JB CXXII: Impossibilities
"Tempting..." Brevet-General John Kessler says, looking at the steaming, still-beating heart of
The Dragon.
He digs his fingers into the meat, steaming blood running down his arms... and as the realm around him reacts to the moment, a dramatic wind picking up, John Kessler sees his own reflection in the glistening draconic heartblood, the power, glory and unconquerable might he could gain for himself here. He blinks, and sees the arrayed forces of the United States Armed Forces behind him in a street that stretches on forever, all these men and women waiting with bated breath for what he will do.
The heart is before him. He doesn't need to use his enhancements to see the power. He can smell it in the air. He can taste it waiting to be exploited. He can feel it on his skin, despite how the armor around him shields him from the environment, feel it in his very primium bones. A creature like this, so old and so powerful and so mighty - it might as well have had rocket fuel for blood. Pure power, unadulterated by the weakness and the implants of the dragons of Xanadu. Power he could use. Power he needs. Power the Union could use, too. He could bring it back.
And isn't it his right? He slew it. All on his own. He killed the dragon which slew Beowulf. Men should sing about his legend. The Union will praise him. He'll get that damn promotion. Be a general for real. Something like this... if he brings it back, he wouldn't the weirdo. Well, he would, but he'd be the weirdo Ragnarok wants. He'd be a shoo-in for status. Power. General Kessler, Chair of Ragnarok Command. Has a pretty good ring to it.
"No," says John Kessler, wyrmslayer. "No," he says, with his new sense of self-awareness. Power isn't his path. It'll corrupt him. Corrupt anything they use it for. Sink into the workings of the Union and its machines. A Technocrat wouldn't think about this kind of thing, but he isn't just a Technocrat any longer. And in that moment, John Kessler knows what he will do.
"I
reject you, Avarice. I
refuse your temptation. I
deny you a place in me." His hands squeeze, and decaliters of blood, far more than any organ should hold and energy-dense like the finest rocket fuel, fountain into the air. "Join my ignorance and all those who stand against Humanity." He stabs into the heart with his pitted blade again and again, slicing through muscle. Gouts of black, stinking blood well up, bubbling and burning and eating away at the ground. It corrodes his clothes and burns at the armor he wears, cutting furrows through black polymer carapace and carbon muscle. And in the end, it's not the heart of a monster any more.
It's meat. Meat in the carcass of an oversized flying lizard, in a pool of stinking toxic burning blood. The wind dies down, fades to nothing, as another myth dies. Kessler drops the dragon-slaying blade of Beowulf, now little more than a nub and a corroded handle. Its legend is over as well. The King can finally rest.
***
Elsa glances around in the abandoned mall, keeping low. This situation may literally have just gotten worse. At least with Illiyeen around, she was just a random civilian. This Jamelia - Jazmin, as she calls herself - is a bright-eyed fresh faced Operative who still responds to her old name. Not skilled enough to really make too much of a difference against a real opponent, and now with added Conditioning.
"I'm Lt Elsa Naryshkin, Void Engineers. We're in the middle of a Cat-RED clusterfuck. There's a Dimensional Anomaly - we're in a hostile noetic subdimension," she says, scanning the sightlines for hostiles. "We're outnumbered and looking for extraction. The rest of my away team is... gone. I'm waiting for our ship to contact us, but it's engaging a hostile alien presence."
"Oh." Jazmin has a bulky handgun out - Elsa vaguely recognizes it as an X-8 Defender. You'd occasionally see them in use in Moscow, mostly in vampire hands because they'd found an old supply depot. It's an old weapon, with most of the same features as the X-5, but twice the bulk. The gun looks very big in the other woman's small hands. "I've never been off-world outside of Union facilities before," she says, looking around with a mix of wariness, alertness and interest. "What's the nature of the threat? Will standard rounds hurt them?"
"Some of them," Elsa says. She pauses. It might help. "One problem: VOIDCOM have positive proof that these aliens - designated Threat Null - have subverted at minimum one individual with at least Director-level authority. They've been using Control overrides." She hears Jazmin gulp. "Do you have any implants they could control?"
Jazmin shakes her head. "No," she says, eyes wide. "I'm baseline, but... but...how is that possible? I thought..."
"There's no such thing as an unbreakable code. Didn't the Noo-Woo teach you that?" Elsa the former Virtual Adept says intensely. "You must be very new. Listen... agent, listen to me. If anyone tries to contact you using Control orders... they're not human. Try your best to ignore them - and tell me what they're trying to get you to do. I have a cyborg body and I'm hardened against their attempts to control me, but you might be vulnerable. Once we're back to my ship, I can try to contact VOIDCOM and they can confirm what I'm saying, but you need to trust me and only listen to me. Got it?"
Jazmin listens carefully. It doesn't sound like Elsa is lying. It's clear that she's not saying everything, but that's not a problem. She knows that the Technocracy compartmentalizes things because of the security risks of a lot of what they do. It sounds like she knows how to survive here. So she meekly follows, only asking questions when it's quiet. "What is this place?"
"It's a noetic subdimension of visual fiction." Elsa replies. "It's where movies go to die."
"Oh. I didn't know those existed. Is this some sort of psychic thing?" Jazmin asks, somewhat enthusiastically.
Her enthusiasm is almost adorable, Elsa thinks. It'd certainly be more adorable if it wasn't likely to result in someone dying. "Something like that, although this wasn't a psychic operation." She has to keep in mind that she can't
lie. Bend the truth, yes, but lying will reduce trust. She can't afford that. "What kind of special ammunition have you been qualified on?" Elsa asks.
"Um, just Manstopper ammunition. I haven't learned to use any of the other stuff." Ammunition Elsa doesn't have, and isn't qualified in. So probably not a good idea to hand her microexplosive ammo or anything else. "You said normal rounds worked on most of them, right?"
"Most." Elsa says. "Some of the things here are bulletproof. They have..." she pauses to try to explain a T-800 to someone from the 70s, "HITMark V equivalents, although with no integrated weapons. There's also armored vehicles and other heavy units. Just stay close to me."
"Okay." Jazmin says, nervously. "I trust you."
Elsa finds that
absolutely adorable. A NWO operative trusting someone. She hasn't even learned the reflexive distrust of superiors yet that seems to be an inevitable consequence of being a NWO operative. "How long have you been an operative?"
"Six months." Jazmin says, slightly stammering. "I just finished most of the basic courses and I'm supposed to be field qualified in low-risk operations. Is this a low-risk operation?"
"No." Elsa says. "There were... exceptional circumstances. Beyond your access grade." And it's true. There
are exceptional circumstances at play, otherwise they wouldn't have been here without at least a small battlefleet. Definitely not anywhere near a war between two heavy planetoids and an H/K. "I'm telling you as much as I can." And that, too, is true. She can't tell Jazmin about Threat Null, about how she's a disembodied spirit and about everything else that's happened. None of the important information can be given out without risk. It hurts, knowing how much has to be censored, how much people
have to be kept in the dark about, when just a few months ago Elsa was fighting on the front lines for freedom of information. But in the end-the hacker's creed isn't a suicide pact. Very little is. And if she has to feel bad about her betrayal of her roots and ideals to keep mankind safe, she'll do it.
They make their way through the generic western cityscape-it looks like it could be any big city in America, all concrete and glass and steel, walking until they find an office building. There's a helipad on top, which means there's a helicopter. A good getaway method. The air-to-air capable movie-vehicles seem to all be engaged on the shores with the MUSCOVITE invasion, slowly pushing it back now. It'll give them more time.
The elevator stops on the 60th floor. Elsa forces it open with cybernetic strength, lets Jazmin clamber out before she crawls out herself. Jazmin starts to shout a warning and drops flat. The windows explode with gunfire, and a moment later there are four explosions right above them. Elsa looks out the window for the shooter, gets a brief glimpse of violet hair, crimson eyes, and a familiar face. The telltale distortion of active camouflage. Delayed explosive rounds. "This is going to be difficult." Elsa judges the odds with Jazmin around and without her.
"I need you to run. I can't keep you protected if she's trying to kill you." Elsa says to Jazmin.
"But-they seem to be hunting
me specifically." Jazmin notes. "Wouldn't it be safer to stick together?"
"You're going to slow me down and keep me from getting a good bead on her. Just go!" Elsa shouts. "I'll handle this problem. I can find you later."
"There's only room for
one lesbian cyborg in this place and as much as I like you you're
going down. I don't mean that in a sexual way, either." Elsa says. She dives through the window, a smartpistol in each hand. Time slows down as she lets each second draw down, as Combat Reflex sets in and her mind overclocks from the infusion of accelerants. Her weapons link shows both guns are loaded with AM-SEEKER ammunition. She lives for this. The thrill of the fight. The adrenaline.
It's why she ended up on an operating table, barely alive, until Catherine Iosefova had given her a new body. One she hated, with an alien face and an alien gait, but one she learned to appreciate the strength and durability of. Her need to put herself in danger. She's not a great bodyguard, she concedes. She knows her limitations. She gets impatient, makes mistakes-but she's sure this one isn't one of them. That wasn't an attempt to convert her. That was an attempt to outright kill her. So there's another faction in play, she thinks. And if this is about movies-this faction seems to be using black ops agents like the Major. It seems nonhostile to the Residents and their movie characters-so most likely the Agents, since the Autopolitans have been locked out with their mothership going rogue-and would never have had the flexibility to consider this noetic realm in the first place-and the Transhuman presence in this realm is nonexistent. They weren't visibly alien so that rules out the Subjugation Corps or Dimension Sterilization Units either, which might have had the flexibility to operate but not the subtlety. She considers all of this in her accelerated reference frame, thinking several times faster than any normal human can.
Elsa twists in midair as high-velocity SMG ammunition screams towards her with inhuman lethal precision. She commands the Alanson to activate several of its less-standard features, hardening the piezoelectric impact-absorbent layer to stop the anti-cyborg ammunition the other cyborg is using. She fires back, tracking the ballistics trails to the original firing position. The other cyborg is very, very good at her job. Elsa smiles reflexively. This is going to be fun.
***
Jazmin runs. She's been running for minutes now, careful to hide from cameras or other surveillance. She's left the building, taken the stairs, and is currently running through crowded streets. She's afraid of what's going on. The streets here are blissfully ignorant of what's happening just nearby, the explosions and firefights and all the chaos. At her count, there's at least a half-dozen flashpoints of combat, where soldiers and weapons are facing off against each other. Some of them look like they might be Sleepers, but this is a noetic realm. She doesn't trust appearances. Others look obviously and visibly alien, machine-monsters that she knows instinctively are very bad news. She keeps scanning for potential threats, remembering her training, but it's not as easy as it was in the exercises and it's just overwhelming. But she doesn't give up. A senior Technocrat has trusted her to take care of herself, and that's what she's going to do. She'll make the Union proud.
Someone runs into her in the streets, and she looks at the stylish man in out of date fashion. "Excuse me." She says. "I'm in a hurry."
He grabs her hand. "Come with me. We need to get out of here."
"What about Lieutenant Naryshkin?" She asks.
"She'll be fine." He repeats. "I'm Mr. Ripley. Just follow me and you'll be all right."
"Do you know Lieutenant Naryshkin?" She asks, suspiciously.
"Of course I do." He says, and she
knows he's lying.
She brings her gun up. "Tell me the truth. Who are you and why are you here?"
"Just let me explain-" he starts, and then goes for her gun, forcing her to the ground as they tangle with each other. She hits him repeatedly but he stays close to her, refusing to let go. She pulls the trigger, and he flinches, but he still stays on her. The shot goes wild. Now the crowd starts to disperse. "This is your fault. You should have come quietly."
"Get off of me." Jazmin says, struggling. She knows hand to hand combat-but she's not very good at it yet. She hasn't even been qualified as a full combat operative! This is just basic familiarization and self-defense. They hit each other in the grapple repeatedly, causing very little injury, but she finally gets an advantage and shoots him. Once, twice. He falls back, staggers in shock. She runs. The police will come, right? And that'd be bad. She's scared. She's too focused on the police that she misses the real threat.
The 9mm bullets hit like a sledgehammer to the gut. It hurts like... she can't really describe it. She turns and spins towards her attacker, getting a brief glimpse of a man who looks somewhat like her original attacker-the Mr. Ripley-but his face is an impassive mask and he wields a handgun like an Operative would, fast and mechanically precise. He aims at her again, this time going for the head, and she fires back wildly. His shot goes wide by a few centimeters as he dives back in an alleyway.
Jazmin hastily reloads, trying not to let her disquiet at having killed someone impact her performance, but her hands shake and she can barely fit the magazine in the well. She takes another shot as she fires at her assailant, who she's
sure is some kind of rogue Operative. Maybe a Euthanatos assassin of some sort? They exchange fire for minutes. The bruises hurt, but she tries to ignore them. She's still alive, right? She's not bleeding to death or anything. She doesn't feel like she's dying. She keeps fighting on autopilot, reloading and firing wildly and dodging in the rapidly emptying streets of this... downtown any-city... even as sirens blare in the distance.
It takes a while, but she eventually makes a mistake. She covers the wrong angle, and the rogue operative shoots her in the arm several times. Her X-8 drops from numb fingers, and he carefully aims at her. There is a loud gunshot. Jazmin closes her eyes. Not like this. She's not going to die like this, right? She'll close her eyes and-and it'll just be a bad dream or a virtual reality simulator or something.
And Jazmin opens her eyes. She sees Elsa in front of her, having taken the shot for her, firing back at the man. She can barely see the man run away, and she knows that he'll be back later, with friends, but they're safe for now.
"Congratulations. You just shot a Matt Damon and another one is out there trying to hunt us, but I think he's gotten cold feet after I got back." Elsa drawls. She looks a lot worse for wear-clothes torn to ribbons except for the powered armor she's wearing-some sort of Alanson derivative, Jazmin thinks, but not like any Alanson she's ever seen. It's a lot more advanced. Some Void Engineer prototype light powered armor? She's taken a head wound which would be nasty on a human but on a cyborg is apparently merely cosmetic, and Jazmin finds it interesting and slightly suspicious that Elsa's skull is apparently blue-black instead of silvery Primium. "Apparently Matt Damons attack in packs, like wolves do. Have to keep that in mind." She looks Jazmin over. "No penetration, you're fine. How are you?"
Jazmin shakes her head, as she is far too busy throwing up now that the immediate threat has passed. "I
killed him!" She shouts, pointing at the body of Tom Ripley. "I killed him."
"You haven't done that before?" Elsa asks, sympathetically. "I'm sorry. You shouldn't have had to." It's hard reminding herself that this woman will grow into the sexy-domme Jamelia Belltower who can sacrifice thousands of people and not blink an eye. In a way it's tragic, because maybe she deserved to stay like this forever. Innocent, endearing, and above all kind of cute. Maybe that's another reason to fight for a new world, a better world. A world where cute waitresses with a thirst for knowledge-Kessler had translated her story of infiltrating a Technocracy construct with nothing but a notepad, a stolen keycard, and an incredible amount of determination-can stay innocent forever instead of becoming stone cold killers. "But right now we're going to need to move, and quickly." She hands the X-8 to Jazmin. "Can you still fight?"
Jazmin nods, tentatively. "For the Union." She manages.
Hypervelocity railgun slugs rip through the stonework of the buildings surrounding the alley. "I think we just found
another Damon. How many movies has this asshole
starred in?" Elsa says, punctuating her statement with Russian profanity. She grabs Jazmin's hand and runs as railgun flechettes punch through marble.
__________________________________
How do you leverage a permanent paradox reduction? It's a buffer if you start throwing around implausible or vulgar effects. That's the most obvious use. The other use is to upgrade. Get some carbon nanotube muscle fiber so Kessler can be the SWOLEST DUDE IN THE GALAXY and punch hard enough to BUST TANKS. Get an arm-mounted plasma cannon. Implanted vibroblades. Rip out his old bionic heart for a nanomachine-infused cyberheart that gives him rapid self-healing. Replace hyperalloy with lighter but no-less-durable self-healing macropolymers. Things like that.
I will probably do a larger update after this when I get more Henriette write-ins/discussions. Right now, Kessler, the dragonslayer, was confronted by a dragon. Elsa therefore had to be confronted by another lesbian cyborg supersoldier, and Jamelia, having echoes (Matt Damon) due to her backstory, clearly has to fight the Matt Damon horde. So you've got Matt Damon from Elysium, Matt Damon from Bourne, Matt Damon from the Ripley movies, and there's probably Matt Damon as Private Ryan somewhere over here, among other Matt Damons who would make sense as combatants (or Matt Damon from the Adjustment Bureau, who is currently using his hat to move other Matt Damons through doors incredibly rapidly).
Damon Hunters:
So, Elsa and Jazmin are being chased by a pack of Damons. (This is
clearly the proper term for multiple Matt Damons). At least there's no fallen angels involved that you know of. Their response is to:
[ ] Use Jazmin as bait. Have her fake a surrender and then have Elsa pounce on them.
[ ] Turn into the attack and kill the combatants.
[ ] Hole up in a building that has enough bulk to stop those railgun shots.
[ ] Write-In.
Henriette's Challenge (Continued from Update 121):
So now you've done it. You've made little sister
madder. Concentrate on...
[ ] Defensive fighting. Keep yourself protected while you enhance the Titan more.
[ ] Offensive fighting. Try to take down the Core-MkV TDP.
[ ] Blaze of Glory. The core is in this room. The
enemy's gate is down.
[ ] Write-in.
