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[X] EXEC.TRAWL

"I don't want to continue this any longer. If we can get this resolved, maybe we can get to Hera before my primary finishes her business. Or just go lie on a beach somewhere." You look over to where Alex is appearing to you. "Can you handle this?"

She smiles. She's playing some trick with your stereo vision, your brain can't decide how far away the woman its looking at is. Then her voice sounds over the channel. <<Of course. Reizay, I'm going to send you some tools. You will be my eyes and my knight in this matter. It's likely the enemy will have deployed some countermeasures in the network to try to attack me. You will find and defeat those countermeasures so I can trawl the whole system.>>

<<Your knight!>> Reizay says, nearly hyperventilating. <<Yes of course.>> There's a pause. <<These are amazing. The kind of tools only the inner cloister has access to back home.>>

<<Succeed and I'll show you how to hide from them.>>

Reizay smiles, then realises she's not supposed to want to hide from the Enclosing Lady and schools her face back to a more professional blankness. For a moment you sit and wait, watching as Reizay runs her network checks and rechecks. "Got it." she says after a moment. <<They'd planted some kind of hmm. I'm not sure what it is. Some kind of Diplomat-derived pattern in the system. I've triple checked it, but there's nothing else that causes the false network to fragment.>>

"The Diplomat is well named." Alex tells you. "It cuts apart and decoheres the networks it interacts with. Always a good approach to take in negotiations. I've developed a false network that can bait its seduction. A minimum viable victim. If it fragments then the countermeasure can be found and isolated."

<<Alright. I've got it.>> Reizay says. <<All clear.>>

Alex leans forward and kisses you. Her other hand rests on your thighs, then pushes between them. You feel a rush of heat, and some shock. It takes you a moment to realise that it's not a hot flush but rather your system putting out work heat. Your nerves are ablaze with her computation; your system vents open across your interface meridians and paints the air with a pattern of heat haze.

Alex withdraws, smirking. You're intensely aware that Luyu is in the room with you and seeing only one side of this. She's watching with some interest. "We're in company." You mutter.

"Playing with your nerves is fun." Alex's hand makes a slow circle on your stomach, touching each overheated meridian "When we get somewhere safe you should let me fully possess you for a while. You'd enjoy that, wouldn't you? Anyhow, we've got the traitor."

She flickers up a report. Well written and authoritative, exposing guilt. You've seen the subject before, on the Echo Chamber submarine. The one who's fashionably Chrysanthe-world monochrome, their third in command. The report catalogues a set of subtle evidence: microscopic signs of security feed editing, sudden dead spots in external surveillance, and highlighted sections of security logs. None of them alone would be enough to prove anything, but combined, they're damning.

"Scrape?" You bring the channel back up and send the results over.

"Yeah. I'm here." She says. You can see from her face she's distracted and in motion. She frowns, showing teeth. "Fuck."

"What's going on over there?"

"I think she's got out. We just had a bunch of our combat inorganics go rogue." She swings the view around to show a squad of Echo Chamber troops clearing through the sub ahead of her. "She's probably noticed what was happening and ghosted us."

"She can't just be running if she took a squadron of inorganics." This is bad. A significant hostile force, unaccounted for at a dangerous moment. "How much did she take vs. leave to cover getting out?"

"About a squad is missing. And I've got a pretty good idea where she's gone." Scrape looks like she's bitten into something sour. "Come over. Word of honour that no harm will come to you and all that, but I think we need to cooperate on this."

You glance at Luyu, who's already picking up her guns. The two of you head out of the Pavilion and past Mirareki and your silent watchers, then along the passage and into the Echo Chamber submarine hanger. They have their own pavilion set up near the sub, but the bay seems more or less in chaos. Floodlights illuminate a whole team outside, weapons ready, checking the bay with their goggles and some kind of hand carry sensors. Drones are crawling everywhere.

"Yo." One of the team outside says with a wave. "The raid leader wants to see you inside. Go straight in."

You pass them and head into the pavilion. There's a security checkpoint, which doesn't make any issue of your guns, then into a command room filled with a dozen Echo Chamber operatives and Scrape. It's a unremarkable version of such a space, with only a few decorative touches that don't detract from its basic sleekness. Not a shrine or a living plant in sight. The meeting is using augmented reality only, and a map of the city pops in as you're integrated with the network.

More ominously, the Chrysanthe woman is standing beside her. Both you and Luyu go for your guns but Scrape puts up a hand. "Easy, Easy." she says. "This isn't the same version."

"Just how much do you remember, Deianeira?" Scrape asks her.

"Enough to beat out integrity sampling obviously." She smiles bitterly. "You could have booted me for an interview and I wouldn't have noticed. But now you tell me I had a mind parasite and it's obvious."

"Fucking infiltrator software." Scarpe looks up at you. "So yeah. I think I know where our doppelganger has gone too."

"Oh, I get it," says Luyu. "Parasite personality? On you guys too? What a bunch of freaks." Luyu says.

"You have your clones on ice?"

"Yeah. We're not cheap." Deianeira glares at her.

Scrape laughs. "Honestly, using a personality infiltrator on us is the most Firewatch thing they've done so far." She shrugs. "Anyhow, she set off some contingency. She had some kind of virus that cut into the control for our combat inorganics. Sent some beserk, got others with her, and booked it out of the aft bay. My concern is what I found in her access logs. She was running solo sim programs on an infiltration mission against one of the installations in this city. Specifically, the main generator plant."

"When you say infiltration, you mean–"

"I mean she's going to try to blow up one of the city's main power generators and flood the area with heat and radiation, yes. If she does it, then that will kill any chance of a negotiated settlement here. We'll have attacked them, and a lot of them might be really dead and I'm not sure they can even catch her."

"Have you warned them yet?"

"Obviously." She laughs. "Using your translator even. They're giving us blank incomprehension. She was cooperating with them up until a little while ago and I think she's fed them some kind of pretty tale."

"You know her entry points and stuff from the sim logs though." Luyu says. "We can get her if we can get out in front."

"How do we get there ahead of her? She's got a head start and it's likely the Nereidi will impede us."

"Oh that's easy." Luyu looks over at you. "Your friend Second can take us, right?"


There are eleven of you in all, each loaded down with equipment. Maybe less than you actually need. No river weapons but instead specially modified low signature carbines, stealthy drone hives and combat inorganics.

All four Luyus and you make up one side of the contingent. On the other, Scrape and Deianeira and four Echo Chamber veterans. You're concerned she might still be infected but scans of her body show nothing. You're assembled in the back bay of the Echo Chamber Submarine, doing final preparations. Support personnel move around the bay making final checks on your equipment.

There's been almost no time to prepare this mission, and you've had only the most cursory briefing and chance to sim the mission first. Fortunately, it seems like both Luyu and the Echos have been studying the structure in question in their own time, as if they were planning to sabotage it. You'd expect this from the Echos, but for Luyu you guess she simply didn't have much to do and got very bored.

The generator is under a brassy bell shape whose smooth mathematical perfection hides the equally mathematical frenzy of the fractal interior. Carefully distributed masses wound round with passages to communicate matter and energy and control. You don't know how it works. Some kind of gravity-wave resonator, what your memories held to still be an entirely theoretical technology among meso-intellects. Reizay claims the Closed Dyson has several, but she's never seen one.

"Here." Scrape hands you a set of the Echo Chamber goggles. "You trust us enough to let us put nano in you?"

"No." You pull them on. "But I think I've got enough data bus that they can work with my sensorium."

"I'll bet." Scrape laughs. You check the goggles and Alex gives you the thumbs up as she connects them. The room picks itself out in perfect clarity as the goggles suck in information. The sensation is a little wrenching for a moment before you adjust to it. Satisfied, you remove the goggles and push them into a pressure sealed pocket on the modified deep sea boarding shell you'll be using for the approach.

"Alright." Deianeira says. "Last thing. Our target is another version of me, but don't hesitate. She's hijacked five ways from feastday. If we get a queue recovery, that's a bonus, but the objective is to stop her."

"Don't worry Dei. We don't like you that much." Sniggers pass around the conflict specialists. Deinaneira flattens her lips.

"What about radiation?" One of the others asks. "If we're ditching the shells aren't we vulnerable?"

"We're all expendable on this one." Scrape says. "This is our mess to clean up. But unless you fall into the reactor core you shouldn't take too much damage. It's some kind of gravity furnace, not a nuclear or spin-state plant." You and the Luyus are also expendable, implicitly, but you suppose you're really not her responsibility. The Communion can carry through the negotiations and get Echo Chamber what they want for the Mockmaids.

"Everyone ready?" The drop master asks. The Echoes give a thumbs up in addition to electronic ready signals. The master steps over to the force field bubble on one side and salutes. The bay opens and you fall out into the darkness of the ocean below.

You wish you had the goggles for this part. It's dark down here. Realistically you can still see fine with a combination of the shell's passives and the tight line from the big array on the sub's keel, but it seems a let down after the perfect clarity of the combat eyes.

The lights of the city glimmer in the murk and flicker out one by one as something moves in front of them. A leviathan sea-creature hauling a mass of cargo pods. The currents of the city traffic coil around it and peel off in sprays of turbulence. With the traffic control so busy, Second Level can hopefully make it in easily to collect you and pull you to the reactor. If she can't make it things could get hot and bright.

And then you see the familiar shape of a worm moving in below. A blob of white marks the top, the recognition code. You jet down and grab onto the side of the pod. <<I am in position.>> Second Level signals. <<I have also moved to try to alert others of the danger.>>

That could make things more complex for you, but you can't exactly blame them. <<Confirmed. We'll be careful. Stay in touch.>>

As you drop, you begin to run a team sim, thinking back to the quick brief you had before.

Your plan was to drop near the target and then infiltrate using an adaption of the Echo Chamber infiltration protocol. The giant bell shape of the reactor is relatively lightly crewed by the Nereidi, mostly run by automation, both mechanical and living. The flux of radiation from the inside allows you to get a good look at its structure.

At the top, above the reactor are a set of mostly empty living areas for crews, perhaps in the event of needing a surge of personnel, with an entrance that could be used to infiltrate. But despite its convenience, this area was down selected on Echo Chamber's planning because while it's on a skeleton crew, it is occupied which threatens both exposing the operation and endangering Nereidi civilians.

There are three possible entrances in the bottom. First, the reserve cooling ducts which Echo Chamber believes is the best route, at least as long as the reactor doesn't suddenly start heat venting, which it might. Second is the maintenance hatch they previously identified as a good way in, which is likely what the infiltrator will use, and thus boobytrap. Alternatively you could go in through the cooling water inflow system, but that will require you to navigate the pump machinery.

Once inside, there were a few options. First, you could move silently to the reactor room and attempt to intercept the infiltrator at her likely destination. This assumes however she's taking the same echo chamber plan. Second, you could deploy autonomous drones throughout the facility and have one alert you when it finds the target. This of course raises the problem of if the drone is eliminated.

Finally you could risk openly taking information superiority across the facility by flooding it with a proper drone screen… and possibly get found out.

The final option here is to call on the help of the Blues that you have and get a guide through the facility and access to local surveillance. This however opens you to problems if the the Blues have any infiltrators or leaks inside them.

Between you, Luyu, and the Echo Chamber experts, you decided to:

Approach:
[ ] Enter the structure via the previously identified maintenance hatch that Echo Chamber identified as their best entry point, and hope that the Infiltrator hasn't got their and laid a boobytrap.
[ ] Enter via the reserve cooling ducts which Echo Chamber identified as a secondary possibility and hope the reactor doesn't get to hot all of a sudden.
[ ] Enter via the seemingly unoccupied crew areas at the structure's top and hope to bypass the crews with or without blue cooperation.
[ ] Enter through the external cooling water inflows (takes you into a dangerous part of the machine)

Execution:
[ ] Move to the reactor control room quickly without deploying a drone screen and hope the infiltrator pursues the plan Echo Chamber had prepped for sabotage (low risk of detection, high risk of missing the infiltrator)
[ ] Deploy autonomous drones to hunt them down even if it risks them taking the drone out. (medium risk of detection, medium risk of missing the infiltrator)
[ ] Deploy a full drone screen to guarantee you find the target even if it risks detection by the Nereidi.
[ ] Use your contact with Second and the Blues to get a guide into the facility (risky if the Blues are infiltrated or unsecure in any way, but a major intelligence and infiltration advantage otherwise)

FFFF timeline
Ante Flore (A.F., AF)
Post Flore (P.F., PF)

[X] Enter via the seemingly unoccupied crew areas at the structure's top and hope to bypass the crews with or without blue cooperation.
[X] Use your contact with Second and the Blues to get a guide into the facility (risky if the Blues are infiltrated or unsecure in any way, but a major intelligence and infiltration advantage otherwise)

Below you the reactor building glimmers as a pattern of lights in the dark water. For these few moments you're fully silent, without even the squad link, as the worm swims away above and the black rock of the reactor housing comes up below. As you come closer your passive sight draws the boundaries of the rock on your vision. Edges, then surface, and then the brass rushes up under your boots.

The others land around you. A flickered exchange of narrow-band laser confirms everyone's position and status; you all dropped where you were supposed to. The hatch is mere metres away. You move over to it as one of the Echo Chamber soldiers covers it with her carbine. So far this is just like the memories dropped into your head by the briefing system.

You had to argue with Luyu to get this job, but Alex means you're the only one who can easily do translation from Nereidi without a link. Until you get inside you're under emission control so it has to be you.

You knock on the hatch. Once, then four times rapidly, then twice.

The answering call comes back. Three. Three. Four. You give a thumbs up to the Echo and she lifts her carbine away as the hatch undulates and turns transparent. Behind it, a Nereidi is waiting. One give you a thumbs up, which seems like showing off. You step onto the hatch and sink through the smartmatter, still on edge in case of any sign of hostility.

<<Greetings.>> One of them says. <<I am designated Blue Crest Infiltrator Former Shift Leader.>> Around you is a broad low cavern stacked with crates, an oddly familiar, only half-alien sight.

"I greet you. Are things set up as agreed?"

<<Yes. We've taken control of the security system and the main antenna. You should be able to send your communications securely inside.>>

"Great." You wave to the others and pop your armour. If they betray you suddenly you still have control over it. "Do we have a read on the target?"

<<"Not yet. We are checking the logs on the hatch you suggested for her infiltration route and it was not used. There was a trap laid on it. We believe she entered through the vents.">>

"I hope she didn't get fried." Scrape sighs. "We could be in here looking for the bits of her all day if she did."

<<We don't believe she was.>> Former Shift Leader says, showing very casually they can understand you now. You hope they're not remote running the translation. That could be very obvious. <<There was a hatch cover loose down there. It's likely she's made it inside and is avoiding internal scans.>>

"Right, well, that's why you have us then." The team is pulling on gear as you chat with the Nereidi. Catapults and webbing strap on over tactical sleeves.

The memory briefing you've had makes things so strange. The Echos are obviously a lot more used to using them than you were with Firewatch, because they've given you a much more intensive patch job. You can still remember which memories are fake and real. They don't quite feel like yours, even if you didn't have both internal security systems and training in recognising implant memories to fall back on.

But they still catch you out. They tell you how your team will react, and who they are.

The woman who covered the door and is now zipping herself into her tac-sleeve and gear isn't just some random Echo Chamber operative, she's Lying Nacre. Young, retiring, but very competent, her hair done up in a strict, slightly virginal updo that everyone teases her for. It makes her look like a college overachiever. You can admire the careful way she checks the pods of combat inorganics with knowledge of seeing that same care taken a hundred times before.

<<I'm surprised the Chrysanthemum let them do this.>> Luyu says. <<This is some pretty Rose side stuff. I guess that's what you get from a bunch of ritual-less war ghosts. >> She sounds positively admiring.

<<I like it.>> You say. <<It's useful.>>

You know how Deianeira will go through a door, and also that she won't date in the unit and is constantly getting her heart broken. There's clutter like that in the purity of the tactics. Or maybe that emotional contact is just how the memories are, and you can't have one without the other.

You set your own gun and pull your goggles down over your eyes, and fit the mask over the bottom of your visor. You don't know how much breath you might have here. "Okay." You tell Former. "Lead on."

The Neredi gestures you forward. . <<"We will avoid most of the crew here. I do not trust all of them. You can only trust me and Blue Crest Infiltrator Formerly Security Guard.>>

<<Greetings.>> The other Nereidi says on comms.

"Right." The team leader looks at you and Scrape. You know she's Roberta Brown, one of Echo Chamber's most veteran commanders. A cool, big sisterly woman with brown skin, short hair and that particularly mischievous smile possessed by a particular type of short haired girl. You know that she's a veteran of the war against the Data Clarity Administration on Redstone, remember her heroism in the tunnels below Splinter City.

It's nice, actually, to have some kind of biographical memories, even if you know they're false. You move forward deeper into the reactor, keeping tactical formation alert for ambushes despite the presence of the Nereidi behind you. On the inside of the brass thick biological connections root through the layers of floor. Near the entry point your drone screen shows you a series of empty rooms and storage areas filled with supplies. Further down their are what might be lounges or rest areas. Then, as your microbots go lower, infiltrating through pipes and vents, you start seeing other Nereidi. Most of them are sat in brace and biostuff chairs, plugged into machinery with tick biological tendrils.

"Real pain we aren't allowed to break this one," says Ginger. Her four gymrat arms are carrying a pair of multimodal antimaterial rifles like carbines; she's not as big as Luyu but you think she might be heavier just through density. You remember the time she stood on the front line for the whole of the Three Day War; her artillery duel with a Kinetic Logic gunship; and her permanent position at the top of the Echo Chamber darts leaderboard.

"Are we moving through the area observed by the rest of the crew?" Scrape asks Former Shift Supervisor.

<<Their minds are fully engaged with the machine.>> The Neredi says, <<Their shift does not require unplug for another twenty minutes. We will be in the elevator by then.>>

"Right." Scrape's ears droop a little, the smart material of her helmet conforming to them perfectly. You feel the same way. Trying to clear the route of ambushes without threatening any of the Nereidi is going to suck. The combat eyes help a bit but it's still a tense movement through the crewed sections until you reach the elevator. The corridor around it is fortunately empty and you at grateful to be able to point your guns again. The elevator stop is an overhung dock with several boxy brass cars hung from rails by biological tendrils. Clear quartz windows mark the sides. From the dock, you can see down all the way to the reactor, the whole structure is hollow, ribboned around with a fractal maze of tunnels and lobes, in metallic brass or iridescent, refracting transparency. At the core is a gleaming mass which must be the gravity furnace itself.

"We should send some inorganics down in a car in front of us, just in case there's an ambush." Luyu says.

"Yeah. Good shout." Scrape says. "Mere, get some macro drones in front too." She looks over at Former. "Is there a way to access the shaft?"

<<Yes. Here is the panel for upkeep and repair. We shall take a different route than usual if you are concerned for ambushes.>>

Mere Resurrection isn't actually human, but she is a beauty. Born an AI and reincarnated in biological flesh, she's lethally femme, with light skin and long hair the colour of the sun at noon. Her svelte frame is still visible even under a mess of drone control equipment. At one point, she ran a virtual world, but she got bored with the challenge put to her by her players. You remember her exploits in a dozen conflicts. The cool voice on a command link calling in fires on cultists tanks, River Infantry and Rose Combat machines alike. Echo Chamber treasures her for her cherished green eyes and stories of defeating a Cauldron Born in a battle of wits.

Former Shift Supervisor opens one of the tunnel hatch and Mere sends her drones spiralling off into the shaft. Meantime, Scrap is giving orders to the bots. Several combat inorganics scramble forward into one of the cars, and set it loose. You see them bob up against the windows as they vanish into the depths. The model that Echo Chamber uses are spider like, highly mobile, with small gun turrets where their heads should be and the option to carry carbines which seems mostly a parade ground affect. None of them have been issued a carry weapon as it doesn't add much to their firepower.

Scrape lets their car get about a hundred metres down the tube before she gestures the rest of you into the next one. Former Shift Leader plugs an arm into what must be a console. The car's tendrils mesh with the tunnel roof and it lurches away at high speed. You brace yourself at one side of the window, extending a drone across it to give you a view of the gravity furnace far below.

"Do you think she's got inside yet?" You ask Former as the car accelerates and jolts onto a parallel track. You can see the inorganics' car ahead on an adjacent route - no point advancing in ambushable single column.

<<That is likely. Your countermeasures technology is superior.>> The Blue keeps down in cover, but does something to the controls, and the windows of the car fold open. <<I hope your sensor technology is as well>>

"It's fine, it's fine. The one is as good as the other." says Scrape. "Good hunting everyone."


<<Hello, Greetings.>> Former Security Guard says. <<I've detected the intruder in the core. She's attempting to interact with the security around the core using the {abstract universal solvent}.>>

You feel Alex pull in deep.

<<Can you stop her?>>

<<For now, please hurry.>>

The car accelerates. Up ahead there's an explosion. <<First drone down.>> Mere says cooly. <<The passages are mined. Sweeping. Former Shift Supervisor. Please follow my navigational instructions.>>

<<Awaiting.>>

The car thumps onto a new rail and accelerates. Wind whips around you as you brace yourselves. The goggles give you amazing anti-countermeasures awareness, your brain filled with with the colours of the whole electromagnetic spectrum. You spot the barest hint of a flicker ahead. A signal deflect off the side of the tunnel, and you start shooting.

Catapults and heavy inorganic carried weapons fire at once, converging on the enemy scout and blowing it to hell. The car rides through the smoke. More drones dart out from Mere's pack, forming up into sweep formation to shield you. Ginger laughs as one missile after another climbs away from the launchers to dive down the tunnel ahead. Gravity flips and changes around the racing monorail car; you' fall one way, then another other, then briefly weightless. Only your armours zero-G anchor points keep you from bouncing off the walls.

Enemy munitions probe back towards you, and the tunnel fills with a narrow air battle of tiny automated fighters. Mere's voice is a war witches chant, a spell of ritualised words to control the air battle and direct firepower up ahead. She speaks authentication and coordinates, initial point and weapons release.

Then she freezes. <<Sandcast. The tunnel's full of dust and burn>>

<<Can you break through it with missiles?>> asks Scrape.

<<Not without blowing us to hell along with it.>>

Former-Shift-Supervisor pulls on Luyu's arm. <<Blow out the tunnel side with your plasma gun please.>> He pats her river weapon.

"Uh, you sure?"

<<Haste! Haste!>>

Luyu grins and levels the weapon, firing off a burst. Three missiles follow it out and the side of the tunnel detonates. The car's arms grab the hot edges of the hole and hurls it into space even as the tunnel behind it fills with the pressure wave of the dust and burn.

"Fuck!" Ginger screams as you hurtle into space. "Fuccckkk!" Luyu is laughing wildly, You wonder how you're going to conceal this suddenly very overt battle from the Nereidi authorities. For a moment you're in free fall, then hard gravity yanks you away towards the furnace. Debris spirals through the car as it tumbles through the air, then hits another gravity pocket and spain back the other way. You transition from microgravity to ten Gs, then ten-Gs the other way, the car spins, its tendrils at full extension as it crashes past tunnels. Your combat glands slam you full of nootropics and your visor drops a dozen fire vectors on you as inorganics moving along the sides of the tunnels bring their weapons to bear on the erratically falling car. Brass chips bounce off your aura as direct fire rounds flick through the compartment.

Then your own combat inorganics are outside too. They just have dropped off ahead in a moment you had no attention for. Under Mere's icey control, two small armies of spider things sniping at one another across the outside of the tunnel system.

Another tunnel comes into view ahead, dark in the forward section. Everyone cuts loose, a hose of munitions and energy bolts blowing a hole in the tunnel through which the car slams, grabbing onto the rail and swinging back inside.

"Holy shit!" Ginger yells. "We made it! We fucking made it!"

The abused top rail of the tunnel gives out with a rip, at almost the same moment part of your cars tendrils tear free. The car slams into the floor of the tunnel and slides, sparks spraying out along the sides as it grinds along the Nereidi stone. You hang on for dear life as the car slides along, its remaining tendrils pulled out to break.

Finally it slides to a halt. You're hanging upside down, held by your suit against what was the bottom of the car. You drop down, landing easily and aim down the tunnel.

"Well." Scrape's ears wiggle. "I guess we walk from here."

Mere snaps her head up. "They're coming."


An observation drone comes around the corner, and then you're rushing forward into the screen of inorganics. Roberta gives clipped orders to her people and they and you spread out to meet the enemy drones across the full width of the passageway.

"How many of these things did you manage to lose?" Luyu laughs, her bodies moving in classic fire and movement, two moving, two fixed and shooting. There's at least a squad of inorganics in the first rush.

"Not this many!" Scrape snarls. "She must have had a secret stash or something. They probably had a fabricator dropped off somewhere to make a surprise!" You duck in behind the shelter of track teeth and briefly overcharged force fields, using smoke and overwhelming firepower to cover each movement. Gravity is light here, and your tac-sleeves jump veins let you make great bounds, carving through decoy induced holes in the inorganics perceptions.

Such holes aren't as common as you'd like. The inorganics are flat spiders hybridised from Chrysanthemum and Alectronian components. They're in war bot configuration, with bulbous mind housings on the back, weapons in a turret up front and sensors underslung. They're pure R-selector devices, meant for an attrition battle in the middle of a nuclear war rather than the more highly resourced battle with a direct action team of conflict specialists, but they're slowing you down. Even when the first screen disintegrates, a series of ambushes and snipers is waiting behind it.

You run and slide, crunching to a stop against the corpse of one before another sweeps the corridor with a massive beam weapon. Nacre pokes out and bulls eyes it with her carbine like she's competition shooting.

There's a judder, you can sense the slight change in gravity. "This is taking too long!" Scrape yells. "Mere, can we go out wide and flank them?"

"Don't think so. There's another squad out on the tunnels. You'd get sniped from everywhere."

"Alex." You say in your head.

"They have a diplomat. If I act it will come and try to interface with me."

"I won't let it get you."

There's a moment of silence within.

"Tell the others."

"Scrape! I'm going to do something to take out the inorganics. As soon as I do, move your team in and take the reactor core. Luyu and I will take out whatever we draw out."

"Huh? Ah!" She nods. "Okay, get ready! Our new friend is about to do some hacking bullshit!"

Alex takes hold of you. Your mouth produces noise. The inorganics pause, then their countermeasures fail en-masse. Munitions wipe them out before they can reset. The Echos are already moving to the side wall. Roberta attaches a strip charge to it and they blow through, hurrying Former beside them as they drop through, moving down towards the core.

"It's coming!" Alex says, and goes deep.


You see it on drones first. Mere reports, a cool voice in the back of your head. <<It's a guerrilla assault frame with some seriously non-standard biological add ons.>> A spun squid, flickering with rainbow diplomat flesh like a motile unit, layered onto the snap-together smart matter skeleton of a heavy combat inorganic. Through your combat eyes you can see its kaleidoscopic spectrum into the deep reaches of radio and gamma. Whatever channel it can find. Deep nerve structures flare up again like they did when you saw the Wasps. You wish you could wish them away but you can't; you're here, now. You snap off the feed for a moment and re-centre yourself.

Guerrilla assault frames have been one of the most successful types of inorganics used in major wars in the last twenty years. They're spider shaped, same as most types of combat inorganic, but thin and skeletal, with every piece of material that can be shaved away shaved away. Easy to build in a fabber. You can only imagine that's how this was built, brought in in pieces through whatever way the infiltrator got in here. Perhaps they had their own Nereidi help, or at least extracted codes, reassembled here and them carpeted in smooth Diplomat flesh.

<<Ever fight one of these before?>> You ask Luyu.

<<Oh yeah, tons of them. Why don't you let me get in close to it while you hang back and manage the swarm. Wouldn't want it to hurt your girlfriend.>>

<<She's not my – >> you say, then snap yourself off, unable to take that seriously. <<Alright, thanks.>> You check the scan display. <<It's coming really fast.>> Drone pictures show the guerilla frame is rushing down the corridor. Luyu marks a hot spot on it snack.

<<That's a River flux capacitor. I see a core as well. It's probably going to rush us and try to get to you. I'm going to set up in ambush. We'll hit it as it tries to overrun us. Keep the kinetic drone up there for final defence..>>

<<Right.>>

<<Be ready to jump in if it does something fancy.>> the four Luyus run forward, carbines aiming as they get to cover. On the side channel Mere and Luyu talk the thing out as it moves in, identifying sensor clusters and weak spots.

You launch a pattern of missiles to loiter behind you in the ceiling for contingencies. Luyu moves forward, each of her unstrapping some surprise weapon she's been just itching to try up. Her pet robot jumps up into a crevice beside you, in as deep stealth as it can muster, ready for its one task of firing a hyperkinetic round at the enemy when it tries to rush you. Luyu hands you the link. It seems she wants all her attention to manoeuvre.

The guerrilla frame flips itself around the corner on its arms. It's moving so fast the terrain-brake rips chunks out of the wall at the corner, and the irregular velocity this gives it lets it skate past the first wave of intercept fire. Its own gait control is prepared enough this doesn't even break its stride. A dozen subweapons hammer out a deafening static. Then it turns on a dime and heads, not for you, but for Luyu.

"Fuck!"

Luyu's positioning is good, a classic L-shaped ambush with mass fire, but she expected it to come after you, not her. The diplomat coating is another problem, neutralising the plasma gun which is her most powerful weapon. Instead she lets it have it with her "surprises". A Sakuran microcannon, a swarm of explosive propelled flechette drones, a big revolving cannon and the gauss jezail you saw Alawen use earlier. These four and her catapults, armed with less exciting but perhaps more practical directional anti-armour grandes reach out for the racing machine.

Not quite enough. It manoeuvres around quick, getting on her flank. The four are already counter manoeuvring but this is fancy enough for you to intervene. You send the missiles in, two, then two more in a stealthy lag behind pattern. It shouldn't be able to pick up the signal but it does, and turns rapidly towards you. The Diplomat skin explodes off the guerrilla frame, spiralling across the floor towards you even as the missiles burst around it. The Luyu with the Jezail out its main sensor and the frame collapses forward as the missiles slam into it.

You feel a slick horror as the diplomat whips forward at you, tendrils extending to engulf. You aim your carbine, aware you're starting to make a noise, aware that the gun isn't going to come close to stopping it, aware of the kaleidoscopic abyss yawning in front of you, aware that your finger isn't squeezing the trigger-

Then Luyu's kinetic drone fires and blasts a hole straight through its core. The shockwave in its flesh cuts it in half, the shockwave in the air jolts your nerves and you shoot. The scattered bits of nightmare splatter.

You swallow, aim your carbine at the centre of the still pulsing mass and fire once. The diplomat goes still.

<<You okay?>> Luyu sends. One of her heads over to the guerrilla frame and begins to dig the river components out of it

"Yeah." You push your visor up and rub your eyes. "I hate those things." It feels better to have put one down. You can always tell yourself you can now. You slap a new box into the kinetic drone and stroke its sensors. The inorganic preens a little under your fingers. "Let's get moving."

When you're close to the core control room, you hear a gunshot. Through the door at the end of the passage you find a tableau: Deianeira standing over Deianeira, and the latter's head scattered all across the floor. Scrape and the others look on as she kneels and digs through the spine for the queue. Former Shift Supervisor, seeming unperturbed, is working on a console at one side. A half assembled matter laser defence system stands near the door. Nacre is bent over into its guts, pulling it apart. It doesn't look like it was finished by the time they arrived..

"Where'd they get all this stuff?" She mutters as you pass.

"Is the core stable?"

Former Security Guard speaks up. <<The Core will be stabilised. Former Shift Supervisor is an excellent technician and your foe had only so much knowledge of our system. However a more serious problem has arisen. The fluctuations in the core have caused an alert to take place in the city's systems, and security forces are preparing to make entry. I have dispatched remote units to clear up the debris of the battle in the core, but you must leave quickly. I am opening the lower manifolds for you. It's not completely safe, but you should be able to make a low gravity fall from there into the lower levels and exit via the emergency hatches>>

"Our shells?"

<<Friends control the number two cargo shaft. Your {skin/flippers} will be near the exit shortly.>>

"Right." You glance at Former Shift Supervisor and Scrape. "Is this place secure?"

"We're just finishing our sweep now." She opens her visor and pours some water over her face. Mere looks up and gives a thumbs up. Deianeira makes a satisfied sound and pulls the queue out.

"Okay friend. You can do your thing."

The floor pulls apart at one side and a dozen small cleaning remotes shaped like large, vaguely demonic looking lobsters begin to drag the body away. One laps up the blood. Another part of the floor opens to reveal the gravity fall. Nacre shrugs, looks at the rest of you then jumps, falling away at a fast but survivable speed with her sleeves boosters.

"Are your sleeves okay for the jump?" You ask Luyu.

"Probably not." She pats the replicator, which is working on something that isn't missiles. "I got these though, don't worry. Each Luyu pulls on a set of four rings around her limbs and then jumps.

You follow her, the Echos falling with you in a long chain towards the bottom of the core.

"See, this would have been a way easier way in." Scrape says, falling near. She's swung over so she's like a princess being carried by an invisible knight, gun slung across her stomach. "We could have got in through the bottom hatch and just boosted up here. That's why we wanted to do it that way."

"Life's imperfect."

"Yeah. That's why they have people like us." She grins. "You and the old lady were pretty good."

"Thanks. You too.."

"I doubt we'll be working with Dandelion again. But there's not going to be a shortage of work around here, I bet. What are you going to do?"

This feels like an overture. On the other hand, ECHO CHAMBER just betrayed their last employer. On the other other hand, that employer was Dandelion, who they now have a badly burned relationship with.

[ ] Tell them the Truth: That you're probably heading to Hera next to hunt Dandelion, possibly involving them in it.
[ ] Tell them a partial truth: That you're headed to Hera but not why, keeping them a bit out of your business but still friendly.
[ ] Don't tell them anything (politely).
[ ] Give them false info on where you're going because they might be still infiltrated, or just decide to sell it anyway.