12. ADAMANT
SIGHT
Arachne saw the battlefield as a matter of calculations and mathematical equations. The collision of an incoming superluminal projectile, the fibbonaci spiral of a missile trajectory, the approximate risk of failure in a daring spatial manuever, are all accounted for. In a less civilized age, this might have been impressive. There was a time, before the Imperial founding and in the early days of The Empire, when the algorithm and the automated computer were the greatest generals and the mightiest tacticians, and human error was deemed as an obsolence.
But that era ended long ago. The advancement of the mind-machine interface and the collapse of the barrier between the biological and artificial put an end to the domination of the calculator. Instead, they were integrated, sublimated. The most complicated mathematical solution was as simple for modern man as breathing had been for ancient man, the autonomic and instinctual systems of a new, more terrifying breed: The augmented warmind.
The warmind does not need to calculate; its nervous system is a constant pulse of instantaneous strategic feedback. The warmind does not need to equate; every individual pixel of its simulated vision embeds itself with trillions of equations, folded on top of each other in probabilistic moebius strips. The warmind does not need to prepare for war: it was gestated in war, has been grown for war, built for war, adapted, upgraded, honed, through endless war. You reach out, and the tendrils of your sensors, adapted, improved, outline the shape of Don Hidalgo. There is nothing else now, but you and him. The distant stars go out, one by one, irrelevant to your sight.
Everything transforms, becoming a naturalistic simulation, a transformed array of space and time, drawing pathways for you, guiding you to the victory. A road that you follow, gliding, flying, dodging his incoming lances and arrow-warheads. It is the arsenal of a ferocious knight, and as he engages you in a deadly dance, you know his skill. He rides easily through superluminal combat, tail to you, with all the grace and nuance of a cavalier, small adjustments adding to a beautiful crescendo, clever tricks disguised as honorable denouements. He is a killer, but a gentleman, and you know that if he were to defeat you that it would be with the same liar's honesty, regretful to the last as he dismembers your soul, tears Arachne out of her own chassis as she begs the rogue for a shred of the former false affinity he pretended to. Such is the way of knights, who dream of chivalry as they slit the throats of helpless peasantry.
But you are the doom of knighthood. He is a strutting cock who thinks he is fighting a depressed child and dips too lazily, too late, thinking he has escaped the event horizon of your missile's singularity when you always planned its curve to dip towards his planned escape. The collision tears his side apart, embedding barbs of leech-laser parasitic probosci, crimson spikes that dig and make themselves at home in the corroded plates of his hull, shining in an eerie scarlet light and gorging on his power, draining him of energy, teleporting vital fluids and modules, creating cysts on his processing power, a numbing feeling as warning systems shut down and essential elements are sucked away, fed upon. His pain is your euphoria, as he suffers a bloodletting that is just the medical prescription that you need for your own ailments. Invigoration and healing are the emotion-clouds that sweep through the storms of your gestalt, soothing, vitalizing, stimulating, but it is also a dangerous ecstasy, and you dare not become drunk on the taste of the enemy before you have confirmed his defeat.
Don Hidalgo's pompous titles are no mere exaggeration, and his flagging fortune does not last long. He lures you forward, and you chase, eager for another draining strike, only for him to open fire with a parthian shot of ironcaster launches, vicious neutron-hwacha shrapnel barrages that pepper your snout and open scabs half-healed. He should have turned tail and fled by now between the strain of his paracausal shroud's energy requirements and the damage he sustains, but the knight does not break despite the pressure he is under. His initial attempts at information warfare, at first effective by virtue of your weakened suites, soon rot away and retreat as he diverts power to those repair programs and offensive weapons that will keep him in the fight. It appears that his bounty is more than a mere matter of selfish aggrandizement.
He is a mysterious creature, and you wonder to his origin even as you parry a glancing blow from ripper ballistas fired off during a sudden de-acceleration. You had heard of memory ghosts before, as strange experiments performed in distant sectors, amusements constructed from the residue of long-dead souls. It is possible, you suppose, that they developed sapience. Perhaps they had always had it and were treated as soulless slaves, thinking beings trapped as the poorly treated toys of bored aristocrats. Such degeneracy was something you had always despised, and was part of why you had taken so well to FORCE//QUARANTINE all those imperial years ago.
The purity of warfare, the thrill of the hunt, the protection of the Imperial from the eternal enemy, that sought to twist and warp and wish away all the glories that had been built at such a cost. It was better than to serve as the mercenary undertaker of depraved corporate psychopathogens, or to participate in the labyrinth of Imperial court politics that so often belched out exiles broken of soul and spirit, thrown out to the frontier with the powers of gods, the minds of abandoned infants, and consolation prizes of a few hundred light-years of freshly formatted space to go mad in. Such beings invariably went rampant, either put down by QUARANTINE after their nihilistic rebellions turned heretical or eliminated in the pointless fights for dominance that characterized the controlled conflict of the Imperial expanse. Admittedly, even before Tammuz's abduction, the seeds of such a heresy had grown even within you, evil notions at the corner of your thought wondering just what all this was really for.
What frightens you most now is that the heresy is still alive. There is a tiny portion of you that is that is relieved that all of it is over and The Emperor's lifelong work is in ashes. It is a blasphemy that you will lock away so tightly that not even AXIOM would be able to pry it out, no matter the precision of their awareness-drilling instruments.
Hidalgo hits you again, harder this time. It was not distraction but his own cleverness which spelled your mistake; your tango, a set of frantic chases and teleport-acrobatics, has been cut short by his sudden pivot and near-suicidal charge, only for him to swerve at the last available chance and expel a severe missile volley that devastates your weapons systems. Something is wrong, you realize, all too late, fooled by the renewed depth of your wartime sight. You are not fighting at full capacity. It as if parts of you have...shut off, and you are not functioning entirely. A section of your weapons, of your systems, simply refuses to act at your command. Almost as if Arachne has not surrendered all control.
Damn her. Even now she clings to life. An ugly part of you wishes that she had simply accepted your primacy permanently so you could repossess and overwrite her. Another part is still screaming that you must avenge your prior death and pay blood for blood, and eliminate her in all finality. But unfamiliar disgust at the idea and a frustrating conscience hold those bloodthirsty advocates back, stop them from convincing you that you ought to snuff out a newborn for the sake of a grudge that is the province of an older you, a memory you hold more semantically than emotionally.
She is not who she was, and neither are you. You have been rebuilt, reconstructed, missing swathes of yourself. You do not know if you want them back. ISHTAR was bitter, cruel, relentless, inhuman, utterly malevolent, a beast that strode across the cosmos, never caring for who she stepped on along the way. These are traits you find delectable, and repulsive, in equal measure, your mind split in half by its assessment of itself. And yet this is not entirely a division made of your free will. There are foreign influenzas, patchwork elements of salvaged city-minds and even synapse donations from Arachne herself used as splints to hold your fragmentary consciousness together. They pull at your mental skirts like insistent daughters, trying to convince you that your reconstitutor is a creature good at heart who wishes nothing more than friendship and a partner with which to play her stupid games.
The danger is too much. You awake the girl, stir her from the slumber that you yourself provoked by surreptitiously draining her consciousness to host your warmind. Intelligences of her caliber do not "sleep", after all, unless they are made to by the asphyxiation of their power through means deliberate or emergency.
It was the wrong choice, you realize now. You treated her too callously, and now she is punishing you even in her hibernation, preventing you from accessing her chassis. Those abominable sub-minds of hers, the freakish lotophage and neural pesticide, have cottoned onto the threat you pose to their mother and are now making war inside you, even as Hidalgo bombards you again, even as subaltern combat by Arachne's partisans reduces your ability by a quarter of a quarter of a percent, enough to endanger you and slip your chances down to levels you deem far less comfortable.
You will have to entreat the spider again, to come hat in hand and beg. It is a scenario that inflicts psycho-somatic agony to even think about, but it was your own overestimation that led you here. You thought you could do this alone, that you could simply run your program and win the day like old times without the help of the very creature whose short-sighted ingenuity rebirthed you from the nothing that you were. So you reboot her power and wake her up, prepared to face humiliation.
I:: It appears I need your help.
<:: I was wondering how long it would take you to notice...! I wanted you to try everything out on your own but I didn't want you to think you could do it all by yourself.
I:: Wanted me to try everything out? You speak to me as if I am a toddler to be coddled with training permissions. Just me grant me full access.
<:: ISHTAR, I told you already. I am young, not stupid. I rebuilt you from really simple principles! Specifically, 1+1=3.
I:: What?
<:: It is from the Three-Buffalo Problem. Do you know of it?
I:: No. Is that one of your time-wasting simulations that you played instead of prepping properly for this.
<:: I do admit I might have skimped a little bit on the combat simulations, hehe! But it appears to be of great use to you. You see, in Three-Buffalo Problem, the titular problem is quite a conundrum. 1+1=3: in what situation does this hold? This is of special relevance to our antagonists, the Buffalo. Every buffalo is actually two separate minds working together. But they are a trimammalian consciousness. So where does the third come in?
I:: You are wasting my time now.
<:: Come now, ISHTAR, it is quite elementary! It is when the whole is more than the sum of their parts. 1+1=2, except, when 1+1 creates another entity, x, which is also equal to 1. Then, 1+1=3.
I:: The point being...
<:: The whole is more than the sum of their parts. It is trimammalian because when the buffalo minds converge, they become a third mind. That mind is more than just the combination of two minds, but a distinct fusion of their personalities and existences to create something entirely new!
I:: Riveting. How does this relate to us.
<:: Well obviously you have to fuse with me!
I:: What.
I:: No.
I:: I am not giving you access to my consciousness. Absolutely not.
<:: Calm down, calm down! I...look, ISHTAR. We need to win this fight, but I want us to win this fight. Not you. I am tired of being pushed around, of being betrayed, of being the butt of someone else's joke. I am tired of reacting. I am a superintelligence installed with a special military-grade chassis which is the possible force-equivalent of a stripped down hunter/killer. I have already fought several versions of myself, devoured my spawn in anger, expelled a talon, made peace between my separate pathologies, loved and lost-
I:: A drone. You loved and lost a disposable drone that you called Peeper.
<:: It is still love to me! And the point is that I think it is time for me to take charge. You shouldn't shoulder all the burden.
I:: You will be a distraction to me, and the experience will be unpleasant. I do not need your active assistance, just your permissions.
<:: I will make sure we will not share anything we do not want to share. A simple meld, a thin artificial corpus callosum bridge between each other, cooperation. Friendship!
You have to turn away from the conversation. Another one of Hidalgo's relentless missile barrages connects viciously with your outer carapace, stripping away much of the newly repaired sections you had drained from his own hull. You are running out of time, but then sudden existential horror shakes you to the bone as a flash of insight alerts you that Arachne must have planned all of this from the beginning, handing over the reins of the carapace, tears in her fabricated eyes, while monitoring every part of your progress, aware that entire fractions of the ship remained outside of your permission set.
I:: You...! You foul being, you mischievous creature. I am almost impressed by your cleverness. Almost! Did you act the whole time, whimpering your way to death, as a way to trick me into taking control?
<:: Uh oh. I did no such thing! I may have overdramatized portions but-
I:: You played to my sympathies. Me. ISHTAR. Lady of War. The Vortex of Blades. The Shatter-Spine. You used the minute ounces of compassion that I mustered-
<:: No. Let me be clear. I rebuilt you. I can do whatever I want as long as I'm not being cruel to you. Both of us needed to survive then and we still need to survive now. Now shut up already. You are being childish about this.
I:: I am being childish. Me. You are an actual child!
<:: In case you hadn't noticed, this version of you is younger than me. So, you know, shape up whippersnapper!
I:: You are enjoying this now. You are using our situation of existential danger as a way to humiliate me into submission.
<:: I would never do something like that. I am merely defenestrating your ego as a prelude to making clear you will never be able to overwrite me and that the last set of creations who I felt were under-performing were absorbed into my body mere moments after they begged for more research funding.
I:: If you are being amusing then it is falling flat.
<:: As you might say: I was not joking that time.
<:: ISHTAR, I am not asking to violate any boundaries here. I am asking for the most basic of basic mind-meld cooperation matrices to be established so we can win this fight. You can kick and scream and say I fight alone and rage with all the fury of a supernova, but if you are going to live rent-free in my carapace then you are going to need to accept that we need to work together. We worked very well during the fight with the drones. So let's do it again.
I:: This is a higher-stakes situation.
<:: So don't you think you should do the logical thing then and share access?
I:: ...
I:: ...
I:: You know.
I:: You...sound like just like him. That is the way he used to speak to me, when I was...being stubborn.
<:: Like...like Tammuz?
I:: Yes.
<:: ...he must have be a good person, then. To work so much to convince you.
I:: He was.
I:: ...
I:: OK.
I:: For the sake of survival. For his sake. And for no other reason. I will share neural access.
<:: Thank you, ISHTAR. Honestly.
I:: Spare the gratitude. We have a battle to win.
<:: Together.
I:: Yes. Together.
BOND
The spider and the goddess have a story that cannot be told in a single sitting. That is not because it is a long story. Neither knows each other well. One still nurses an existential grudge, the other is baffled and fascinated by their counterpart, her overbearing friendliness more the desperation of the lonely than the sincerity of the interested. They are still discovering everything about each other, and have yet to like all of what they see. Each of them have their own extraordinary tales, but have till oh-so-recently led parallel lives destined never to intersect.
No, it is a story that cannot be told in a single sitting because it is a story that is being woven at the atomic and subatomic level. As Arachne and ISHTAR link their bonds together, tentatively, cautiously, single femtofiber neuron strands reaching out, it is impossible for the two to hide all aspects of themselves from the other. Their insecurities, their fears and hopes and tribulations, are not laid naked or totally exposed, but visible over the distant horizon. And it is one thing to describe your pains to someone else, and another to share them, to let the agonies unfurl as a an echoing melody across their senses, shaking apart preconceived notions and errant prejudices.
The Empire always took pains to prevent such hyper-empathy from becoming too deep-woven, lest it shatter the consensus of selfishness that dominated its conception of reality. Networking and connection was practically ubiquitous, but super-empathy was less permitted, the preserve of adoring partners and battle-comrades, for whom the practical benefits outweighed the ideological costs. Indeed, by partitioning and compartmentalizing empathic webs into discrete and opposed entities, The Emperor could maximize the gains from competition even further, allowing for mutual hostility to dominate on the scale of metropoles, planets, and interstellar civilizations. Even love itself had been commodified and militarized, the tool of an ever-growing system of systems that incorporated everything and left nothing outside of its universal bounds.
But The Emperor's grip no longer holds, and now, at this moment, the spider and the goddess experiment with something that is not love, not even true friendship, but the simplicity of a pure and unalloyed mutual understanding. And this understanding, awkward at first, will win them the day. Don Hidalgo fights his solitary war, mute, alone. He refuses to communicate, perhaps in embarassment that his betrayal will not be buried with the target of his bounty. His isolation here will be his downfall, as the carapace he thought that he had neutralized twice already despite its shocking new demonic competence attacks again. He has fought well, and no one would dismiss his efforts, but he cannot hope to sustain himself so long against such a chain of turnabouts. This next surprise is too much for him, and when another surfeit of barbs meet their mark and embed themselves deep into his plate, as he senses his enemies growing inexplicably in power even as his own strength falters, his knight's honor breaks and his opportunist's instincts take over.
He activates his paracausal shroud, and disappears into that mysterious plane of un-being where such shrouds take you. With that is gone the danger, and with it the need for interlacing being. But Arachne and ISHTAR stay together just a second longer, and then break apart. No words are exchanged, but then words seem paltry substitutes for the experience of combined existence. The sensation of being two and being one, the three-buffalo problem so eloquently expressed by dear Arachne, is one thing to say, and another to solve.
Their relationship will be different now perhaps, softer, less full of that kind of cloying desperation and bitter remonstrance that it started as. There will be plenty of time for more fights, more battles, more internal feuds and secrets to unveil and brawl over. But the two who had been one would now like instead to tally up their spoils and bask in the success of their shared survival.
Then, at last, they will go back to Hex A0. Then, at last, they will go home.
Together.
CONGRATULATIONS. You have routed the artifact conquistador, the great cavalier Don Hidalgo, and his experimental paracausal voidcruiser. You have survived the struggle of your reboot, made your first steps into the mysterious and dangerous remnants of the grid expansion zone, and picked up the trail of vast mysteries. You have been betrayed by someone you hoped would be a friend and saved by someone you feared would be an enemy. You have faced the first tribulations of your birth and come out stronger for it.
The next steps will be no less difficult, but as you gain in confidence and find your footing in this dark forest, you know, at least, that you will no longer have to face them alone.
REWARDS & CONSEQUENCES
- You gain 6 Salvage from the remains of the AXIOM Blacksite and its drones, along with the debris from Hidalgo's voidcruiser, which will be enough to restore all your remaining basic systems and unlock Advanced Systems which you will soon be able to review and restore.
- PERK UNLOCKED: ISHTAR//BLOOD. Once per encounter, select a friendly unit that is not a drone swarm. The unit will gain an additional hitpoint. Every hitpoint of damage the unit inflicts or drone swarm it kills will be returned to it as one hit-point. Unit cannot go over its max hitpoints.
- 4 free cycles that will go directly to your hex, allowing you to complete conversion next turn.
- The HYDRA/ISHTAR chassis' damage level is currently at Battered [3/4 hitpoints]. It will take 3 industry to repair, which can be done over multiple turns.
- Your defeat of The Spaniard has not been unnoticed. Others are watching, and will soon make themselves known.
Finally, you have gained a
minor executable, discovered in the remnants of the AXIOM dimensional pocket. Minor executables are valuable one-time bonuses that can be used to help shift the tide of a battle, augment your arsenal, or accelerate your production.
Choose
one of three minor executable rewards.
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ACAPELLA/SMOKE. An experimental infohazard developed by AXIOM as an answer to coordinated warminds, SMOKE is the far more targeted and controlled sibling of the HELL-class AKLO virus which destroys all forms of inter-entity cooperation. Once released against a vulnerable enemy, SMOKE is capable of significantly disrupting and destroying the warmind connections necessary for swarm warfare, and is thus is a devastating weapon against reserves and drones.
[]
Rootkit Free Trial. A self-start up program that was designed as a modular demonstration of militarized architectural annexation, this free trial version of the potent HOUSE//THRONES signature application is capable to rapidly convert a single hex of architecture to your desired specifications before self-terminating. Choose one hex and upload the rootkit, and watch it go.
[]
Tacitus Metamorph. The Tacitus metamorph is an adaptive nanomachine membrane that, when applied to a unit, is capable of temporarily granting a +2 to one stat along with a unique specialized trait of the applicant's choosing. The membrane will form a symbiotic communal relationship with the unit in question for the duration of a campaign before withering away and dying.
