JB CXVII: Damage Control
"Go," Nichols says to Elsa. "You know where she is. You'll want to go with the hulking tinhead. He's much smarter than he looks; trust me on this. Not that that'd be very hard, of course. But
I need her alive, for what's about to come." She glances down at Henriette. "I'll talk to Little Miss Too Clever For Our Own Good here and find out what she did and what exactly possessed her so she thought
this was a good idea." None too gently, she half-supports, half-drags Henriette out, while Elsa sprints for the transporter bay.
The world spins for Henriette. She feels tender. Raw. Like something's just stuck a surgical blade into her and now something which was always part of her but she just didn't know it is gone - and it's only the absence which tells her that it was ever there. She's gone limp with shock. Her body isn't responding - her muscles don't want to move. She groans and tries to think about what... what the thing out there is going to do, but she's coming up blanks. They used to be alike - so very alike - and now... now they're not.
Not at all.
"Heaven save us from prodigies," Nichols grumbles, as she deposits Henriette down in one of the control chairs on the bridge. "Very few things are more dangerous than some brilliant young hothead on your side who comes up with some brilliant plan without asking themselves why no one else is doing it." She puts her hands on her hips, and glowers down at Henriette. "So?" she asks aggressively.
A bit of Henriette's brain - her ADEI, in fact - is clinically pointing out that she's currently alone in a room with a known traitor/defector/high-rank enemy of the Union and that's probably grounds for worry. The organic bits which have a lot of monkey-experience at not wanting to die aren't really listening to that bit. At times like these, a little bit of Reality Deviancy is probably not the highest concern. The ADEI bit of her brain reluctantly concedes that they may have a point for all that they're a cluster of thinking meat, and helps her remember her explanatory story despite the aching cold gap in her head.
"That..." she wets her lips, tasting vomit. "That... is... maybe was, now. Was the thing from Moscow. It wasn't a machine. Not just a machine, rather. Too human." She swallows. "It had Genius. But could have been a lot more efficient. So there was a reason for the inefficiencies. Maybe they had to keep the mind mostly baseline to get it to work. For the innate human talent of Genius, maybe. I pushed its buttons. I pushed them hard. I... I thought it'd just g-go snap and start shooting the station and then w-would go lock itself down or something, or it'd go radical posthuman to get away from the emotional pain and lose that edge of Genius that made it dangerous." She coughs. "Underestimated her."
"Her?" The word is cold and incisive.
"It... it's a an it now, but..." Seeing the difference, Henriette has to admit it to herself. The thing out there used to be her little sister. "It was female before."
Nichols' eyebrows quirk upwards. "Now, what kind of Iterator mech jockey talks about 'innate human talent' when talking about Genius?" she asks. Henriette gets the distinct feeling that this question isn't just a question - that she's getting something else from it. "And for that matter, launches a 'hacking' attempt which is purely social engineering despite what she implied to the rest of us?"
Henriette looks up at her, squares her jaw, and tries very hard not to drool even a little bit. There's something familiar about Catherine Nichols - and even more than her face, there's something similar about her very sarcastic tone. "I'm piloting a p-piece of irradiated scrap," she says blithely, her voice sounding a lot more confident that she really is. "How am I meant to hack into something like that with electronic methods? And I've learned a lot from Director Belltower."
"Harumph," Nichols says, and that is very much the noise she makes. "Belltower, you're a pain even when you're not even here," she announces to thin air. "Well, young lady," she says to Henriette, "congratulations. You've managed to make a technohorror which could probably beat most gods out here. It also really, really wants to kill you. It seems that's something
else you've learned from Belltower. Good job. Really."
Henriette almost laughs. It's the tone which cinched it. "You're Baptysme's... uh, mother, aren't you?" she says. "You sound so much like her when you're being sarcastic."
"Don't try to change the topic," Nichols says flatly. "And don't try to get around me with the revelation that you're friendly with one of my clones. Unexpected plot twists mostly make grumpy old ladies like me irritable. We have much more important things to focus on right now."
"Yes," Henriette says faintly. She swallows, ignoring the bilious taste in her mouth. The ache is... it's not fading, but she's getting used to it. She can survive it. "We... we need to put it down," she says. "Somehow. It... it might still have access to... to what it used against Moscow. Not again." She narrows her eyes. "And I don't like the Void Engineers, but we can't let it rampage around out here and..."
"And it's a posthuman monster which has one of its major drives 'making you suffer for ever and ever and ever'," Nichols says heartlessly, pacing up and down.
"Yes," Henriette says, wincing. "I... uh, didn't need reminding of that."
"I felt it'd help you focus. No, I'm not a nice person," the older woman says. "Now, are you fit to pilot or will I have to do it?"
Henriette stretches. Her body still feels weak and limp, but she's just taken direct control of it with her new implants. She tightens her hands around the control yokes, and squeezes. "I can do it," she says. "She... it isn't human any more. It'll be better than she was. Much better." The things that she heard from Major Clarent and Kessler feel like a hand around her heart. All those things about the consequences of upgrading yourself so much you forget what you're losing. She's just seen the end of that path.
"Yes, that is one of the consequences of driving someone into a self-destructive cycle of posthuman optimisation," Catherine agrees. "All hail the wonders of the Computer, mmm?" she adds acidly. "You Iterators are all about self-enhancement, so maybe you thought you'd get our enemies to self-enhance too."
"I got that you're not a nice person. You don't need to remind me of it," Henriette mumbles.
"And by your response to that, I got that you're not very fond of the Computer to put it mildly, despite your implants trying to hide that from me," Nichols says mercilessly. "That's some of the best news I've heard all day. It means your 'brilliant idea' was just the usual rash stupidity of the young, rather than some deep programming implanted in you."
She pauses.
"Right. Got a plan. We... sit back and let it fight the... hah, MUSCOVITE spaceships. That's step one."
"And then we try to persuade it that we're not its enemy?" Henriette asks sceptically, picking her words with extreme care. Catherine clearly doesn't believe the name of 'MUSCOVITE', but as a probably-former Void Engineer there's no way Henriette can let her know that she knows the truth too - although she also thinks Catherine already guesses that Henriette knows. "That won't work."
"Fuck no it won't work," Nichols says. "It's like trying to persuade Venus to keep her knickers on. Just not going to happen. Well, I mean, she doesn't
wear knickers, but you know what I mean. No, we just let it weaken itself and that gives you time to get me onto the
Avellone. Its engines are fucked, but its reactor's still working. We should be able to rig its drive for an asymptomatic shearing dimensional rift collapse. Or to put it in terms an Iterator like you will understand, dimensional science dimensional science dimensional science dimensional science. Then we'll have the ship broadcast some kind of message from you, to lure that thing in close. Then boom goes the drive."
It's quite hard to remember that Nichols is a defector, Henriette considers. She sounds just like any other jackass Engineer.
"And if that doesn't kill it, then we'll have yonder Noo-Woo psychic asshole slip under its even-more-pissed-off radar and torpedo the fuck out of it. The shearing rift should split it wide open and give him a better shot. And if that doesn't work... well, we'll come to that bridge when it comes to it."
Henriette nods and pushes the
Oppenheimer's Light towards the
Avellone. She can see the duel between gods in the background, flashes of blinding light as munitions of unbelievable power are deflected or seduced away from their intended target or otherwise blunted. Swarms of small craft buzz around them, occasionally disappearing in violent spasms of mutual destruction, occasionally turning against their brethren as they are suborned by electronic warfare. Henriette can actually see the difference between the two now-the patient and methodical movements of the Autopolitan swarm, and then the frantic, frenzied strikes of what was once her sister. She can't see who has the edge in this battle. She knows that the paired Autopolitan warships are bad news, but she can't place them. They're complex, almost fragile-seeming collections of parts that shift and alter themselves seemingly on a whim, but her sensors can see the incredible forces holding them together via forcefields and hypertensile connectors. They were pitch-black and nigh-invisible before, but they have become perfectly reflective in response to incoming weaponry, shielding elements replicating and interlocking to create rough ovoids of protection with sensor stalks and weapons systems protruding. There is a small core inside, and Henriette
knows this is the metric-altering computer at the unit's heart, one part mind, one part weapon system, and one part drive.
"Those are Hunter/Killers." Nichols says, as if reading her mind. "High-end Autochthonian autonomous long-duration weapons. Capable of self-repair and self-enhancement, evolving killing machines that are smarter and deadlier than anything anyone else fields. Taking down even one is an accomplishment without using ancient superweapons. I think whatever the enemy is, it's got a fair shot at breaking that record. I've seen HKs duel beings which we might as well call gods, but they might have picked a fight beyond even their capabilities."
Henriette does her best to ignore the feeling that this is all
her fault as she creeps towards the
Avellone, using the constant electromagnetic nimbus from antimatter bombs bursting like raindrops as cover. The Oppenheimer's gauges start creeping towards the red as the sheer side effects of the god-slaying weapons both sides deploy wreak terrible collateral damage, even tens of thousands of kilometers away. The battle has raged for hours and shows no signs of abating.
Nichols sneaks onto the
Avellone piggybacking on a stealth drone. Long range teleportation would possibly get her noticed, she said. Not by any serious weaponry-but by some automated point defense subroutine, some gun with only the firepower to damage the
Oppenheimer's delicate stealth systems that Henriette is still spending incredible effort maintaining. It is fortunate that they were quite far from the scene when Henrietta had gone radical posthuman on them. Otherwise, they might have been noticed from the flickering of stealth. It is even more fortunate that the H/Ks came when they did-otherwise Henrietta might have reviewed its sensor logs and realized what had happened. Henriette understands physics. The physics of saturating space with munitions to kill an invisible assailant are absurd. Maybe Reality Deviants could do it by firing multiplying flaming ghost cannonballs from their space-galleons-but that's Reality Deviant wackiness and Henrietta isn't a Reality Deviant. She's worse.
When your capabilities are so radically beyond the human scale you might as well be called a god, 'absurd' tasks start becoming significantly more doable. And it's her fault.
She did this, Henriette thinks. It's her own fault that her sister is no longer anything that resembles a sister, but this twisted ovoid of sleek machinery and vampiric flesh, this spherical god surrounded by a halo of deadly weapons. Maybe she shouldn't have come. Maybe if she wasn't here things would be better.
Harlan interrupts her reverie. "Explain to me what exactly happened and what your plan is. I've been creeping along signals-silent for the last hour and you clearly knew more than you were letting on."
"That thing out there-I knew it from Moscow. Knew her. She was a lot like me. I pushed her buttons, but I didn't plan on the result."
"I would hope so." Harlan says dryly. "And so you want to..."
"Nichols is out there modifying the
Avellone to self-destruct. We're going to catch the enemy in the drive self-destruct and kill it that way. If that doesn't work, you're going to have to hit it with the chronal torpedoes Nichols has made."
"If she runs?" Harlan asks. "She's a traitor. Even if we think she's useful and don't do anything, we can't trust her and she can't trust us."
"She could have vanished a long time ago, I suspect." Henriette says. "She's here because she wants to be here, and if she hasn't done so, I suspect she's chosen this hill to die on."
"That's a very auspicious way of putting it." Harlan mutters. "I'm a psychic commando, not a
Star Trek captain." Harlan grouses. The worst part about this, for him, is that his contribution is relatively minimal. He's got his psychic powers and the telesthetic amplifier in the QUEST, yes, but the QUEST flies itself. It fights itself. In this form of combat, all he has is his psychokinetic powers, amplified by the vessel-and he can do nothing else. He can't even suggest tactics for it to use. He's never been trained in space combat and his ideas are probably either dumb or obvious. That's ignoring that computers, although inflexible and incapable of unleashing the force that the human mind can, are still faster and more precise-and the QUEST has those minds as well, vitrified and preserved in a way that keeps their psychic abilities useful, just to add insult to injury. All he can do is watch.
The battle starts to edge closer to them as minutes tick by. And then suddenly, Henrietta gets an edge. One of the H/Ks goes into an aggressive posture and unleashes metric-warping homunculus weapons and other devastating munitions, calculating that its foe will emphasize survival over counterattack. It guesses wrong. There is a brief blinding flash. And when it clears, one of the H/Ks is gone. A good 40% of Henrietta's body is gone, and a similar proportion of her orbital weapons have vanished in the H/K's assault.
Henriette notices a communique from Nichols, sent by the thin fiberoptic cable the drone has laid. It's absurd, Henriette thinks. Her sister has become a godlike being with weapons that have created
lesions in space-literal wounds in the fabric of space and time. She is using towed cables like some sort of... Cold War-era submarine captain. Ugh.
"The drive is ready for directional overload and equipped for remote detonation." Nichols has sent. "Returning to vessel."
"So." Nichols says, when she makes it back to the
Oppenheimer's bridge. "Looks like she's winning this fight. Or what's left of her." The tone of voice she uses is similar to how a sleeper might discuss a basketball game. "You've done more damage to Threat Null than a squadron of
Qui La Machinae would have. No matter that the godling is going to win, the Autopolitans will spend a lot of their time hunting down this new rogue god, and it's going to be diminished by the fight. It's a personal affront to them, even if they pretend they're logical robots with no annoying human emotions. Congratulations."
Henriette looks at Nichols, unsure if she's giving praise or criticism. The next sentence Nichols says erases all doubts.
"Of course, there's still the minor problem that it'll have more than enough power and ability to hunt us down, destroy this ship, and torture us forever like we were in a Harlan Ellison novel. But that's just a minor issue, easily fixed. If we had a small fleet of warships, for example... or maybe if it didn't have as one of its driving goals the thought of committing unspeakable tortures on you. That'd probably mean we could just vanish here and not worry about it, making it even more of a problem for the Autopolitans. But you know, you can't have everything you want."
Henriette shrinks in her seat and wishes she had chosen some augmentations that would have let her disappear. A cloaking device or chameleon skin. Just so she could vanish from sight now instead of hearing Nichols praise her. "Why are you telling me this?"
"So you know what the consequences of even small actions can be, in the Void. And more importantly-so you understand why I'm here. I predicted you'd be useful assets in the fight against Threat Null. I suppose I guessed pretty well."
"I already know the Void is a dangerous place." Henriette insists quietly. She turns the
Oppenheimer around and prepares to leave the kill radius. "I knew we wouldn't be able to outfight the mothership so I tried to give it a problem-"
"And you did. And it didn't work." Nichols continues mercilessly, as the
Oppenheimer exits the kill radius of the improvised weapon. "This isn't school anymore. You don't get a pat on the head for trying, and the second place prize is a severe case of 'dead.' Things in the Void don't
happen in the same way they do on Earth. It's an entirely different environment with entirely different rules."
Henriette sighs and ignores Nichols. Inwardly, she feels a bit proud at not rising to the bait. "We're out of the blast radius. What's your plan then?"
***
"You know where she is." Elsa repeats. "I should have asked." Elsa pulls her tablet out and runs another scan of the station just like before-and it comes up empty. No Jamelia Belltower. She can't find Jamelia Belltower on the station in realspace, and she's looked multiple times. So Jamelia has to be somewhere else. Where Nichols took her-that'd be Ensemble Space, wouldn't it? The not-quite real realm that they taught her about in Applied Dimensional Science classes. The realm which the NWO referred to as the Collective Unconscious. "How the hell am I going to explain this to that big dumb Exojock?" She thinks out loud, as she makes an intercom call. "Kessler. I need you at the transporter room next to the fore restrooms. Immediately. We need to get Jamelia Belltower and I don't have time to explain."
"Should I bring friends?" Kessler asks.
"It'd probably be best if you didn't." Elsa admits. "I think this might be better if we do this fast and light." Besides, it means she has to explain herself to fewer people. Fewer people who might object. Who might become loose ends. She doesn't want to see any of them disappeared because of security reasons. "Bring a couple of the White Towers, though. They might be useful." She considers equipment. The place Not-Jamelia was in looked like a place where power armored soldiers wouldn't blend in-and sometimes getting the wrong sort of attention could be deadly. "Bring Alansons and something to hide them other. Let's try not to instantly get noticed." She takes her jacket off, wearing only the armor undersuit, and starts to put on one of the Alansons. It's a complex process, compared to the 'wriggle in and power up' of the more advanced Haldemans. First the artificial muscle goes on, thick tight-fitting sleeves around her arms and legs and a vest for her core-silicone muscle fibers, interwoven with anti-ballistic mesh to protect against anything that might bypass the armor plates. Gloves go next, ballistic-fiber and myomer gloves which provide full dexterity and protection against heavy handgun rounds and shrapnel with moderate strength enhancement. The exoskeleton clips on after that, the slim metal frame attaching to the disclike connectors on these sleeves. Only then do the armor plates fit over it, thin nanocomposite shells that can defend against most small arms ammunition and possibly stop a shot from an antimateriel rifle or two. There's a chest and back plate, upper and lower arm guards, thigh protectors, shin and calf protectors, and finally the groin protector-something that people joke about but can save your life against a landmine or a unlucky hand grenade. The helmet she leaves off-her skull is fairly well-armored, its sensors are actually worse than her body's, and it's harder to blend in with a helmet on than without.
"Understood." Kessler sends back.
"We look like Matrix rejects." Elsa says when Kessler comes in, as she throws a sweater, pants, and a long coat over her Alanson. She watches the four White Towers, already suited up, get into the baggy overalls and other loose clothing Kessler has provided them. It's low-profile power armor, intended specifically for this sort of operation. "Well, we do. They look like fashion disasters." She's going to be using HVAP or QT rounds from standard firearms. "I just need some tight black leather and we'll be ready to shoot up an office building and get chased by black suited agents."
"These were perfectly fine fashions." Kessler ignores the rest of her commentary in favor of hiding a light machine gun in a suitcase, with blacktip ammunition-high explosive armor piercing. Probably, Elsa thinks, because he doesn't know what
The Matrix is. Or he thinks it's a movie about a mathematical concept. The coat he's wearing isn't the coat he wore to Moscow. For one, it's dark gray instead of brown. For two, it seems to have a limited amount of space, which is why he needs the suitcase. Underneath it is a small museum worth of firearms.
"Yes." Elsa concedes. "In the nineties. Which were the worst decade."
"What was so bad about the nineties?" Kessler asks.
"Oh, Russia suffering economic collapse, the Technocracy being the Technocracy, vampires everywhere, terrible fashion, and really bad comic books." Elsa ticks off as she configures the transporter to send them into Ensemble Space. "The worst decade. Set up all the bad shit that happened in the 21st century."
"Look, it was better than the 80s." Kessler retorts. The White Towers stare blankly at the argument. "At least the fashion was."
"Fine. The fashion was better. That still leaves everything else. And the transporter is online. Ready?"
"Beam us down, Scotty." Kessler says, grinning. "Always wanted to say that."
The cramped room vanishes, and they are in the middle of what seems like a disaster movie. The godling that was an Autopolitan mothership is still there, blocking out the
WOO, but it is now surrounded by other ships assaulting it. Elsa can see TIE fighters and X-Wings and the
Nostromo and Star Destroyers joining the fray on the side of the Autopolitan H/Ks. Even here, its strength is sufficient to warp reality around it.
Tanks and soldiers pass her by. Some of them are in black and white, wearing 50s US Army fatigues. Others are in full color and carrying current-era Sleeper gear. There are those futuristic ones, in white or black body armor, with impractical-seeming future weapons. Yet others wear British uniforms of the 18th century, or the Union Army's uniforms from the 19th, or World War II fatigues, or Vietnam-era flak jackets. There's even people with facewraps and AKs and RPGs lining up here, the old plots forgotten as a new one weaves. They're the defenders of Hollywood, Elsa guesses. Some sort of antibody in Ensemble space. She looks over the horizon. In the middle of an inexplicable ocean, next to a beach, a giant spiderlike
thing, sparse and angular lines glowing red with rage, duels with a massive giant robot and a large dinosaur. Surfing movie characters run around screaming at the sight. She thinks she sees the characters from
Baywatch there as well, doing their best to rescue swimmers from the maelstrom.
"I know this might be a little confusing," Elsa starts, "We're not quite in the same place as we were. This is where Jamelia
is right now, though, and we need to find her before whatever is out there finds her first. Because they're almost certainly looking."
"So you took me to visit a psychic dream realm to get my boss back." Kessler says, neatly undercutting Elsa's explanation. "Got it. Where do we look?"
"Fucking Nichols." Elsa mutters under her breath. "Could it hurt to be wrong at least once?" She waits for a heartbeat, and Kessler doesn't respond. Nodding at him, she starts to set up a wide-area scan. "She's working here, apparently thinks she's in her twenties and a cafe waitress. Let me check." She's not in the same place-inertial navigation is useless. If inertial navigation would have helped. Elsa scans the place, methodically taking over the cameras everywhere-it's Hollywood, after all,
everything is filmed-learns where it is. "About 10 kilometers northeast. Doesn't look like they're sending anything yet."
"Let's go." Kessler says. "Double-time. Lead the way, Lieutenant."
"All right. Something something Oscar Mike something something Stay Frosty." Elsa jokes. "Damn I've always wanted to say that."
"Er?" Kessler asks.
"It's 2 decades ahead of your time, old man." Elsa says. "Let's move. Walking pace, though. Try not to look too much like a military formation." It's hard concentrating on the mission when there's just so much happening around you and so much time to think. Wondering what's happening on board the Oppenheimer's Light. Feeling much like it's Moscow again-fighting an important battle of her own while gods fight in the background. But this time-one of the gods isn't on their side. They don't have anything like that. Whichever of the H/Ks or the MUSCOVITE commander win-they're basically fucked. She watches one of the MUSCOVITE-derived things, a fat flying insectoid with too many long thin legs, land on one of the Hollywood defender contingents. Elsa realizes almost immediately that those aren't legs, they're arms, and the machine is a processor intended to refuel the enemy.
It fails as salvo after salvo of bombs and missiles from orbiting F-35s and F-18s and WWII planes finally bring it down, crashing into the beach. She can't figure out who's winning this fight. It seems to be an eternal stalemate, milked for more and more drama. As she gets farther and farther away from the war, it's hard to even remember it was happening. Elsa strides through the streets of New York and Los Angeles and other, more exotic, cities, all fused into a single confusing roadmap as she thinks about how they'll escape after finding Jamelia. Romantic comedies and comedies and criminal procedurals and dramas play out around her, and she gives them no heed. Her life has been more than exciting enough.
About a block out, Elsa signals for the team to stop. "Okay, this is going to be a little harder than I thought. There's a complication."
"Yeah." Kessler agrees. "This is going to be a problem. We need a plan of attack."
___________________________________________________________
Lost In Hollywood, Part 1:
You're approaching Cemal's, the cafe which Illiyeen works at. However, there is a complication. That complication is...
[ ] Elsa's just spotted a big Austrian man going into the cafe-and someone who looks like a young Michael Biehn doing the same. This might be a
minor problem.
[ ] The cafe is surrounded by black SUVs, snipers, and suited government agents.
[ ] There's a hostage situation in the cafe, which is cordoned off by police tape and SWAT vans. The hostage takers are:
[ ] Professional terrorists
[ ] Supervillains
[ ] Illiyeen's not there. The other waitresses said she was taken away by the police and a suited man with shades.
[ ] Write-in.
Lost In Hollywood, Part 2:
How does the team of Kessler, Elsa, and 4 White Tower units
solve this problem? They have low profile power armor but they also only have regular guns, even if they do have special ammunition in spades. And by special ammunition I mean foci for magic.
[ ] Write-in
Lost In Hollywood, Part 3:
So, Henrietta has started deploying massive robot armies and has done her Moscow thing and taken over the robots in the region. The Agency is pointing the Residents at you, who are attacking you with movie characters. What's your escape plan after you grab Illyeen? In which direction do you run?
[ ] Towards an inland jungle warzone, full of chaos (Leads to The Killing Grounds, the Realm of war without end)
[ ] A run-down high-tech city that makes you incredibly uncomfortable. (Leads to Dystopia, the Realm of pessimism about the future)
[ ] Through the streets of American cities, being chased by shady black-suited people and black vans. (Leads to the Omega State, the Realm of strong governance)
[ ] Towards where singular heroes are trickling in-superheroes, war heroes, maverick scientists, you know the types. (Leads to Fountainhead, the Realm of Great Men)
[ ] Towards Henrietta (leads to Planet Hollywood and directly out)
[ ] Write-in
The Event Horizon:
So the fight is not going well for the combined Resident/Autopolitan forces. Possibly because she is literally eating the Resident forces and turning them against their former masters.
[ ] Detonate the
Avellone now, with one of the H/Ks gone and Henrietta wounded. Don't risk one of the two sides figuring out the gambit.
[ ] Detonate it later. She's in the effective range but it's not nearly close enough.
[ ] Try to lure her in closer.
[ ] Follow up the detonation with a chrono torpedo strike.
[ ] Write-in.
