[X] Tell them the Truth: That you're probably heading to Hera next to hunt Dandelion, possibly involving them in it.
"We're headed to Hera. We've got information that a major Dandelion cell is there."
"Hera huh? Good luck." Scrape says. "Fucking worst place in the universe. Enjoy total surveillance and competition."
"I thought you girls liked competition." Luyu says, upside down, from a perch in the middle of a gravity stream.
"Maybe, if it wasn't so prissy. And if it wasn't obviously crooked." Scrape says. "You know they had this girl win recently, from one of the marginal zones at the edge of the old city. A no account family. She should have won the Feast of Swans, but they cheated her out of it. Total bullshit."
"That's the grand prize?" You ask. You're broadly aware that Hera is pervaded by elaborate competition rituals, but a lot of the details are fragmentary.
"Yeah." Scrape says as you reach the bottom of the reactor. "It's boiled over a bit, lots of protests, some assassinations, lot of fun to watch. Anyway, eyes up. There could still be more bots or boobytraps down here."
There are, but the rest of the exfiltration is still blissfully easy. There are four combat inorganics watching the maintenance door, and an explosive device, but it seems like the Nereidi have got a lot better at spotting them. Probably because their bots have eaten and broken down the countermeasures on the others. It's a simple matter to snipe the four and then don your shells and get out, heading back to the ships.
Things drop off from there. Selko has more or less frozen you out of the negotiations, only giving quick messages to the Blues, which you suppose is fair. You didn't exactly tell her everything either.
Days pass. You'd like to go out and see the city but with the situation so febrile and whoever Dandelion's bomb-planting contact was still at large, you're persuaded to stay in the sub to begin with. You end up spending a lot of time watching the feeds, and eventually, as things get more friendly, walking around in disguise with Mirareki.
On the streets you see the Blues position seems to be strengthening. They're more openly in public, and several unaligned or Purple-dominated cliques are reported - or seen - to have disassembled and reassembled members into Blue configurations. The colourless make several attempts to sweep for your smuggling routes but by the time you have to seriously scale back, the Echo Chamber fabricators have already accomplished deploying a critical mass of manufacturing for the Blues, and some cockier Blue groups are even demonstrating the benefits of Gardenian technology.
After ten days, out with Mirareki, you see the first big armed demonstration. Maybe that's anthropomorphising, but that's what it seems like. It's not quite the way humans do it. The Blues come down the streets in little knots rather than a great mass. First they're almost unnoticed but eventually the Nereidi drawback to watch as the groups pass, and continue to pass.
And continue.
And continue.
It lasts for long minutes, one group passing after another in a continuous stream. Your translators, even with the benefits of experience, struggle to frame what's said in human terms, but you don't need words to interpret the sight of bystanders dismembering themselves - or being dismembered - and joining the packs.
One group stops before you.
You blink. By this point you're starting to recognize Nereidi configurations. You see there, in the crowd, Second Level. You risk dropping your veil and reaching out but you realise then you were wrong. You had just put together familiar-seeming angles of a few different people you've never seen before.
<<Greetings Stella,>> says one. Too late to go back under veil. Is this a killer, gloating before striking? You let your hand stray down to your side arm.
"Have we been introduced?"
It waits a moment. <<We realise the confusion. This is difficult to express. Among us are the {remains} of {Second Level} Blue Diplomat, who you knew.>>>>
<<The remains…>> Oh. You see now how you thought you saw them. Elements of them are scattered in the crowd. Gestures and features.
<<They are {dead} now,>> says the Nereidi. Then another one pushes forward. <<This one is expressing it badly. They did not receive the eloquence of {Second Level}. {Second Level} persists among us, is how {I} think {Second Level} would have chosen to express it.>>
How they would have chosen to express it for your benefit, you who takes the unit as essential and its disuniting as the end, to be salved with memory and mourning. For them, it's the natural way of things, not worthy of remark. What made Second Level a good diplomat was her grip of that gulf. But it's not a gulf that will be as wide with the Communion, on whom you still impose the shadow of death.
<<We are those who have been {gifted/assimilated} by their components.>>
"Was this what sh-they wanted?" You ask.
<<Yes. This is what all of us seek. To become more than what we are.>>
You bow. "Then I wish you all luck in the future."
The day after the great show of the Blues, Selko tells you that you're leaving.
"Negotiations are concluded?" you ask.
"The Nereidi want the final summit to be conducted somewhere else. It's a tradition for them. Meetings are always conducted at the tide line. The mockmaids prefer shallower waters too, and obviously it's easier for us." She pushes her hair back and smiles. "Also, I thought you might enjoy the beach."
You wonder how much of the desire to get you and the Echo Chamber subs out of there is a desire to stem the flow of arms. If that's the intention it's both belated and will be unsuccessful. The last day is a hectic round of meetings with the Blues to rearrange things, and then the ascent begins.
Three days later, you're on the beach.
*****
The beach under your bare feet gleams in complex patterns of black and white. Two species of self-organising microparticle that leach energy from tides and waves to build mandalas in obedience to long-gone gods. It shifts a little between your desecrating toes. In the distance, the gleaming spires of Lorloren Resort sparkle in the sun over rainbow seas. The final conference is taking place.
"Get ready!"
You spread your legs and touch your wrists and see the bronze colossus coil in the air and then
strike. A hundred and twenty kilos of optimised military technology launches a hypervelocity round at your prepared positions. You've seen through it. As you predicted, it's targeting Lanaiatte. The ball flashes in, the victim isn't fast enough, and you're about to spring off your feet to cover, when you see its trajectory twist in the air, straight toward
you. You're off-balance but you can at least get in the way and block-
You realise in the last split second that you've misread it again, as the volleyball rises a degree and hits you square in the face. The force overwhelms your broken footwork and splats you backward into the sand. The ball arcs lazily through the air, to where Reizay bounces it and sets it for a fruitless spike by Mirareki into Luyu's lightning block.
"8-3 to me and myself," calls the Valkyrie.
Above you, the midday sun burns, until it's blocked by Alex's head. She looks down at you. She's wearing a bikini made of cold blue fire. The sun through her hair curlicues off into little blazing strands. She presses her foot on your chest, nudging your breasts apart with her heel, and leans forward toward your face.
"I know you wanted to deal with this yourself," she says, "but I didn't think you'd be so undignified about it."
"Stop nagging," you mutter. "I've got an idea."
"Fine, fine. No Pharaoh for you today." She walks off to perch on one of the net posts. On the other side, Luyu gives herself a high five.
There's half of her on this court, and half on another down the beach, where Alietta is captaining a similarly doomed defence. Two 4v2 games and Luyu is winning both. You know, and you know Alietta knows, that the way to do this is to time your attacks so Luyu has to deal with both at the same time, but it's hard to control the pace that way when Luyu is serving, which she's going to keep doing so long as she keeps winning. It's not looking good.
You sit up and recover some dignity by ogling her. The game isn't looking good, but she is. She apparently had a special order with a local designer waiting when you resurfaced, because 'obviously we were going to do this at some point', and has deployed with a matched set of four bikinis made of different flower petals. They don't even give her proper support, you're a hundred-percent certain there's glue in there. She's flexing on you. On your side you've invested in the best sports gear you can fabricate at short notice, designed by some algorithm one of the more bored of the Shalathri spun up, with irregular, inhuman webbing between its panels and fine-tuned forcefields for each of sand, sea and subcutaneous fat. It's not really closing the gap.
"Come on, pick yourself up." says Luyu, with a crooked smile. "We've still got a lot of points to get through."
The final negotiations are on, but there's nothing for you to do. Security is provided by the local militia, and so far hasn't been tested. The blues have sent you a lot of data on the diplomat but so far its still a matter of automation and the Shalathri chewing through it. The three of them have been unclear about their plans, but you suspect they may stay with you, at least as far as Hera, further from the River border. They've asked a lot about the Deep Ship. Unfortunately much of it beyond what you already know is Sky One coded, and will take a while to comprehend.
Luyu wins, but not by as much as she wanted, and you get the pleasure of watching her smile start to crack as the counter-strategy gets a chance to dig teeth in. After her final spikes past Alawen and Reizay she pumps a fist on both courts. You look at the other to see if Alietta's cosmic serenity has wobbled at all, but it looks like Minetta has popped out to offer post-game encouragement. Very convenient.
You slump back on the sand, finally, and pour ice water across yourself. Your muscles have had a workout more than any combat mission. The feeling is pleasant, but in a way that warns you're on the edge of too much of a good thing.
Mirareki sits next to you. Her hostile-environment shieldmaiden is doing better at handling the exertion but she also looks beat.
"Enjoying the beach?"
"It's fine. Too hot." She takes a deep breath, wipes sweat off her face, spends a few seconds sighing then just pulls off her top and bundles it into the other half of her swimsuit. Stray strands of webbing dangle uselessly in the sand.
"Hera isn't going to be as free as this," she says. "You have to watch what you wear, watch what you do. Enter contests that you can win but not win too much so you don't get noticed. You have to cover yourself by being mid."
"You've done operations there before? It's your home planet right?"
"Yeah. Though, I spend as much time as I can off-world or in the old cities. I got my start in supernature reporting covering the Old Machines." She watches the ocean's slow march up and down toward you. The tide is coming in. "Basically, everything's a competition."
You know the gist of this but you let her go on. It's nice to have proper memories of someone telling you a thing rather than the cold sterility of knowing it through access to some off site archive.
"At the beginning of the century, we were starting to lose out to Thetis, and some other worlds. People were worried that there was no competitive spirit left." She laughs. "People always worry about that. So they brought in the games. The Feast of Swans. To let people win acclaim by effort. It really… wasn't such a bad idea at first. I imagine Luyu would call the whole enterprise crypto-Riverine. But it really wasn't. It made us something special. Not just yet another councilist republic."
"So what changed?" You pull your own top off. You're so hot. You see Reizay glance at you and hurry off in the other direction.
"A lot of powerful people realised they could use the competition for their own ends. It's all administered by the Church of Nike, through one of their AI systems. Only they're still a mystery cult, not a civic one, so nobody knows how the AI makes its choices. Over the years more and more things have become part of the games, until you can't escape it. It's everywhere. There've been attempts at reform but they've all failed."
"I hear there's a big scandal going on right now."
"Same as ever." She looks out at the sea.
"Hey Stella!" Reizay calls. "Put your link on. Also your top. We've got an agreement."
You check your feed. There is indeed an updated agreement coming through, agreed by all sides. Signatures are the new Nereidi government, ruled by the Configuration of Progress and Rebuilding, what used to be the Blues, the Alliance of the People-Of-The-Shallows ('Mockmaids' is rapidly falling out of use), mostly supported by Echo Chamber, and the Commune Government, with the Chrysanthemum as a co-signer.
The final agreement is
[ ] A broad union between the three powers, with a single set of exchange rules for scarce goods, bringing the planet into a more or less unified configuration… and likely aimed at defending themselves from the Chrysanthemum. It's likely this is the most internally peaceful and cosmopolitan agreement possible, though it's also likely to be the one that conflicts with the Chrysanthemum and possibly can deal with the River. It would also likely see the People of the Shallows dominated as the weakest party.
[ ] The Creation of three new nations on Nereid, with the Communion, the People-of-the-Shallows and the Nereidi each doing their own government, with borders, entry formalities and embassies. The three powers will all be guaranteed by the Chrysanthemum, and likely too weak to resist it. On the other hand this means that they'll be little likelihood of River infiltration, and there is general agreement and non-aggression between the three. This also leaves Echo Chamber forming a government for the Shallowers with no real oversight.
[ ] Two entities now rule the planet. In the depths, the Nereidi, and on the land and in the shallows, the Comunion. They and Echo Chamber are joint guardians of the burgeoning nation of the People-of-the-Shallows. In the case of Echo Chamber that guardianship will be some kind of uplift team, but one with deep roots and much local power. In the depths, the Nereidi rebuild their population and infrastructure and seek to recontact their empire. The Communion and Echos will likely seek to play the Nereidi and Chrysanthemum against one another.
[ ] The Configuration for Progress and the Communion's new government are both revolutionaries, so it's no surprise they found common ground. Not quite a union, but a strong alliance that might, one day become a human-alien state. Echo Chamber and the People-of-the-Shallows are now the Chrysanthemum's bailiwick against alien powers. It's a little bitter to see this conflict still exist, if only at a low level, but it might be the best thing for the People-of-the-Shallows, who will now receive all the aid that the Chrysanthemum can give them to hold against the Communion and the Nereidi, two sets of similarly temporary beings now joined together.
