its approach, their weapons firing as they closed the distance to Hymir. The third wave was still decelerating, their engines burning bright as they prepared to enter the fray.
The Fenrir was part of the second wave, its position near the center of the formation giving it a clear view of the battle. Yossarian watched as the ships ahead of him engaged the Centauri defenses, their weapons lighting up the void. Railgun slugs and fusion torpedoes streaked through the darkness, their impacts lighting up the surface of the closest moonlet, now christened Hymir-Alpha. Now close enough for the ship''s sensors to clearly resolve, its surface was a nightmare of geometric shapes and jagged spires buried deep into the surface ice, crawling with energy signatures. Glaciers the size of cities began sublimating as waste heat was dumped into them, allowing weapons to be fired at a pace the human ships couldn''t match.
A cruiser on the Fenrir¡¯s starboard flank took a direct hit from a particle beam, ablative armor flaring and failing in an instant. The beam carved through the ship¡¯s hull, slicing it in two. For a moment, the two halves hung in the void, their interiors exposed to the cold vacuum. Then the reactor breached, and the ship vanished in a flash of light. He winced, the Ragnarok fleet''s ships had been the first to be outfitted with completely antimatter based power plants and propulsion system, as opposed to the older antimatter-catalyzed fusion that prior models used. A lot more power, but when the reactors were compromised and the magnetic bottles lost confinement, the end was quick.
¡°Cruiser Freja is down,¡± Bulldog reported, its tone unchanged. ¡°No survivors.¡±
Yossarian clenched his fists, his mind-forks racing through the data. The fleet was taking losses, and they hadn¡¯t even reached Hymir yet. He glanced at the tactical display, his augmented cognition processing the information at lightning speed. The Centaurs were adapting, shifting their defenses to counter the fleet¡¯s movements. They were learning, and fast.
¡°We need to punch through,¡± he said, more to himself than anyone else. ¡°We need to get to work on Hymir.¡±
The Fenrir¡¯s Teleporters were already at work, their abilities stretched to the limit. One moment, a ship would be caught in the crosshairs of a Centauri weapon. The next, it would vanish in a flash of light, reappearing kilometers away from the kill zone. But even the Teleporters had their limits. The closer the fleet got to Hymir, the more dangerous the jumps became. The Centauri had anticipated this, seeding the approach with gravitic mines that threw off their abilities. Several ships had already been lost to misjumps, their crews torn apart by the unforgiving physics of folded spacetime.
Yossarian watched as a Centauri mass driver emplacement on Hymir-Alpha was obliterated by a direct hit, its structure collapsing in a slow-motion cascade of debris raining down on the opposite hemisphere.
But for every emplacement destroyed, a dozen more took its place. The Centauri defenses were relentless, their fire precise and unyielding.
"This is too slow. Bulldog, enact Scenario Blitz. Send Anya in." Yossarian ordered, the words barely out of his mouth before Anya was vanished from crew quarters and appeared in the teleportation bay. She''d have mere seconds to act, but that was all she''d need.
Shd stood in the Fenrir¡¯s teleportation bay, her body humming with barely contained energy. The air around her crackled faintly, sickly blue Cherenkov radiation a consequence of her exerting her powers to the max in anticipation of the jump. She adjusted the lightweight harness strapped to her torso, its compartments filled with hundreds of micro-charges, each no larger than a coin but capable of leveling a city block. Her fingers twitched, eager to move, to run.
¡°Ready?¡± Yossarian¡¯s voice crackled over her comms, his tone calm but edged with urgency.
Anya smirked, her eyes narrowing as she stared at the teleportation pad. ¡°Born ready, Cap. Let¡¯s light this candle.¡±
The Teleporters - twins with matching grim expressions - nodded in unison. Their hands glowed faintly as they synchronized their powers, the air in the bay shimmering with the promise of imminent displacement. Anya took a deep breath, her heart pounding not from fear but from anticipation. This was what she lived for - the rush of speed, the thrill of the impossible.
¡°Go,¡± Yossarian ordered.
The world dissolved into a blur of light and sound. For a fraction of a second, Anya felt weightless, her body stretched across the void. Then her boots hit solid ground, and the chaos of Hymir-Alpha engulfed her.
The moonlet¡¯s surface was steaming. Towering spires of black metal rose from the icy ground, their surfaces crawling with energy conduits and weapon emplacements. The atmosphere was thin and could hardly have been said to exist before the battle had started. It was mostly nitrogen just woken up into gaseous form. Above her, the sky was a maelstrom of light and fire as the fleet¡¯s bombardment continued, the impacts sending shockwaves through the ground. It was achingly slow, she could see the incoming tungsten rods falling as gently as rain.
Anya didn¡¯t waste a second.
Her body exploded into motion, her speedster abilities propelling her forward orders of magnitude faster than the naked eye could follow. To the ship''s sensors, she was little more than a blur, a blue-shifted streak darting across the battlefield. To Anya, the world had long slowed to a crawl. The Centauri drones hovering above the surface moved like molasses, their weapons tracking her with agonizing sloth. The most advanced drones could detect her in nanoseconds, begin target acquisition in microseconds. The hypervelocity kinetic rounds meant to kill her seemed to hang in the air, their trajectories clear and easy to avoid. Lasers were a much bigger problem, but she dealt with them by outpacing the tracking systems, if not the beams.
She weaved through the defenses with practiced ease, The first charge was placed in less than a millisecond, appearing to freeze in place when she let go of it. She was gone before the turret¡¯s targeting systems could even register her presence. The second charge went on a missile silo, the third on a gravitic mine dispenser. Anya moved like a ghost, her presence announced only by the faint click of each charge as it attached to its target. The Centauri defenses were formidable, but they were built to handle threats that moved at machine speeds. Anya was something else entirely.
There was little gravity to speak of, but that didn''t matter to Anya. Whatever force kept her fixed to surfaces clearly did not give a single fuck that by all rights, a single step at such speeds should have sent her into orbit. She ran straight down the barrel of a massive coilgun, the helical superconducting coils and surrounding capacitors momentarily intert after having just fired a payload. Another charge, another few milliseconds.
She ran out of charges before she ran out of time, walking leisurely to a crater where one of the twins stood frozen like a statue. She walked up to him and grabbed his hand, and relaxed her senses. Poof. Back to the ship..
Her smile mirrored Yossarian''s as the charges detonated, amat spilling out of containment and turning the moon brighter than a star. When the flash faded, so did most of the incoming fire.
She was still smiling as she slumped into her husband''s arms, grinning up at his furrowed brows.
"ANYA GARAMOND MOVES AT RELATIVISTIC SPEED. IT WOULD BE MORE EFFICIENT TO DISPENSE WITH ANTIMATTER PAYLOADS AND SIMPLY USE HER KINETIC ENERGY AS A WEAPON" Bulldog asked Yossarian as the latter leaned back in his crash couch. The Fenrir was fully inertially dampened by its metahumans while in combat, so the hassle of shock foam was dispensed with.
"Bulldog my boy, you''re thinking too hard. You''re not paid to think." He drawled, releasing his own pent-up tension as he sprawled.
"I DO NOT ACCRUE PAYMENT."
That was humor. Bulldog wasn''t that dumb. It did ask a reasonable question, but Yossarian knew that Anya''s powers didn''t work that way. Otherwise they could have thrown her at the moon itself and dispensed with other considerations.
No, despite reaching relativistic speeds, she somehow avoided the energies that Einstein would normally demand. Even if she threw a ball while going all out, at what appeared to her to be 50 kilometers an hour, the moment it left her immediate vicinity, it would somehow reconcile itself to actually moving at that speed in real time. In effect, it was only whatever she was in direct contact with that would seem to behave like it had been enveloped in her power''s field. That''s why she had to manually place the charges. She couldn''t ''run'' through vacuum either, she needed something to walk on. A pity, but there were speedsters who did function that way, but those would certainly be a class 6 strategic assets not so easily deployed in a minor engagement.
Other metahumans in Sleipnir had been doing their dirty work in the background. A Centauri installation the size of Manhattan writhed in purple lightning, a drone swarm turned inert, rendered helpless as their sensors fed them gibberish. Water-ice asteroids that would have been comets if they had more sun were yanked out of their orbits and descended on Hymir-Epsilon, crushing defenses under their weight. He noticed the work of a powerful telekinetic on the flagship, crumpling a sleek Centaur ship into a fireball that then steered itself unerringly into another orbital outpost. A supe who had initially been dubbed a mere class 2 had proved that power scales weren''t everything. He had the ability to ''unlock'' anything in his range. During a quick fly-by of another space fort, he threw open the layers of failsafes in their missile silos, leaving it self-detonating in his wake.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Most of Fenrir''s resident metas weren''t too adept at long range combat. Even supes with strong powers were often hamstrung by the inhuman distances involved in the bulk of orbital combat. That was one of the reasons the fleet had been forced to fly this close in the first place. Still, his crew weren''t cooling their heels. Well, maybe Ryan was, he was currently returning from a jump to a beleaguered ship that had its radiators blown off and was on the verge of cooking from the sheer heat dumped into it by merciless lasers. He''d cooled it down long enough for it to escape to a distance where diffraction rendered the laser system impotent.
Yosuf was working himself ragged, scouring seemingly empty space for hidden traps and fuzzing their sensors with false data. Anya was a boon, while he was in her head, he had the benefit of the world running at glacial speeds, letting him keep up with clock cycles in entities that had eschewed silicon circuits for longer than Homo sapiens had existed. Still, he couldn''t delve too deep into alien thoughts, both because some of them were fundamentally incomprehensible to an otherwise baseline human, and because of the risk of hidden coghazards that might one-shot him if careless. It was enough to gauge intent, identify if hostility radiated from a weapon''s platform, following his intuition to identify its target in time for evasive maneuvers.
After a nerve wracking transit, Fenrir was out, the distance rendering almost all incoming weaponry practically harmless. Unlike their initial approach, the Centaurs hadn''t kept up a hail of fire even outside of effective range. This was the best news Yossarian had seen all day, it meant that the fleet was putting sufficient pressure on the alien defenses such that they had to prioritize the most dangerous targets.
"Status?"
"HULL GREEN. SHIELDS GREEN. WEAPONS YELLOW. PAYLOAD AT 95% OF NOMINAL."
Yossarian shook his head. Several of his crew had perished, not that they''d died had died while still aboard Fenrir. One of them was a Technomancer who been borrowed to help in an engagement involving ships with no metahumans of their own. His presence hadn''t helped, the ship had run close enough to a hidden graviton mine been well within lethal range. There wasn''t much any amount of armor could do when your enemy attacked with tidal forces. The ship was mangled, everyone aboard squeezed into paste. There was no reactor explosion this time, Yama''s remnants died quietly. There wouldn''t be an open casket burial nonetheless.
Yossarian 35, one of the older forks, told the others that deaths were inevitable. Fenrir didn''t exist to protect just itself, it was meant to dispense supes where needed, keeping them safe in the meantime. As many as half of its metahumans would be redistributed to ships seeing active combat when it itself was out of range. There simply weren''t enough heavy hitters to go around.
A worn out contingent had just returned, and Yossarian was confident enough that Bulldog could handle the grunt work of station keeping, so he took the time to greet them after their sortie. Grim nods returned his. He felt his stomach churn as he noted their injuries, he wasn''t used to seeing his troops return wounded. A consequence of his earlier battles having been long distance brawls in AC - in a fleet engagement, utter obliteration was the usual consequence of getting hit. Five of them had returned, of the nine sent out.
He''d already sent out a request for their Healers to be returned to them, but that had been denied. The walking wounded here would keep, the ship''s autodocs were good enough for burns and the kind of bullet holes that didn''t kill out outright.
Ranja was still sprouting shimmering shields that wrapped around her figure. A nervous tic, a sign she''d been pushed to her limit.
"No boarding action this time?" He asked her. She''d been in charge of Team Orion, a group of supes who had powers that synergised particularly well.
"We didn''t get in range of Ruslan, the Purana''s Teleporter. We did fight ground-side. It wasn''t pretty, but Anya had cleared the majority of the turrets. I can handle a few warforms and drones." She spat on the floor, a faintly pink blob which made Yossarian shudder. He could be a neat freak at times. "Sorry Cap. The bots are going to mop it up." He didn''t admonish her. She was clearly moments away from shock.
The war had extended onto the little ground there was to be fought on around Hymir. The fleet intended to neutralize all of the orbital defenses, and if possible, set up their own factories and automated defenses on the moonlets. Terran robotic self-replicators were nowhere near as efficient as alien ones, but they would, given enough time, be able to start harvesting the moons. The fleet had been loaded with enough supplies for a protracted engagement, but any reinforcement was at least six months away. The very best Teleporters stationed near AC could get to them in weeks, but couldn''t bring much along with them. It made eminent sense to start building up their own resupply hubs on the shattered rocks.
Hymir-Alpha was the first moon to be contested. Tens of thousands of robots had been deployed, stalking through the irradiated ruins, engaging the tenacious Centaur survivors. The more limited metahumans who couldn''t contribute much from shipside had been sent down to help them.
He''d seen the raw telemetry, and the bloodless reports from the command net, but a part of him wanted to know what his men and women had been through.
"Ranja, do you have footage?" He asked gently.
She stared at him for a moment with hollow eyes. "Nothing from the ground. When Mikko used his powers, the suit cameras failed." Out of pure force of habit, they''d formed up in combat order in the return bay. Mikko''s absence was almost palpable.
"I''m going to ask Yosuf to come by and grab memories. Is that okay?" Yossarian asked gently.
"Have him wipe them clean once he''s taken them." She muttered.
The Clairvoyant appeared in moments, having had an inkling he''d be needed. He stepped out of a spinal passenger lift, gently touched Ranja, making her eyes glaze over.
"I.. I didn''t mean it. I don''t want to forget them.." She mumbled.
"I knew you didn''t. I just took the parts you were trying to forget. You''ll remember them and their sacrifice." She nodded, and walked away in the wake of the rest without another word.
Yossarian took in a breath, and touched Yusuf.
Memories. Not his, though they were as vivid as any he had. One of the Yossarians rippled, turning into a woman with a haunted look on her face. The rest of them looked on in quiet expectation.
Hymir-Alpha¡¯s surface had buckled, dotted with craters so fresh that only now was liquid nitrogen now dripping down their sides to pool at the bottom. The moonlet¡¯s brittle crust, already fractured by the fleet¡¯s opening bombardment, now heaved under the tread of war machines. Human drones - boxy, angular things of tungsten and graphene - advanced in phalanxes through valleys of irradiated glass, their sensors flickering like fireflies in the choking static of Centauri countermeasures. Above them, the sky boiled with the afterimages of orbital strikes, the auroras of dying ships painting the ice in hues of lithium-green and cobalt-blue.
Ranja¡¯s boots crunched through permafrost carbonized by plasma burns. Her shield shimmered faintly around her, a second skin of fractal geometries that hummed in time with her pulse. Unlike the rest of her squad, her environment suit was minimal, the bare minimum that would keep her alive. To her left, an Anduril Indomitus combat drone listed sideways, its torso sheared open by a Centauri particle slicer. Hydraulic fluid pooled black around its carcass, steaming where it met the -200¡ãC ice.
¡°Contact front!¡± shouted Kael, their Technomancer. His voice crackled through the squad¡¯s bone-conduction comms. ¡°Warforms - three o¡¯clock, subsurface!¡±
The ice erupted.
Centauri war machines uncoiled from hidden burrows. Ranja¡¯s HUD tagged them as Type-VIIIs: six-legged, with carapaces that refracted light like oil on water. Their primary weapon¡ªa spinal-mounted mass driver¡ªpulsed once.
A Dreadnaught Super Heavy Infantry unit three meters ahead of Ranja ceased to exist. Where the 3-ton drone had stood, a hypersonic slug left only a crater lined with molten silica. If it had not been for the attenuated wisps that could barely be called an atmosphere, the shockwave would have hit her shield like a freight train.
¡°Suppressing fire!¡± she barked. The surviving drones obliged, their rotary cannons hosing the warforms with depleted uranium. Ricochets screamed through the air, each round cratering the Centauri armor but failing to land killing blows. The Type-VIIIs scuttled sideways with uncanny coordination, their movements a perfect counterpoint to the drones¡¯ predictive algorithms.
¡°Mikko - now!¡± she screamed.
A wiry figure detached from the squad¡¯s flank, skin etched with glowing circuitry hidden under the anonymizing combat armor. Mikko Varga, Class 3 Electromancer. He hit the ice palms-first, his suit having fired out long webs of thin wires to channel his power through.
The nearest Type-VIII spasmed. Its legs locked mid-stride as Mikko¡¯s surge overrode its motor functions. For three glorious seconds, the warform was a puppet with its strings cut¡ªlong enough for Private Cho to slap a shaped charge on its underbelly. The detonation peeled the machine open like a rotten fruit, spilling coolant across the ice. This time, it didn''t sizzle. The drone had been as cold as the ice it lurked under, dodging their thermal scans.
¡°One down!¡± Cho whooped.
¡°Nine to go,¡± Kael muttered. The Technomancer¡¯s eyes were shut, his fingers dancing an invisible keyboard. Sweat froze on his brow as he dueled the Centauri drones in the dying Noosphere. ¡°Their command node¡¯s buried¡ª300 meters deep, bearing 278. Need to¡ª¡±
A particle beam lanced through his chest.
Kael¡¯s eyes flew open. He looked down at the smoldering hole where his sternum had been, opened his mouth as if to comment on the weather, and collapsed.
¡°SNIPER!¡± Ranja roared. Her shield flared crimson as another beam struck¡ªthis one deflecting skyward to vaporize a low-flying recon drone. She scanned the horizon, HUD layering thermal and infrasound signatures. There¡ªa heat bloom on the ridge, half-hidden behind a seemingly undisturbed mound of blackened ice.
¡°Lyn - suppress that position!¡±
Lyn Nguyen didn¡¯t answer. The Class 4 Pyrokinetic was already moving, her hands trailing tendrils of starfire. She vaulted onto a Goliath¡¯s carcass, her pupils swallowed by molten gold. The air rippled as she pulled heat from the vacuum itself, compressing it between her palms into a spark that resembled a newborn sun.
The ridge exploded.
Molten rock rained down as Lyn¡¯s firestorm scoured the sniper¡¯s nest. Something shrieked in the flames - a sound no machine should make - before falling silent.
¡°Clear!¡± Lyn gasped, swaying on her feet. Blood trickled from her nose, flash-frozen before it reached her chin. Her specially modified suit quickly resealed itself, it was an unfortunate fact that she needed her hands uncovered to use her abilities. At least she wasn''t at much risk of frostbite.
Ranja didn¡¯t pause to celebrate. She grabbed Mikko¡¯s shoulder strap, hauling him behind a half-melted slag heap as the remaining Type-VIIIs regrouped.
¡°Command node¡¯s still up,¡± she growled. ¡°Ideas?¡±
Mikko tapped his temple. ¡°I can pulse their network again, but it¡¯ll fry my implants for good.¡± He didn''t suffer from MRS, and in fact rejoiced in his ability to commune with the hardware buried in his head.
¡°Do it.¡±
¡°You know what happens if-¡±
¡°Do it, Private.¡±
He hesitated, then nodded. The Electromancer¡¯s tattoos blazed white-hot as he dumped every joule from his reactors into the ice.
The effect was immediate.
Centauri drones froze mid-stride. Goliath IFVs tumbled over a nearby hill, wheels spinning madly in freefall. Even before they hit the ground, they seized the opening, ripping into the drones with guided missiles and point-blank autocannon fire. Two Type-VIIIs detonated their cores rather than be captured, blasting craters in the human line. Mikko collapsed, his neural lace opting to shutdown his brain before it overheated one too many times.
¡°Got it!¡± Cho yelled. Her drone¡¯s sensors pinged - a subsurface vibration, rhythmic and artificial. ¡°Command node¡¯s pulsing¡ªit¡¯s rebooting!¡±
Ranja grinned savagely. ¡°Lyn, melt us a path.¡±
The Pyrokinetic didn¡¯t hesitate. Her flames carved through permafrost like a plasma torch, exposing a honeycomb of Centauri tunnels. Ranja leapt in, shield-first, following the tremors to their source.
The command node wasn¡¯t entirely a machine.
It pulsed in the chamber¡¯s center - a fleshy orb the size of a shuttlecraft, veined with bioluminescent cables. Ranja¡¯s HUD classified it as a Centauri Synaptic Nexus: part brain, part optoelectronic computer, all ugly. Its surface rippled as she approached, while its partially biological nature meant it wasn''t as powerful as other mainframes, it had resisted electronic warfare that would have fried more delicate circuitry.
¡°Burn it,¡± she ordered.
Lyn obliged.
The Nexus didn¡¯t scream. Instead of a gentle blaze, it exploded, far hotter than expected, reduced to ashes barring metallic tendrils that wilted in the heat. Ranja blinked tears from aching eyes, glad that she hadn''t let down her shields.
¡°Node¡¯s toast,¡± the Private said. ¡°Drones shouldn''t be as much of a bother.¡± It was too much to expect them to shut up and shutdown after the central node was decapitated. Even rudimentary drones were remarkably capable of fighting on without further command, but now they''d have to do so alone or in packs communicating through line of sight.
Ranja sat down, wincing. She''d been too slow to throw up her shields, and had suffered minor thermal burns. Nothing that would put her out of a fight. Around them, the remaining friendly drones, mostly more hulking Goliath combat vehicles, stood sentinel over the smoldering remains of Centauri forces. The battle wasn¡¯t won¡ªsmoke still billowed from a dozen fresh craters, and the ice trembled with distant artillery¡ªbut the tide had turned.
¡°Casualties?¡± she rasped.
¡°Kael¡¯s gone. Mikko¡¯s half cooked¡ªMedevac¡¯s inbound. Lyn¡¯s¡¡±
They both turned. The Pyrokinetic sat against the tunnel wall, her eyes vacant. The skin of her hands hung in charred strips, but she still smiled as faint embers danced between her fingers.
¡°Worth it,¡± Lyn whispered. ¡°Tell Yossarian¡ tell him the oven¡¯s still hot.¡±
Ranja opened her mouth - to yell at Lyn, to order a retreat, to call for reinforcements, to say anything - when the ice beneath them screamed.
The floor dissolved.
A Centauri leviathan erupted from the depths - a mining rig turned war machine, its drill-head spinning with hunger for frozen dessert. Goliaths vanished into its maw, armor shredding like tissue paper.
¡°Fall back!¡± Ranja roared.
But the leviathan was faster. Its tail - a kilometer-long whip of monomolecular filaments - scythed through the chamber. Cho died mid-sprint, bisected at the waist. Lyn¡¯s flames died despite her desperate effort to rekindle them. She was buried under ice, only saved from being crushed by the fact that gravity on the moonlet was trivial. Mikko''s unconscious body was less lucky, tumbling down into the gaping hole left by the eruption and squashed by the thrashing machine.
Ranja¡¯s shield held - barely. She skidded across the ice, her visor cracked, blood frosting in her eyelashes. The leviathan loomed above her, drills singing a dirge in B-flat minor.
A shadow fell across the ice.
Ryan Chungho landed like a comet, his cryokinetic aura flash-freezing the air into diamond dust. The Class 5 raised a hand, and absolute zero swallowed the world.
The leviathan¡¯s drills froze mid-spin. Ryan clenched his fist, and the machine shattered¡ªa glacier calving, its fragments scattering across the ice.
¡°You¡¯re late,¡± Ranja croaked.
Ryan shrugged. ¡°Had to defrost a popsicle.¡± He nodded towards the rest of her team, moon-hopping down a slope. To her relief, they were all there.
¡°Command would have preferred the Nexus intact,¡± Ryan said, eyeing the smoldering chamber. ¡°We haven''t had much luck getting anything that large out intact.¡±
Ranja spat blood. ¡°Tell Command it¡¯s scrap. I had to take it out, and I bet it would have self-destructed if we''d tried to recover it.¡±
¡°I could have frozen it.¡± Ryan said glibly. She looked at him as with disdain.
"If you''d shown up in time to be useful."
As a sort of half-apology, he reached out to help Ranja to her feet. She ignored his proferred hand, and managed to lift herself up with ease in the low gravity. Around them, fresh waves of drones marched over the horizon, disturbing the barely settled ice. Somewhere, a surviving Centauri railgun battery fired¡ªa streak of light ascending to join the maelstrom above. She didn''t look back as Ryan was teleported away, beginning the process of digging out Lyn before her oxygen ran out.
The battle for Hymir-Alpha was far from over. But for now, in this frozen corner of hell, the humans held the line. She hoped that Yossarian wouldn''t be so much of a hardass and let her down a few drinks while still on duty.
Every one of Yossarian agreed, gently holding the faux-Ranja as it dissolved into dust.