JB CXXIV: Engine of Extinction
The two women run, and then run a bit more. Elsa is keeping an eye on the motion tracker on her HUD for EDEs, but there are so damn many of them in this place that she can't be sure. Between the natives, the Agents and the psycho MUSCOVITE, she can't actually be sure what moving blob is what.
... and shit, when did she start thinking about Threat Null as the MUSCOVITEs? As a somewhat proud native of Moscow herself, it's vaguely insulting to associate Autopolitan invaders with her former home.
"Who's the sister she's talking about?" Jazmin asks, gasping for breath as she leans against a wall and tries to clear the jam in her gun with shaking hands. She swallows. "I think... I think I prefer being in the Order. I haven't been chased by a madwoman with a machete
once. Is this a common thing in the Void Engineers?"
"I was chased by a few hemophages with axes... well, meat-cleavers when I was back in Moscow," Elsa says without thinking. "But they just burn when you load up some incendiary rounds." She pauses, thinking to herself. Hmm. So, assume that the Autopolitan is either Pilot Langley's sister or fork or
something. After all, Langley is an exceptionally good pilot. Maybe they stole one of her backups to make their pilot for the invasion, so she would...
... Henriette knows there's some tie, Elsa realises. Yes. She has to. She went and pushed its buttons deliberately. Maybe it let it slip when they were fighting in Moscow. And - heh, Langley is quite prickly at times. She has a lot of buttons to press. So if Elsa assumes that the Autopolitans made their pilot or pilots from her mindstate... yes, that makes sense. And the earthside Technocracy knows the so-called MUSCOVITEs are using a lot of Iteration X gear, so... hmm. That bears looking into.
But later. Right now, the Autopolitan is really fucking dangerous, and really hates Henriette. And it's attacking the Agents and the natives as well as them. It's basically attacking everything. So if it's attacking the not-them things, it's not attacking them.
Elsa grins. Fuck it, it's worth a try. And if it pays off, the horrific Autopolitan murder machine won't be murdering them, and will instead be murdering Agents. And might be shot a few times. She notices Jazmin is eyeing her up.
"Are you feeling alright?" Jazmin asks cautiously. "She did hit you quite hard."
"I'll be okay with some workshop time," Elsa says, feeling vaguely touched at the concern in the shorter woman's voice. "I've had worse. One of the costs of having a lighter Engineer model of body. I don't fall through so many floors, but I'm not as solid as an ItX exojock." She winces. "But I really, really don't want to get that close to her again."
"So what are you going to do?" Jazmin says. "I think he was telling the truth - or at least believed what he said," she corrects herself. "But you said they'd compromised comms and..."
Elsa raises a hand. "Yeah, I don't trust him," she says. "But at the very least... we can pick our own targets. If this is the simulation source of the place we just were... yeah. Keep quiet." She takes Jazmin by the hand, pulling her as she follows an internal map of the place, working her way through side rooms and avoiding the EDEs she gets on the motion tracker.
She finds what she's looking for in a room full of soundtracks. It's empty here - the censors don't care so much about the backing tracks, it seems. Sorting through the shelves, she picks out a bulky tape player which looks like it's from the Sixties.
"Close the door," she whispers to Jazmin as she sorts through her memories, thinking of conversations she's had with Henriette. Her voicebox is just another machine, so she can manage playback functionality.
"What are you, stupid?" she begins, in a voice which isn't her own.
Jazmin waits patiently as Elsa records the message, covering the door with a gun which is only shaking a little bit. They both know that this won't do much if that Autopolitan thing comes in, but it's something which gives one a feeling of control over one's own life. Elsa finishes, and picks up the recorder.
"That sounded like her," Jazmin says.
"Yeah, it did. I'm not sure what's going on, but I think I know the person who she thinks is her sister," Elsa says as they move out. "I'm thinking the sound of her voice might distract her. And... ah ha, jackpot."
There's a trolley laden down with shrink-wrapped manuscripts. That'll do. That'll do nicely. "See if you can find any glue," she whispers to Jazmin, who immediately produces a small tube of superglue from a pocket.
"A well-prepared Operative always carries adhesive with them," Jazmin whispers back, her tone indicating she's reciting something. Probably some kind of NWO book like The 101 Habits Of Well-Prepared Operatives.
"Thanks," Elsa says. "Now, you think you can bluff one of the faceless local EDEs into taking this to..." she checks her internal map of the area, "Editing Hall 2c?" She's built up a 3-d map of the area relative to the signs on the walls, and her EDE-detecting hardware is telling her that that room is filled with lots and lots of EDEs.
Jazmin nods. "I'm... quite good at bluffing," she says, in a proud little voice.
"Don't get seen by any of the things pretending to be agents," Elsa says intensely. "But you need to pass as one of them. The rest should work, but you'll need to lose the headscarf. It'll stand out too much."
Jazmin hesitates, and then sighs. "It still doesn't feel right," she mutters, unwrapping it to reveal jaw-length black hair. She folds it up and then tucks it into a pocket, and then pulls mirrorshades out of another pocket and puts them on. "I don't feel comfortable like this."
"Hey, you've got great hair," Elsa says. She's not saying it to flirt. Oh, no. Not one bit. She just needs Jazmin to feel confident. That's the only reason. "Hey, when this is over, we can head to the showers and wash out all this sweat, and then trade tips. How do you keep it so glossy?"
She gets a flat stare from behind mirrorshades. "You're a cyborg. Do you sweat?"
"Yeah. Synthskin has to stay cool and hydrated, just like real skin. You probably spend less time taking care of your skin than me. Moisturiser is a
godsend."
Jazmin tilts her head, obviously fascinated. "Interesting. I'd never thought of it like that before, but that makes sense." She takes a deep breath, and mutters something - a prayer, perhaps - to herself in Arabic, then starts pushing the trolley of scripts - now with the recording device stuck to its underside. A recording device which has had its volume turned up to max.
Elsa trails behind her, but she didn't really need to. Jazmin simply marches up to one of the local workers, orders them to deliver the scripts for necessary censorship, and makes a vague allusion to the regulations which permit such a thing.
"Good job," she whispers to Jazmin as she steps around the corner and takes a deep breath.
Jazmin nods. "What now?"
"Now we get the hell away that place before the timer kicks in and the tape starts playing." Elsa squats down by a ventilation shaft, rummaging for her Alanson quick-release kit, before finding a screwdriver placed in her hand.
"Let me guess. A well-prepared Operative always has a screwdriver?" she asks, getting started on unfastening the vent covering.
Jazmin nods. "It was in the manual," she says, looking around nervously.
"Sounds like a useful book."
"It really is," Jazmin says. She seems to be trying to distract herself, and she's talking more rapidly. "I really want to be good at this. The Union's been really good to me. Professor Blanc s-said he wanted me as an assistant, but I've... I've spent most of the time just learning things." She laughs weakly. "I don't want things to end here in space. It'd be such a waste when I'm actually getting to go to school and... and getting paid well and..."
The two of them hear the scream of rage. It echoes ominously. Apparently despite only looking like a teenage girl, that... that thing has a powerful set of lungs on it. "I'LL KILL YOU! KILL YOU ALL! EVERYONE OF YOU WHO DARED TO INSULT ME!"
"... I think we got her attention," Jazmin says, swallowing hard.
"That was the plan," Elsa says, with more confidence than she really feels. "Now, c'mon. Into the vents, and we should be away from that
thing and be able to work our way to where the film we want is stored." She lets Jazmin go first, and then boosts herself into the vents. It's a tight fit-but it's just barely doable in her armor. She crawls as the echoes of screams and gunfire ring in the ventilation. Then a brief moment of silence, and then more screams.
"YOU TRIED TO TRICK ME! YOU'RE ALL IN LEAGUE WITH EACH OTHER, AREN'T YOU?! YOU'RE ALL..." she pauses, as if what is coming next is some kind of unforgivable slur, "...REALITY DEVIANTS! YOU'RE ALL RDS!" Henrietta shouts. There is some muffled mumbling, and Elsa runs it through a program to analyze it. "I guess, then, I'm just going to have to purge
all the Reality Deviants," the crazy girl starts. "Yes, purge them all."
Elsa can smell smoke and fire as scripts and celluloid start to burn.
"Wait," Jazmin said quietly as they exit the latest vent. She points at the door just across the hall from them. "We can use that."
"Use what?" Elsa focuses on the door. She'd disregarded it-it had no exits, no obvious paths, and no obvious tools. The sign on the door reads "Janitorial."
"A well-prepared Operative is never disarmed. They can always create weapons from any available material," Jazmin recites, opening the door and dragging Elsa inside behind her. "There's likely to be something I can use in here to make some good traps and devices."
It certainly
smelled like a chemical plant, Elsa conceded. Chlorine, ammonia, soap flakes, hydrogen peroxide, methyl alcohol… a whole array of smells that would be almost overpowering on their own and are even worse combined bombard her.
Jazmin didn't seem to notice, already pulling bottles and cans off the shelves and starting to mix powders and liquids in a set of empty cleaning spray bottles from a lower rack. "Alright, I've got a handful of low-order explosives and firebombs, blinding traps, and a few things that generate toxic gases. We should be able to start placing these ahead of her or any place we think she might try to access." She carefully places them in trash bags and hoisted the lot up over her shoulder. "We can get back into the vents after editing the film, and place them wherever we think might be useful."
Elsa wants to respond with encouragement for the good idea, but is interrupted by both Nichols and Kessler calling. She answers Nichols first.
"You
made the robot god mad again, didn't you?" Nichols asks accusingly. The grouchy old woman looks even more grouchy. "The last time it just caused her to undergo apotheosis. What
in God's name possessed you to make her angry again?"
"We were trying to get her to fight the Residents and Agents." Elsa hisses back. Jazmin is there-but she won't have any of the context to put together the words Elsa is saying. "We were stuck in this higher noetic realm with no other options. She was roaming the halls and I wouldn't have bet on my chances against her."
"So you should have avoided her. Things are not going well. She's decided that consumption of the station and the noetic realm was inefficient when she did it one by one, so she's planning to burn the place and just drain it for resources when it's a lifeless cinder." Nichols responds. "Talk to Kessler. He can tell you his situation, and then get back to me. It's clear that you need supervision before you hurt yourself."
"Yes,
mom." Elsa grouses.
"For all her faults, Belltower at least have thought of a plan which wouldn't have involved angering the robot demigod twice in a row."
***
John Kessler has been many things in his life. He's been an athlete, a student, a soldier, a cyborg shock trooper, a survivalist, a shaman, and now a general. A general of a spirit army made up of the celluloid representations of the United States Armed Forces. Even belonging to the armed forces of no nation, he still had enough residual nationalism to do that. And he's embraced what he is now-Reality Deviant and Enlightened Scientist, cyborg and shaman, two sides of the same coin. His motley army slowly grinds through the defenses, made up of hordes and hordes of squid-robots and metallic skeletons wielding plasma rifles and other war machines, from flying humanoid drones to unmanned aircraft. Artillery goes off around him as he leads his charge, walking alongside an armored division without fear. Soldiers with M1 Garands and rifled muskets trade shots with plasma-gun armed Terminators and military-grade tactical robots and other mechanical war machines.
His forces are being funneled into the machines by enemy action, he knows. But nevertheless, it's not a problem he can fix here and now-and he can sense that this enemy is just as powerful, and far more immediately dangerous, than anything the spirit masters of this realm have in store. His tanks grind over Terminator skeletons and humanoid robots and the wrecked remnants of floating robot squid-things and other drones as he finally lays siege to the fortress that contains much of the alien god-thing's strength. His artillery crashes down on the foes like metal rain, his infantry erode the last defensive lines like a tidal wave. His air power is busy killing and killing and dying against enemy unmanned fighters and drones, filling the sky with orange and black. It looks like hell, Kessler thinks. But it's not. There's a tangible sense of progress against an implacable foe of civilization and humanity, even as the sky turns black with shrapnel and flak and the ground becomes a cratered moonscape.
It's an impractical fortress in reality-but here where physics have no real sway, an ominous dark fortress bristling with guns is excellent at keeping things out. Kessler thinks for a moment, starts looking for commandos and gets a variety of soldiers. Some futuristic marines with pulse rifles and smartguns, a handful of men and women in crude exoskeletons, Rangers from World War II, a handful of Civil War soldiers, and various special forces from eras he's familiar with, SEALs and Deltas and Green Berets and Marine Force Recon. It'll be an infiltration operation, leaving most of his forces behind. The walls are too thick with hate and rage to breach-but the same terrible strength that makes the godling a force to be reckoned with gives it blind spots. Places he and his allies can operate.
Which is a good thing as well, because the fortress splits open and starts to spew nuclear missiles into the sky. Kessler can see in the background the white lines of ICBMs following suit. Something is happening.
"KILL YOU ALL!" a young woman's voice echoes from the sky. "ALL OF YOU! You're all going to be purged."
He looks at this problem and thinks that he needs some more help. He activates his commlink, demands it activate its transdimensional sending function. He knows that function didn't exist until literally a second ago, yet he does not care.
"Elsa," Kessler sends. "Elsa. Pick up. I need your help." Kessler manages. "Right now."
She finally does. "What is it?"
"Whatever the alien threat is-it just launched. Multiple nuclear weapons. It's trying to burn the entire place down. What happens then?" He suspects he knows what happens then-but he wants her to understand how important this is. How important it is that he knows anything that might be able to help.
"If that happens-the entire noetic realm collapses. The effects-I don't think anyone studies them but-"
"The effects," Harlan says, interrupting them, "mean that you wound an entire concept. Ever want to watch a movie? In a theater? Kiss that goodbye. And maybe a bit of collateral damage too. You know how the Reality Deviants say we're flying around killing creativity and rendering Creation a dull gray prison? That's exactly what this is going to do. Cut a little of that creative spark out. Much as Hollywood is full of derivative trash, this is still part of the collective unconscious that governs creativity. Destroy it, and the main body suffers, much as cutting off a finger or a toe lessens the whole." Kessler doesn't flinch as an artillery shell explodes next to him, punctuating Harlan's statement.
"Who invited you?" Elsa asks.
"Nichols." Harlan says. "This is beyond petty rivalries now when you have a Nephandic godling running around trying to destroy everything."
Kessler thinks. Yes, he supposed that if that
thing from Moscow is now trying to destroy everything, it's pretty Nephandic. It might have been corrupted by some sort of taint from the infernalist hemophages it was eating like popcorn, and now it's unconsciously tapped into the same dark things which empower them. Certainly, its angry, petty rages seem to be reminiscent of hemophage activity. Its mindless quest for destruction reminds him of the unclassified documents about Code Ragnarok. It's an assumption that won't hurt.
"We can deal with recriminations and who should have told us something or other
later." Kessler says, taking up a mantle of leadership. "Right
now, we need to stop this from happening. Can we get a simultaneous conference call working?"
"Yes." Harlan says. "Working on it... done. Networking it through the QUEST to keep it active, and its partially psionic medium means that it should be uninterceptible by our foes."
***
Henriette Langley is a pilot, and as an Iteration X pilot she has learned to multitask very well. She's had to keep track of a half-dozen enemy combatants in Moscow, after all, and that went pretty well. She has, however, never had to do a teleconference while fighting for her life inside the decaying undying god-body of her little sister in an Etherite giant robot.
"I'm a little busy here!" She yells at Harlan, who's initiated the conference.
"Shut up and accept the invitation." Nichols says archly. "It's important. Both for your education and for your tactical situation." The Trinity Titan barely deflects the Mark V's phase blade with its fission axe, and radioactive fragments fly everywhere from the self-sharpening self-repairing edge of the weapon. Henriette fires a barrage of atomic micro-rockets at the BioVARG horde, and although they try to network their bio-energistic fields together to provide a shield, the sheer nuclear fury overwhelms another dozen of them and burns them from existence. They turn to ash when they die, Henriette notices. That shouldn't be happening. BioVARG biology should be stable, not metastable.
"Fine." Henriette complains. "If I die because I get distracted-"
"Then don't." Nichols says. "Do or do not, grasshopper squared. There is no try. Now, I'm calling you all together because we have a slight problem. We all exist in different dimensional phase spaces. I, alongside Mister Aristide and Miss Langley, exist in realspace, where the enemy machine-god is currently heading full speed at the station while firing all its mass-depopulation weapons. Miss Naryshkin and Miss Belltower, who is incapacitated, are in a transcendent noetic realm, and Mister Kessler is in a noetic realm. All of these are connected. All of these are important, because the enemy has a presence in all of them. We need to coordinate our actions to hurt her. Unlike most gods, our target is smart."
"She's raging incoherently at everything." Henriette responds.
"Yes, she's raging incoherently at everything in a very smart way. Smart people can be very dumb, as demonstrated by how you all decided that poking the newborn godling, twice, was a good idea." Nichols says. "I was planning on quietly distracting the mothership and hitting it with a chronal torpedo. But instead, now we're here. Anyways, she's unconsciously distributing her core functions in a way which means that she exists, in some way, on each of these levels. You need to defeat her on all of them to bring her down. The good news is that it weakens her on every level and it means that each action you take in your own environment can hurt or stun her in all of the other ones. It means her mental fortress has gaps-that her transcendent body is vulnerable, and that her core is protected by a lot less than it could be."
"So, objectives. I need Kessler to penetrate the fortress and blow up the core. Looking at the explosion is optional but recommended-I want to make sure that the core and the fortress are, in fact, in pieces. Part two. Naryshkin, you need to find a way to kill her in the Archives. Part three, grasshopper-squared needs to beat a god-killing giant robot and also a god. Should be a piece of cake." Nichols says. "Oh yeah, before I forget, we need to do this before she turns everything into ash, and we need to keep enough firepower around to kill the other combatant." She thinks.
"So first step. Aristide. You have two chronal torpedoes. I need you to do an assassination on both of them while they're distracted. The torpedoes themselves are phase-shift capable. Get close enough and they can't intercept. I can give you the weak points on the Hunter-Killer. If you do this, she'll probably be wounded enough that we can make real progress."
"I'm a commando, not a-"
"Yes, yes. You also have a half-dozen brains in that ship of yours if the one in your skull doesn't pass muster. Make use of them. That should stun the enemy long enough. After that, we improvise madly."
______________________________________________________________
Space Backstabs in Space:
Nichols has started creating a plan. She just needs Aristide to do something nigh-suicidal. She plans to make that possible by:
[ ] She's not telling the full truth. One of the parties is actually a sacrificial pawn here.
[ ] Elsa
[ ] Kessler
[ ] Henriette
[ ] Aristide
[ ] Sacrificing the
Oppenheimer as a decoy. They can hijack a new ship from the station afterwards.
[ ] Expending most of the
Oppenheimer's ammunition in an alpha-strike and warping out ASAP.
[ ] Giving Aristide the exact timing to avoid both Henrietta and the H/K's attention.
[ ] Write-in
Note that the more you sacrifice, the higher your chances of the plan working and the lower your chances of a TPK. If you kill off a PC, for example, you're guaranteed success.
To Catch A Predator:
The main problem here is that you have a very angry and moderately wounded Henrietta who does not give a single fuck, not one, running around the archives. Which she has
started to set on fire. This is the worst time to find out that although she looks human she does not have human needs like 'oxygen.' Oh yeah, and Nichols, that smug bitch, wants you to kill her somehow. That's right, manage to hit her successfully about a dozen times. Elsa and Jazmin's plan to do this is...
[ ] Dragging Henrietta into more Agent fights.
[ ] Making a deal with the Residents, because they want her dead as much as she does.
[ ] Finding a way to disarm her of that machete.
[ ] Finding a way to lock her in a room and burn her to death.
[-] (0.0x) Any plan which involves angering Henrietta further as a primary objective.
[ ] Write-In.
