[x] Option 4: "I think we should head for Haraway. That's the nearest major world with enough military potential to stop that Crown of Thorns, if its still on us." Luyu says, bluntly. "Also, we could get Stella into a medical facility there, and Mirareki can talk to her friends about this." The other her drinks some coffee. "And I can get my full complement of bodies."
"I think Luyu's right," you say. "We should get back to civilization for a little while." You rub your eyes. "That was extremely stressful, and I want to find out exactly what's going on in my head. No offence, Atet, but I think that probably needs a specialist facility."
"Oh we have those here." Atet says. "But all the staff but me are dead. I–" she considers. "Actually, what are we going to do with them?"
"Resurrecting a hundred exiles or nyx cultists doesn't sound too safe," Reizay says.
"I agree." Luyu. "We should find the exile's stacks and send them to one of the main Chrysanthemum or Rose hubs in this area. That way they won't end up with major dislocation, but they won't be able to immediately try to take over the ship." She sighs. "Of course that'll mean people know that we have the Nyx's Daughter and will want to know what happened, but that can't be helped."
"I think it's good actually." Mirareki says. Luyu looks at her and raises an eyebrow. "I know that Firewatch has a reputation for keeping secrets but I'm not sure that's a good idea here. It's obvious this was a major conspiracy, and they're dealing with unknown aliens who can attack posthumans. That's something that needs a committee to deal with. It requires general knowledge in the population. A Deep Ship getting jacked is a good way to make people interested."
Luyu sighs. "Okay but like, don't do some article where you fess up that we're nine strong. That's just asking for us to have a ton of people to try to grab this thing."
"This isn't my first ball game, Luyu." Mirareki says. "Anyhow, we should try resurrecting one of the people operating that hospital. That's the easiest way to figure out what they were doing."
"Alright." Luyu says. "Can the rest of you take that? I want to go and actually physically check that all the diplomat is contained and there are no other Quiet leakers, and I need Reizay to be my operator."
Atet looks incredibly unhappy at this idea, but before you can say something Minetta cuts in, to her relief. "If you and Stella wouldn't mind doing that Mirareki, I'd like to take the doctor around to locate everyone's queue. We're not sure if all the dead entered the ship's backups."
"Okay. You and me, Stella," says Mirareki. She seems to prefer this anyway. You nod and follow her down.
*****
The ship's self repair system has more or less fixed the internal transit system, so you ride the train down to the hospital level. Mirareki is obviously bothered by something on the way down, and when you get close broaches the question: "Is it okay that we're going back to that hospital?"
"It's fine. It was bad, but I'm not going to freak out just from being there."
"Sorry." She laughs, awkwardly. "I'm not really good with people like that. I mostly work alone. It's easier to talk to them via essays and videos."
"What do you think Firewatch will do when we alert them to all this?"
"Probably send a cell out to help investigate." Mirareki says. "I'll poke some people I know about it. I want to figure out whether or not I'm my original or not too. The last thing I remember before all this was making a spare backup of my queue in my hotel room."
"Honestly I wish I remembered even that much."
"You don't have anything at all?"
"As I said, just fragments." You shrug. "Some things the posthuman said, but not everything she said made sense. I don't know. I don't want to theorise too hard and be disappointed." You glance over at her and find her eyes are watching you with more than just concern. "By the way, the Observatory. You said it was a warzone?"
"Yeah. Honestly Luyu is probably right, we should prep up before we head there." She shrugs. "The Observatory is on Scythia, one of the first planets we found during colonization, just beyond the edge of the paradise zone. it was built by posthumans with human assistance way back– well the theory is it was built in the early days of Exile. But it never worked.. It was a curiosity until about five years ago when there was an attempt to reactivate it by building a posthuman around it with modern techniques. It went wrong somehow, and now fragments of it are fighting. That's what Luyu meant by Godspawn earlier - the other common name for them is Nephilim. Rogue parts of a posthuman that didn't cohere or split itself up. The locals and various military forces are trying to clear it up but it's hard fighting, and the place has attracted a lot of hangers on, River mercenaries, Folders, stuff like that."
"What are Folders?"
"They're a kind of cyborg. They're Gaian derived, not aliens. They believe certain cryptographic forms are I guess beautiful would be the right word. They value them for reasons nobody understands anymore in the same way humans value beauty. They tend to appropriate a lot of local resources, and can get violent if not given them."
The car swings into the station and locks down with a click and you walk down the wrecked street to the hospital. A procession of automata is clearing up the debris, the rubble and the machines and the bodies.
"What are we going to do with all this space?" Mirareki asks.
"No idea."
You enter the hospital and quickly find that your enemy had a contingency plan for this.
*****
"Yeah. It's just the same." Mirareki kneels by the body and then whistles for the medical bots to move to it back in the bag. "None of them have conventional queues. Just uplinks."
The hospital is less spooky now. Robots have put the two parts of the diplomat in large bags and transferred the motile down to the morgue. The immotile is covered in a set of bags that hang over it like dust sheets over furniture in a closed up house. It looks ridiculous, like a cartoon ghost. The morgue bots wait to one side, ready to transfer the bodies here as soon as you've checked them all.
So far, no joy. There were twenty staff in the hospital. All of them have been modified. Rather than queues, each has a slim antenna built up the computronium of her spine, meant to send her mindstate elsewhere. A bit of technical checking has pinged the hospital's main server, a huge, armoured black box set up in a sealed isolation frame marked with warning lights that threaten to blow the whole thing if it's improperly opened. Mirareki looked at it for ten minutes, then declared it probably unbreachable physically. You were hoping that at least one of the bodies would have a key.
"Reizay, can you unlock this?"
"No way." Reizay pops up on an AR screen, side angle. "Whoever locked this up had deep knowledge of infosecurity and the resources to deploy it. No way to break it without a quality ICE Breaker and an acausal decryption rig, and the one here is trashed. I checked already. If Stella's hitchhiker was awake she might be able to unlock it but the only way we're getting in otherwise is with a password."
"I guess we can just look for that." Mirareki sighs.
"Sure, good luck," says Reizay. "Now, do you mind? I'm checking the computers with Juketta. Apparently she has a friend who she thinks might appreciate them."
"Okay. Over and out."
*****
With the sweep done, you wave and head off to find some quarters. It's almost hard to tell your own preferences, since you remember so little. There's caverns of unused space on the ship. You can get off randomly at a station, and most likely find an area that wasn't previously inhabited, an empty town of tucked in chairs and gleaming countertops kept in shape by small robots that will be just as glad to help you out. You walk through various places, looking over the ancient, minimalist finery, and marvel at the use of space. Every part of the ship is made to seem huge and echoing, meant to signal just what a huge accomplishment it is to have such a place.
You immediately decide you're going to find a ship segment that's behind at least one layer of bulkhead from any Diplomat infection. Luyu is still confirming they're all sealed in, but so far none of the ship's internals or guard machines have detected any of them moving.
As you travel you look over more of the Deep Ship's lore. Apparently there's supposed to be a second, smaller hull on the ship's left side, a dock and industrial pod. This seems to be currently missing, though growing a replacement should only be a matter of a few months of effort in a metal rich system, or persuading some local committee to restore the ship to its historic configuration. The wall on that side is almost clear adiamond, giving a easy view into the grey of hyperspace, but allowing ship traffic in to be seen if the docking pod is attached.
You decide you should deliberately pick an apartment rather than just grabbing one at random. That will tell you something about the kind of person you are.
[ ] Take one of the smart and spacious apartments facing the industrial dock, where you can stare into the void and feel the nostalgic melancholy of infinity.
[ ] Take a nice practical apartment near the bridge. There's a suite of rooms that was probably meant for the ship's command crew.
[ ] The ship is so empty that just using an apartment almost seems wasteful. Claim an entire area around one of the less used stations as your own, rather than one of the purpose built single living spaces.
[ ] Don't pick. Get together some necessities and a carry bot and wander the ship so you can see every (safe) part of it.
*****
FTL, Aletta tells you as you sit watch together with Reizay in the command centre, works on an inverse principle of size. This has defined much about travel and warfare. Over long distances, large vehicles are faster. Over short distances small craft can move almost instantly. This has lead to a diversity of designs for different roles, from behemoths like the Deep Ship to FTL strike craft and gunships that dominate close battle spaces and planetary assaults.
"Can the system defence really stop a Macrophage?" Reizay asks.
Juketta is the one in the driving seat now. "In most historical cases that's been the case. There are ways that the Posthumans can kill lots of people of course, but they have to prepare specially and those preparations are fairly obvious."
The computer beeps as it reaches the correct coordinates and there's a flicker of motion as space bursts back into being. You're in the Haraway system now, a binary star at the edge of the Paradise zone with half a dozen inhabited planets and moons. The major port in the system is Haraway Station, a huge orbital grid around Haraway 1-3, Haraway Prime or just 'Haraway' in local parlance.
You've dropped into a standard large ship approach corridor for that. More usually ships the size of the Deep Ship would stay back out, but with the Crown of Thorns potentially still on your tailyou decided to bring the ship in. The Deep Ship is by far the longest vessel in the system, dwarfing even the kilometer plus lengths of heavy long range haulers and the pair of system defence force super carriers doing exercises in the outer system. Only the massive laser star defence stations around Haraway 1-3, and some of the static habitats are larger.
The Deep Ship's tactical systems highlight defences and military assets across the system. Laser star stations hanging above the planet like giant jellyfish, orbital tethers hanging down to great heat sinks in the world's oceans. Shoals of system defence pods, sensory stations that provide tracking for distant skip missile and starwisp launchers, and over sixty major space combatants at various points across the system. A ring of firepower that can kill anything hostile that enters the system. Proof that this is frontier space. A place that may see combat against hostile forces at any time.
It's reassuring. Relaxing.
Ahead is a parking swarm of large vessels, and a continual flicker of FTL transits as smaller drop ships and lighters unload them into the orbital ring and the planet below.
You should change. Minetta had suggested you find something more permanent to wear than a succession of anonymous spraysuits; like your apartment it might help you remember, or create, more sense of yourself.
The others have settled by now into something they find comfortable, or at least familiar. The Ettas have changed into the traditional garb of an eternalist priestess, a full length robe that falls as a series of perfect geometries in folds and cutouts across her body, picked out with lines of everglow and a precise array regalia of jewellery at the edges. Reizay has synthesised a short white dress with a pleated skirt and an odd antique-maritime collar that carefully frames the data code under her throat.
Atet has kept wearing medical catsuits of the kind you found her in, but what's eyecatching is that she's also not removed the crystalline mask the diplomat fused over her eyes. She's avoided the topic, at least around you. Mirareki has shorts and an aquamarine crop top over a nearly transparent hazard sleeve. Only Luyu hasn't really adopted a look besides what the ship decants by default. You thought she might just not care if it's noncombat, but she says she's not interested unless it gives her some kind of new problem to solve and claims she once spent six months working for a fashion publication.
None of this solves your own problem, as you stand among the mannequins in a disused showroom watching the approach on projection and consider the situation. The air on Haraway Prime is hot and muggy. It's mostly rainforest at .9 standard gravity. The climate is warm but very rainy across most of the settled band. Even if it was freezing cold or burning hot you could walk around naked in with your enhancements and a defence aura and not have a problem with temperature regulation. But you don't plan to do that.
The room's fashion assistant helpfully informs you that it's common to wear an augmented reality cosmetic, called a glam, over the top of your normal outfit, so you should also decide whether to do it.
Fashion options
[ ] Dress like a local: a simple two white piece and a dark, short flared rain poncho with a hood and a lot of pockets. Add a pair of waterproofed thighhighs in case of puddles.
[ ] Go for a practical, tactical look and just wear a tac-suit and carrier. But walking around a normal planet in combat gear might attract the wrong kind of attention.
[ ] Go full on for extravagant style and wear a new living gown made out of flowering plants, in just this season.
[ ] A relatively culturally neutral smart-casual catsuit in deep red, with a bit of personality in its mid-rise heels sculpted like abstracted wings.
AR option
[ ] Basic lighting and cosmetic enhancements: Doesn't change your outfit's look but makes sure you're always attractively lit.
[ ] Angelic Halo: Add wings of light and a halo. Popular with party goers but too eye-catching for covert ops.
[ ] Flattery: removes the extra bulk in an outfit from things like pockets and load carrying systems to project an image of pleasing lines.
[ ] Complexity: Adds a bunch of augmented reality parts to your outfit, allowing for fanciful capes, gravity defying sleeve twists and long trains without compromising freedom of movement
You finish dressing and strike a few poses in front of the mirror, summoning more subscreens to check yourself out from the back. You're halfway through reconstructing your hair with a swarm of little drones when a screen pops up in the air. It's Atet. Accepting the call shows her in one of the ship's surgical bays, next to a dead quiet mostly obscured by a filter that probably means its guts are still open. The others are also in the call.
"Hey." She says, uneasily, then breaks off to check something in the air.
"Medician?" Mirareki prompts when she doesn't continue. She's in a bathrobe, and a steaming hot spring stands behind her. "Why are you calling?"
"I was just checking the Quiet," Atet says. "Uh, doing an autopsy, I mean. I wanted to find out what Stella's possessor did to them, but I found something else. They have DNA. With an ATGC base-pair system, and mitochondria."
"You think they're based on terrestrial life? Some Godspawn or a Garden bioweapon?" asks Luyu.
"No. It's not Garden DNA," Atet shakes her head. "We have databases of all the exile lines. I can't be sure until I've done a more thorough analysis given how heavily engineered they are, but the earliest common ancestor is human, pre-exile. These creatures, they've come from what we left behind."
