- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
Hyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyype.
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Battle Action Harem Highschool Side Character Quest (No SV, you are the Waifu)
- Thread starter Avalanche
- Start date
- Original
Hyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyype.
Nighzmarquls
The Endless Hunger
- Location
- United States
Should I feel complimented the "more threads like this" for my own story is what brought me to this great fic?
- Location
- Elsewhere
- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
- Location
- Somewhere.
By the way this is a quest.
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
- Location
- Illinois
Fools! I keep watch when I am awake, I keep watch when I am asleep, I keep watch when I am dreaming and I keep watch when I am believing!
... Those last two are 24/7/365 kinds of affairs. It's not so bad, the UN has great dental.
Rickshaw
Officially a Boss Mob
- Location
- The Land of Boots and Ten Gallon Hats
*headpats*
- Location
- universe
All it takes for this to happen is an earnest desire to see it become a reality.
Maybe this should be arranged?
Icipall
Don't worry, we can fanfix that!
- Location
- Cold snow fields of Finland
*Sips tea while surveying the chaos.*
Ah, what a wonderful time to be alive.
Ah, what a wonderful time to be alive.
*headpats and scritches*
- Location
- Illinois
It's very much on the "fic" end of "quest"... which is, quite honestly, how I like it.
It definitely has the quality of a published novel. Where it would run into issues is in market, and temporarily, structure.
It's simultaneously a serious military sci-fi story and a send up of a sub-genre of light novels, written originally in english. The market for it is... not very big. It would do better sold electronically and/or print on demand.
Structurally, we're 180k words in, and I don't recall a good end of book point anywhere in it. It works great in a serial format such as a quest, but we haven't really reached a good stopping point. It has 5 or 6 story threads all advancing somewhat simultaneously, but none of them have gotten near a climax yet.
In short, I'd buy it personally, but if I was working for a publisher, I wouldn't go for it.
Definitely self-publish or however amazon e-books work when we get to a point where we can end a book on though. Please! I want you to get enough money from this that you can afford to write full time!
- Location
- Earth
- Location
- universe
Icipall
Don't worry, we can fanfix that!
- Location
- Cold snow fields of Finland
But he'd hire someone to write it all from his dictation as he plays WoW.Then he'd just play WoWS 24/7.
Post 21
Avalanche
Atypical Netizen
- Location
- Australia
[X] Timeskip Activities.
-[X] Attend Instructor training sessions.
-[X] Attend general Flight training sessions.
-[X] Volunteer again for Sandra's UNHCR reconstruction activities.
-[X] Train skills
--[X] Remainder to Blue Wave - 150 points.
Deferred;
[X] Holiday Activity
-[X] Spend time with:
--[X] Koujirou: I guess it all came down to me not being able to stop those missiles in the earlier rounds, clearly I need help with long range things. Gimme a hand?
--[X] Yukari and Setsuna: Say Anna, what do you do in your time off? What do you say about dressing up a little, how about your room? Do you have enough furniture?
--[X] Sandra: Greetings Anna, while we have become closer as a Flight in the past month, but I don't feel as if we've gotten to truly know each other as people, or maybe even this country. What do you say to a short trip around Australia?
--[X] Ask Sandra for help in spending some time with Shuri. Out of everyone in the flight, she and you are most distant. And if you're going to be relying on her in battle, well, you'll need to know her better. (2 days)
--[X] Contact one or more of the other top ranked valkyries, ask to meet and talk shop. See if they have advice on training, on how to prepare yourself with top-level UN-supported combat, which you have not experienced before. See if any of your abilities are unique enough to contribute something no one else brings (wave excepted of course). See if they have advice on development of the wave force. (2 days)
--[X] Try one of the historical simulator scenarios solo. What difference would a lone valkyrie of your caliber have made? Ask Sandra for a recommendation, she knows the context to the history involved better than you do. (1 day)
--[X] Beach Episode: Yukari is gathering the flight together to spend a day in the beach biome in Perth. Somehow this feels inevitable to you. (1 Day)
--[X] Movie Marathon: When Sandra was looking for things for the flight to bond over, Koujirou suggested something called a 'Movie Marathon'. Now your flight is going to spend two days watching several cinematic creations together. Errm, what are you supposed to pick? (2 Days)
XxXxXxXxXx
A/N: ANOTHER LESSON LEARNT, THANKS MR SV
XxXxXxXxXx
>>Notice: You have placed this topic on your ignore list.
XxXxXxXxXx
It's 1100, and you're still in bed.
It's the Sunday morning after the Vanguard tournament, and the controversy over Shuri and you skipping out on it hasn't declined at all.
You had been a little shocked that there was a controversy at all. Then you had rather glumly monitored the online discourse until you felt it was in your best interests to completely ignore it.
Rolling over onto your back, you breathe in and let out a long sigh. It's just- you don't understand.
These people, why are they so angry that you hadn't decided to participate?
It's like you personally insulted them or something.
Some cadets called you a coward.
…
They'd been dogpiled with dissenting opinions, your friends, cadets from other years, some passing acquaintances from elective classes and even a few instructors wading into that mess.
Cowardice.
You grab an armful of blankets and roll back onto your belly. Technically, they're not wrong.
Technically.
You don't want to kill anyone else.
But…
The implication you won't be useful against the Antagonists hurt. It- it is infuriating. Anger quickly burns away the confusion and dismay.
You're not scared of Antagonists! Maybe you were, at the start, but you always did what people needed you to do! It's just here, these people, these kids, why did they care how proficiently someone could kill someone else? What was the point of proving you were willing to hurt someone else? What did it prove? What could you have shown, there in the simulator? Every match, a single strike across the arena. The mechanical capabilities of your four real weapons alone are capable of power so far beyond what the other cadets could possibly have brought to bear. You knew how it would end. So did they, they must have.
How quickly even Types would die, you'd shown it, gladly, in the combat simulations you'd found time to participate in.
A single human. Wrapped in metal and conceit? What chance did they stand?
They knew! They know! You don't need to prove it again by killing someone! You'll kill Antagonists! You will-
The bedframe snaps as your hand grips just a bit too hard, oak panelling powdering under your fingers and steel bars bending slightly.
You bury yourself deeper into your blankets, and wrench your mind onto a different tract, resetting. Taking a deep breath, as it were.
Repairing the bed frame, you check your schedule. It's been a few weeks since Instructor Langston had offered you the opportunity to join the group training the Instructors did on weekends.
Confirming its clear to fill the day with your personal activities, you message Instructor Langston. After a few overly stiff and formal starts, you elect to send a business-like message. It is the best that you get to the point, you're not really sure how people do, well, any of this.
>"Instructor Langston, you mentioned the possibility of taking part in the Instructor group training sessions during the weekends. Is the offer still open?"
Despite the message being sent without any priority markers, a reply arrives immediately from the young Instructor.
>"Of course Anna. We meet up around lunchtime every weekend and practice a few hours. You have an open invite to join. We're actually just about to get started for the day, do you want to come?"
A new event pops up on your schedule, detailing time and location that the Instructors typically met at.
The regular Sunday session usually begins in just a few minutes from now. You consider for a moment, then deciding you didn't really have any other activities in mind for the afternoon, you answer in the affirmative.
Making sure your room is in order, which basically only consists of making sure your RC car is stowed away properly so that its exploration and mapping module doesn't take it for another trip around the Arcology, you stand up and make your way towards the surface.
After a moment of waiting in the dazzling sunlight of the surface for the Arcology to grant permission, you set off for Ordnance Testing Ground Three Five Eight. About three hundred kilometers northeast of Perth, OTG 358 it is a shorter trip than your now regular flights to OTG 507, but with your reluctant adherence to the terribly slow local airspeed limits, you will be late by more than half an hour.
Still, you can see some of the Instructors almost immediately as you leave the Arcology. Two groups, fifty kilometers above sea level and rising. Possibly a race. TACNET informed you of more Instructors in the general area, but still below the horizon.
With time to spare as you fly, you take some time to review the situation on the local TACNET. The Academy has a total of forty four Instructors rostered, a pair of Instructors for every first year squadron, a single Instructor for every second year squadron, an Instructor for every two third year squadrons, and two in reserve.
You eye those last two with no small amount of surprise. What possible situation in an Academy entailed two Ace rank Valkyries to standby on reserve, especially when there's already another forty already present? That oddity aside, of the forty four, today there's an odd two dozen here, but a quick review of the flight history of the airspace surrounding Perth showed that Instructors joined and dropped out on their own schedule.
A search for an agenda for the day comes up empty. Compared the rather rigorously scheduled classes they set out for the cadets, the Instructors seem to just wing it. You are not the only cadet participating, there are a few third and second year Ace and Elite ranked cadets scattered here and there with the Instructors. A ping from your Flight IFF identifies Shuri amongst them. It's not really a surprise, you suppose. Shuri did leave the Arcology every weekend, and a quick browse of her fan site for confirmation shows plenty of footage of her with the Academy's Instructors.
A few hundred kilometers out, you receive and accept an invitation with the encryption key to the Instructor's voice channel. You already have permission to listen in thanks to your rank, but it was a nice gesture.
"Hello," you greet everyone on the channel.
"Anna!" "G'day, welcome." "It's an honour to finally speak with you." "Welcome, Coroner." "Hey."
"Is there a plan for the session? I could not see an agenda."
"Oh activities are created on a uhm, need to do basis—" "She means that we don't have plans." "You're destroying our 'carefully cultivated' image of authority." "It's the Coroner, like a stiff upper lip—" "ANYWAY, Fiona, Cereza, she's your girl, what first?" "Sorry, gimme a min—Cez, can you—?" "Of course."
Instructor Leonhart waves lazily at you as she breaks from a group of Instructors and descends, flashing a waypoint on the ground.
The two of you land, and after taking a moment to flatten the dust with her impeller, the instructor expresses out a pair of couches and sits down.
"Come Anna, make yourself comfortable."
Instructor Leonhart actually uses her voice rather than radio, despite the cacophony of sonic booms, rocket and jet engines, and impeller clashes in the background from the other Valkyries. She realises how awkward that is right away and with a flash, a living room expresses out around the pair of you, completely cutting off the sound from the outside despite the visually normal construction of the walls and windows.
Wait, you recognise this room—the curtains, that table, still set with food, but different dishes—
You only have time for the briefest of glimpses before the room morphs with a flicker. The warmer reds and yellows in the upholstery is replaced by neutral faded blues and browns, the curtains completely drawn and rolled up, decorations removed, the dining table emptied, left with a lonely bowl of decorative fruit. With a few changes, the room loses much of its welcoming personality.
Leonhart doesn't give you a meaningful look, a sideways glance or... anything, really, but you still shuffle uncomfortably, alert to the fact that you had seen something Leonhart preferred to keep to herself. While you are busy grappling with the guilt, Leonhart disappears around a corner and comes back with a jar and a pair of mugs.
"No need to stand about," says the Instructor as she sets down her jar and the mugs.
You look upwards uneasily, but everything inside Instructor Leonhart's house is covered in solid layers of her Impeller, some of the densest and most stable you've seen from any other Valkyrie. You retract Durga and gingerly sit down, wincing at the groan from the couch as it sags slightly under your weight. Wooden frame, not reinforced steel. You take most of the support back onto your Impeller before the couch is strained any further.
This time, the Instructor does give you a sideways glance, before quietly muttering under her breath as she digs deeper into the jar, "No cookies then, maybe just some wafer crackers... "
Uh— you— that was— You're not fat, you're just tall... and dense.
Besides, her jar is empty—
The Instructor pulls out a few wafer crackers.
Oh, of course, she's just pulling food from within her storage.
Leonhart uses the crockery as placeholders as she bustles, pulling snacks and pouring drinks from her storage, quickly handing you a mug of something that tastes like aromatic, sweet and frothy milk tea, and a small plate of colourful wafer crackers.
You munch on a cracker silently as the Instructor pulls open the drawer of the coffee table, pulling out a thick binder of paper.
"You're an awfully hard girl to find snacks for, you know," the Instructor muses as she flips through her binder.
You glance down at it and blink at the video recordings playing out on the surface of the paper. Not a projector or LED film, but colonies upon colonies of colourful micromachines living on the surface of the wood fibres, using Van der Waals forces and Plateau–Rayleigh instability to swim to the surface of the page and sort themselves into pictures. A rather profligate way to use micromachines, but the mechanical precision and elegance of the moving ink colonies is so mesmerising you almost miss what the pictures are actually showing.
It is you, eating, recordings from the ceiling cameras in the cafeteria.
A quick glance reveals the title for the binder to be "Anna's favs" and the microchip inside informs you its stuffed full of notes from the Instructor on what kind of food and activities you like the most. At least, what Leonhart guessed to be your favourites from looking over the academy records at least. You smile in slight confusion, it surely would have been easier to just ask, right?
I don't know. Anything is fine.
You take another sip from your mug and pause, looking down at your mug and smacking your tongue. Now the drink is inside your storage, you get a proper feel for what it is. Several different lipids and gasoline? Sure enough, you can see it evaporating from your mug. Despite proportionally having a lot of hydrocarbons, it tastes good. No, it tastes fantastic. You quickly chug down the drink before more of it evaporates and let out a satisfied sigh.
"How did you make something with butane in it taste so good?" you ask Leonhart in awe, placing down your mug after discreetly scooping out the last drops with your Impeller. You've already analysed the drink's composition, but you'd never expect it to taste so good from looking at the composition.
"Oh, don't try making that for your friends," chuckled the Instructor, "I made the drink specially for you, I don't think they'd like it that much. Seconds?"
"Please, thank you very much," you nod, accepting another mug and taking a few more crackers.
Getting down to business, the Instructor blinks at the window, turning on an embedded screen and linking a sprawl of technical manuals.
"Anna, we practice a lot with group skills, and we don't have any records of you using them. How about we start today with some testing for group Impeller actions?"
You nod, nursing your drink.
"Alright, have you reviewed the documentation we have on Impeller Synergy and Group Skills?"
"One moment," you ask.
"Of course—"
"I just did," you answer. Well, not all of it, just the texts for Cadets on Leonhart's screen.
Instructor Leonhart chuckles at that. "Should've expected that. Well, let's start then."
She holds out her hand and a layer of her Impeller extends outwards.
You compose yourself, folding your hands in your lap and trying to relax, reaching out with your own Impeller.
The two fields contact— and clash as usual.
Ok. Now you have to try and synchronize and combine the fields, the exact opposite of what you would usually do to crush another Impeller. That way both Valkyries can manipulate the same Impeller partition.
…
Synchronize the fields? How are you supposed to do that?
"Wow," whispers Leonhart, "Your field is… fierce. It's very territorial. Try to relax a little Anna. Don't try to lash out all the time, imagine it like holding hands— wow! Shaking hands, not holding, shaking hands."
You squirm and manage to fight down a blush. Instructor Leonhart just gives you a knowing look, which doesn't help at all and you hide your face behind your hands until you calm down. From her folder, you know that she knows about your short and brief visit to the Matchmaking elective class.
Ah-hawawa…
Ahem.
You try again, and reach out with your field. Instructor Leonhart reciprocates, and the two of you try again.
…
You don't get it. How are you supposed to enter someone else's Impeller? The two of you try many things. The Instructor holding her Impeller quiescent and you trying to synchronize with it, then vice versa. Then the two of you trying to dynamically match each other. More than one partition on one side, then both, to try to synchronize one whilst using the other as the control. Instructor Meyer entered the house and she had helped Instructor Leonhart demonstrate Impeller synchronization for you in hopes that you could replicate it.
None of it works. It just feels too… scary— no, you're not scared. It feels creepy and weird.
You can't let someone into your Impeller. Or even enter another Impeller while leaving it intact. While your Impeller is intact. It's too dangerous. You must not, you must never. Never again.
Any Impeller you meet, you destroy with your own field instinctively, and you can't seem to rein the reaction in.
After four fruitless hours of experimentation, Instructor Leonhard reclines into her couch and lays a cool cloth over her brow, massaging her temples slowly. You hover at her side, knowing that the overuse strain wasn't really something you could help with, but trying to find something to do anyway. Having her Impeller layers ground down to near zero dozens and dozens of times by you pushed even an experienced Ace like the Instructor to her limit.
"I don't suppose you think it will go any better with another Instructor, do you?" asks Instructor Leonhart.
"I don't think so," you say.
Instructor Leonhart hums and speaks slowly, "I'll have to ask around about this, Anna. For the moment, how about you have a look around at what everyone else is doing? Seems like people are lining up for thumb war hour again."
"Thumb war hour?" you echo. What on earth is that?
"Yes, something that Shuri introduced. Apparently she was inspired by a sim exercise that your flight had."
Ah?
… Ah!
God bless it, Shuri as well? Really?
You sigh and exit Instructor Leonhart's house, leaving her to recover, noting that the Impeller layers covering her house remain as steady and solid as ever, as if she hadn't been exhausting herself for the last few hours.
Three kilometers away, you can indeed see the various Instructors pairing up and a… line forming up near Shuri? What?
The pairs of Valkyries rise to a hundred meters in the air, accompanied by a spotter. They clasp right hands— then incandescent lights of Impeller interference light up between them.
They are actually playing thumb wars against one another. Using Impellers and their whole bodies— explosions light up— scratch that, their entire arsenals at zero range.
This— this is incredibly dangerous. This is not a sim. There are no hardcoded safeties. You swallow and clench your hands, sensors straining to watch every pair— but you don't seem to need to have worried. The rules appear to be limited to Impeller partitions over the arms, after all, once one Valkyrie won the struggle over the Impeller over their clasped hands, there is not much the other can do to avoid defeat.
You almost start relaxing. Then Instructor Mulyani expresses a pair of charged particle cannons right into Shuri's chest.
Shuri shoves them with her free hand, and a lightning quick twist of her right wrenches the Instructor around to force her own cannons against her head. You're already moving— and stumble to a stop. They're both interdicting.
A twist of Shuri's Impeller sends a partition into Mulyani's storage, and the cannons fire. Even then, their spotter, Instructor Yap, doesn't move, hovering close and watching.
>"Anna, wait. This is safe. We guarantee it."
Instructor Meyer sends to you with high density comms.
>"Confirm?"
>"Confirm. The only thing that will be hurt here is pride."
Instructor Meyer assures you.
Instructor Mulyani reels from the impact, but she is more stunned than hurt by the strike, her Impeller easily up to the task of deflecting the hits. A twist of space and reactor plasma blasts towards Shuri, but Shuri easily catches it in a spatial torus with her own Impeller and absorbs it.
You bite down on your lip, still tensed and ready to leap forwards.
The Instructor tries to draw a melee halberd, but Shuri grasps her elbow, then with a fluid tug, wrenches open the Instructor's guard and rams a forearm across her chest in a sharp chop, Impeller swirling around her arm in a destructive piercing formation. Instructor Mulyani gasps and slumps in the air, her core Impeller brought down to a couple of tenuous layers by the strike, but Shuri holds her up by their connected hands. It is only now that you notice Shuri has the Instructor's thumb pinned beneath her own on their right hands.
Mulyani tries a desperate spatial shearing attack, but Shuri crushes it with her interdiction barely after the attack leaves the Instructor's Impeller.
"Ten count. Valkyrie Kravala wins," Instructor Yap declares.
An explosion of grumbled swearing over open comms from Instructor Mulyani rocks you back on your heels, making you forget your worry for a moment.
Who said that only pride would be hurt here? Your poor ears.
You quickly uninstall your bahasa Indonesian translator, but it doesn't help. You've already learnt the language off it. You grumble as you manually sort around the software floating around inside your storage. Organizing information like software in your storage is always slipperier than a physical component, even if they are the same thing at the lowest level. After a second of struggling, you give it up as a bad job and filter the general comm channel instead.
"Instructor!" you protest to her over a direct line, scandalized, "That— that's going to set a bad example!"
"Hey, Anna! Uh, sorry, are you here for a turn as well?" Instructor Mulyani sounds a little breathless, and a hint of a slur colours her words as she responds, but at least she's no longer swearing.
"Wait, but I'm next," protests Instructor Vitala, barging into the line.
"You actually here for a match?" Shuri asks skeptically over her own direct line.
A bit of an argument between the Instructors start in the background, some for and some against allowing you to cut in line and you feel your shoulders sagging in disbelief. As if you are here to do that.
"No, no I am not," you deny, crossing your hands in negatory, "What are you doing anyway?"
"Teaching. They're Valkyrie Aces, so they can learn techniques more efficiently than the cadets are capable of."
"You're teaching the Instructors?"
"You aren't?"
What? Of course not— wait, Langston said— and Vivas with the wave force— oh. Well, you are really just expanding your own capabilities and it just so happens that uh… ok. That is a good point.
"Valid," you admit.
Shuri inclines her head at you, then closes the channel.
God bless it.
"Alright then, let's set up, Shuri. You spotting again Dyana?" questions Instructor Vitala, as the Instructors fall back into their queue.
Instructor Yap gives a quick thumbs up and the Instructors all get set up again. Are they really just going to continue like this?
"Want to have a round, Anna?" Instructor Meyer floats over and asks.
Boom
A plume of red dust erupts in the background as Shuri slams Instructor Vitala into the ground, thrusters blazing and igniting the dust as she pins the Instructor. Instructor Yap floats lazily down after them, still unconcerned as ever. An Impeller ghost from Shuri completely fools Vitala, who throws her Impeller to guard against an illusionary attack. A bright strobe of synchrotron radiation flashes as Vitala barely recovers to deflect a pair of beam attacks from Shuri. Moments after the quick exchange, Vitala attempts to pull them back into the air, but a throw from Shuri causes both Valkyries to disappear underground with another massive explosion of dust.
"Are— are we going to do that? I don't want to," you shake your head.
"I doubt you'll need that much effort to beat me at thumb war, Anna," chuckles Instructor Meyer, "Think about it this way, if we can learn from getting matches from you, less of us are getting slapped around by Shuri."
But they're still be getting… pushed around by you, and you— no actually. You can absolutely use less force than what Shuri is using right now to win against the Instructors in thumb war. It's easily in your capabilities, but… Instructor Leonhart had been exhausted simply trying to synchronize fields with you, and you'd very nearly hit Instructor Langston with a blast of corrosion. If you reacted badly in this kind of exercise, you don't want to imagine the consequences.
"No, I don't want to risk an accident."
"Fair. You got any advice for us? Shuri explains things well, and for most of us it's just a matter of putting theory into practice, but maybe you've got some insights to share?"
"My explanations are confu— my flight mates tell me they are hard to understand."
"Oh we're all very, very familiar with your way of explaining things, no need to worry," Instructor Meyer waves your concern off, "You can just demonstrate if you need to, we can talk it out with our Impellers."
Well, if she's sure…
You point at a pair of Instructors.
"They're being really round." "Mmhm." "It could work, but they need more bubbles moving, like a blizzard." "…Mmhm." "It's still too fuzzy, it needs to be sharper, like bzzt, not sssh." "Uh, okay." "That's… just a little slow. You see? It's too slow. The pulling and twisting isn't whiny enough." "…" "That's really thorough, she got higher, but it's too hasty." "Hmm, Anna, can you translate your process into a graphic and transmit it to me instead, like the way we're doing with the project?"
Oh yes, of course. The three members on your flight that needed the help with their Impeller formation the most can't process volumes of data like this, and these types of Impeller techniques are orders of magnitude less complex than the Wave Force, so it won't take you days to compose messages and then wait for days for the Instructors to process them.
…
You send a graphical explanation over to Instructor Meyer and she takes a few minutes to think. You wait, somewhat nervously eyeing the continuing competitions. Dust thrown up by the melee grows thicker in the air, and with so many spatial attacks being thrown around, you begin to notice ripples in spacetime forming, the ebbs and flows of strange colour and sparks of photons from vacuum energy actualizing. It's not much compared to the aftermath of a teleport or the signal of an open gate, but it is beginning to remind you of the aftereffects of Wave Force once a few hours have passed. Now it would be easier to form spatial techniques, but harder to control them.
Then in this case… your initial recommendations need to be changed.
You compose a new set of graphics, with improved accuracy, and send them to Meyer.
Hmm, taking into account the degrading spatial conditions, the risk of using, or being the target of Corrosion as well the general complications in use of other manipulation techniques…
You compose a new set of graphics, with improved accuracy, and send them to Meyer.
Accounting for and predicting multitarget reactions, using the wild Impeller partitions of the other participants— though with the careful spacing and tight control of the other competitors, a difficult prospect— to your own advantage…
This may take a minute.
You compose a new set of graphics, with improved accuracy, and— the channel is closed.
"Alright, Anna. I am declaring myself a kinaesthetic learner," declares Instructor Meyer, sticking out her hand, "Revision two, movement set two hundred and thirty, path variation eight leading into set five hundred; I'm having trouble with it. Can you demonstrate for me?"
But revision two is now two major revisions out of date— but, if it's just a rote movement like that, then no problem.
You grasp her hand and wait for Meyer to attack, then appropriately demonstrate the countermoves as described.
"Alright, now for five hundred, let's try the variations leading into the nine hundreds."
Sure.
"From nine hundred, let's go through the four kays."
Movement set four thousand? That set is a low probability set since one competitor should have won.
"That's an undeveloped set, there's no proper terminus for the branches."
"The end state could lead back into the seven hundreds or one thousand two hundreds right? Just direct it whichever way, update me live."
You have enough spare capacity, you can do that.
You weaken your own Impeller significantly, emulating the preconditions for the four thousandths move set and allow Meyer to push forwards, suggesting different methods of attack as the two of you explored which Impeller moves would be most appropriate in the current situation, except—
"That's a ten count, Meyer. You've lost."
Instructor Madrigal taps on Meyer's Impeller.
Oh, right. You belatedly release Meyer's thumb from under your own. The two of you busy yourselves for a moment with smoothing out the terrain around you and cooling down molten rock.
"Sorry Instructor, that was just the most likely outcome from all the plausible developments."
Instructor Meyer doesn't seem displeased at all, smothering a few fires with her Impeller and grinning up at you, "See, Anna? That wasn't too bad, was it? Having a teaching match?"
Wait. You— you were tricked!
But it actually wasn't bad?
Mmmmrgh
You spin on a heel, pouting, and studiously ignore the Instructor for a moment, reaching further out with your Impeller, filling in some craters and levelling a few newly made hills. With this many high powered Impellers around, it would quickly become a mess again, but you needed something to do while digesting the last few minutes.
"No… it wasn't too bad," you finally admit, but—
Instructor Meyer leans close and claps a hand on your arm, "Just keep it slow, and you will be fine. Anyways, we're about done for the day, how do you feel like trying again next weekend?"
You sigh, but nod. You felt… fine. There had been no impulses. Keeping it to a calculated and pre-determined, uh, lesson plan, managed to remove all feeling of threat from the game. It was just procedure. So, it wasn't too bad, but—
Teaching the Instructors? Is this okay? It doesn't feel okay.
"Besides, you think anyone will be wondering why you don't bother competing with other cadets after this?" muses Instructor Meyer, shooting a shadowed glance towards some of the nearby Second and Third year cadets who are watching on.
"…oh, was this just—"
"No, don't misunderstand. You really will be helping us out here as well. Practice makes perfect applies to us as well, we would be grateful. We are. That I could give those little snits a slap about the head is just a bonus."
"…Alright. I… thanks. Thank you, Instructor."
You slowly squeeze Meyers hand and step back, turning and preparing to return to Perth.
XxXxXxXxXx
You have discovered a research dead end. The warrior-monster character cannot perform group Impeller actions. This limit may be removed by special actions or plot events.
XxXxXxXxXx
Your somewhat buoyant mood sinks as you head for the next elective class on your list, the Foreign Languages elective class, but spy a pair of people in your way through the cameras.
Ehhh…
You flutter back and forth across the hallway a little, but you can't really see an efficient route around them. Maybe you can come back tomorrow? They might just wait for you here again though.
With a sigh of resignation, you continue on your path.
Spotting you, cadets Sibel Neuer and Mindy Hatono drop into simultaneous bows. They're both even wearing a full set of dress whites.
"Valkyrie Sanchez, I am here on behalf of the crafty— uh, crafting class to deliver an invitation," the president of the Crafting elective class intones, her solemn atmosphere damaged by the slight slip.
You give an awkward smile and nod back as formally as you can. They sure are crafty; they learnt pretty quickly that you were not someone to turn tail and run from a reasonable request. You might turn it down, but teleporting away from someone just trying to talk to you is just rude, so you've forced yourself to stay around and listen as long as they aren't being obnoxious. Now they've changed their approach to be polite and unobtrusive. How crafty. They aren't aggravating, not really, but their enthusiasm, it's way too strong for you. At least this time it's just two members on the lookout for you.
You take the letter, prepared to politely turn down yet another invitation to give a lecture, but pause when you scan its contents.
It's an invitation to Beijing, for a longer term collaborative work between the crafting elective classes of the Beijing Valkyrie Academy and a panel of UN engineers with regards to your Heavy Particle Projectors. It looks like enough work has been done that plans for serious production planning could start being drawn up for some components, though there are still some serious roadblocks in the production methods for the most vital features in the acceleration rail, ammunition generation and configuration, and system reconfiguration and synergy design.
…Uh.
Those are all three of the distinguishing features of your cannons versus standard model particle projectors. Are they saying they're stuck and have nothing to progress on at the moment?
You're immediately tempted to attend, but you hold back on an immediate answer. You're not sure on the exact timing of your UNHCR missions, and those missions in particular you do not want to miss.
"I will check my schedule closer to the event. I may be busy. I see there is no option for remote attendance?"
Uncharacteristically remaining serious, Sibel nods solemnly.
"Under my role as the deputy director of UNARD Oceania, I am informing you that the Relativistic Particle Projectors and the Onium Capacitors have been raised to Beta Eight, Schema Blue One October First. Further transmissions and details of the projects must be through direct laser communications."
Hmm? Strange, why the sudden increase in secrecy? A quick check through your own service record and attached projects doesn't show any direct changes related to you. A development you are not aware of then.
"Most of the membership of the crafting elective class do not meet this classification rating," you half state, half ask.
"We all had a long chat with UNOMI and we have been elevated in Blue Schema all the way to Beta Eight for just this project," nods Sibel, "Rumour is that there's been an incident in Santiago; not sure of the details, neither is my source."
You search for it as soon as Sibel mentions it, but aside from news of an unexpected power outage to the highest ring of the elevated Arcology, there is no particular news on the Wider Area Network. Santiago Arcology also did not file any AARs. Officially, the second of March was a normal day, nothing happened. Record of generator activity, publicly available requisition requests for resupply of armaments for the Santiago police department and missing inventory reports from the UN Air Force suggest differently.
"Okay," you reply, perturbed, "I should be able to visit, but I cannot lock down a timeframe at this moment."
Sibel nods, but she doesn't leave.
"Um, Anna, how is Yukari doing?" she asks carefully.
Yukari? She's—
Sitting on a beach, one hundred and twenty six kilometers north of Perth, according to her transponder and a quick look through the eyes of a patrolling sensor drone. Resolution insufficient for further analysis. Her status on the Flight's chat is set as away.
How is she doing?
You… don't know. She seems happy with the flight.
"I'm not sure," you admit, "She seems ok."
Sibel smiles slightly, "I'm glad to hear that. With that whole business with Malik, I was worried. She was part of our year originally, but after transferring back down, she hasn't really reconnected with the rest of us, I think she doesn't want to. If she's happy now, if you can, Anna... please look after her."
She bows again, then glides away on the travelators.
Taking care of Yukari? What— how does she need taking care of? She asked you to take care of Koujirou and Setsuna, or teach them, at least. You can't say you've made good progress there.
You… are not the person for this. Why did Sibel ask you to try to do this? What should you do? You need a plan.
You need to look after Yukari. So, first find out if she is ok. If not, you need to deal with whatever it is which is making her not ok.
First, investigate.
Trawls across social media come up relatively empty. She is involved with a few Third Year flights, but peripherally, mostly at get togethers. Checks across guest lists reveal she declines most invitations. Outside of your flight, Yukari doesn't appear to have any close friends. Any… extant close friends. Close friends. Do you count as one? One recent disciplinary event on record for Rokusabe Yukari, involving Javeria Malik. Details unclear, Arcology recording systems malfunctioned. Resulted in no physical injuries to either party, minor damage to Arcology hallways. No complaint lodged by Rokusabe Yukari, case was closed at her request after both cadets completed some tasks served as disciplinary action.
You clench your jaw at that last one, but unhappy push it aside given Yukari's requests.
Besides this event, already lodged as resolved, circumstantial evidence is inconclusive.
…
>>"Are you ok?"
You message Yukari. Once she sets herself as available on flight chat, she will update you.
So far, good progress.
Now, onwards for the Foreign Languages elective class—
>>"I'm fine, Anna, taking some time off right now. Why'd you ask?"
Yukari is apparently still looking at her messages despite being listed as away.
You are now presented with a dilemma. Yukari expresses that she is not in any way not ok. One issue resolved, another created. In asking you rather than Yukari herself, Sibel appears to be asking for discretion with her own concern. Abruptly expressing concern aroused suspicion. You have not prepared an adequate excuse in preparation. You require a deflection. No, textual log too clearly in focus compared to vocal conversation. You will carefully construct a statement that omits some facts but remains factually sound.
>>"I uh, was— um, trying to help you out. Because you have helped me quite often. I am reciprocating."
>>"Oh, Anna. No need to worry, I'm doing alright. Thanks for asking."
The channel closes. You pace back and forth in the hallway, considering the message. Is the issue resolved? Should you update Sibel Neuer?
No.
Issue remains outstanding. Additional action is required.
You push it into your queue, and eye it uneasily.
You don't know what to do.
For now, vacillate on the issue, visit elective class. Possibly seek inspiration.
You enter, and a wall of language meets you.
People are chatting in every language, over all sorts of topics.
There are two major huddles in the classroom, one around a series of computers, another around the holographic display board. You quickly recognise the code on the computers; it's your translator program, the general purpose one in use by the UN Armed Forces. One module of it at least, relating specifically of translations of a dialect of Chinese into English. The holoboard displays some mathematical transformations. After a moment of looking, you figure them to be partial encryption schemas.
A ripple of movement runs across the classroom as other cadets notice, and glance over. After a short moment, one cadet separates from the huddle around the holodisplays and waves you over.
Oh, you recognise her. Callsign Rhythms in April. She was one of the cadets working on the reconstruction project in northern Asia with you, often helping Sandra with paperwork and optimising the software for the network hubs. In an inversion from the usual, she only kept her callsign visible, rather than her name, so it's only today that you see her name is Yang Yue.
"Valkyrie Anna, long time no see. I'm Yang Yue, assistant cat herder. Welcome to the Languages class. There's two things we always end up doing here: translation, and cryptology. Have you tried either as a hobby?"
What. Assistant cat herder? Who is the head cat herder then? Instructor Lewis? She has it on her qualifications? She doesn't own cats, though?
…
Uh, right. Moving along.
"I have both the United Nations translation program and their communications packages." You reply to Cadet Yang.
"Well yes, I mean, everyone has the machine translator and the comm ciphers— ok," She cuts herself off with a shake of her head, "Do you have any feedback for our work? Any opinion on how to improve the speed and fluidity of the translator in particular?"
You take a moment to review. It has worked quite well so far, but you have not spent a lot of time talking to people who speak anything other than English. Or that much time talking to people at all.
There is one thing that stands out in your mind however.
"Does the translator program really need such an in-depth translation of curse words?"
"Curse wor— you mean swearing? From a completeness perspective, of course. What's wrong?"
"It's… rude. Isn't it?"
Cadet Yang stares at you silently for a second, eyebrows climbing into her hairline. The silence stretches and quickly grows awkward as she opens her mouth a few times only to abort her responses.
"Well, I mean, it has to be," she finally replies, "If the translator doesn't convey the contextual vulgarity of what the other party is expressing, it may lose nuance or urgency. The nuance subroutine is one of the most important and hardest to modify without breaking other modules. Like hearing antagonist and Antagonist, there's a reason the translator allows you to hear the capital letter. Another example, still relevant from centuries ago, you don't translate British English of 'We're in a spot of bother' directly into Australian English word for word; you have to reword it into something along the lines of 'We're in a shower of cunts, need help' or— what? What is it?"
You pull your hands off your ears, chagrined by your Impeller flawlessly transmitting her swearing to you.
"It's nothing," you mumble, drawing your Impeller back, "So, I have to keep the library of swear words?"
"Well, you can customise your library to reflect the nuance of your own preferences to take the edge off if you'd like, we'd be able to help with that. Wait a second. You're an Ace, if it's urgent enough to require swearing to convey, you can directly stream TACNET data through jamming from any source of comms in combat. You don't even have to talk to anyone."
If only.
"No," you shake your head emphatically, "I can't do that. I have to be able to talk to people. I need to be able to talk to people and understand what they are saying. Otherwise… when I'm wrong, there will be… misunderstandings."
Cadet Yang does not pry, succinctly nodding and rerailing the conversation.
"Well then, we can customise a translation package for you. It should be a pretty painless process. I'll let the linguist group know."
XxXxXxXxXx
Painless. Painless?
Language is hard.
Personalised social contextual analysis, which lay at the heart of the translator, was harder, and far, far away from your area of expertise to boot.
You had to talk so much. Provide your social norms and expectations against hundreds of hypotheticals. That was exhausting.
You were so tired that by the end, when the other focus of the class, the cryptology group, asked you for any experience for Antagonists communication, you dumped them your records of the few interceptions you managed inside the Saskatoon breach and fled while the class descended into pandemonium. It probably wasn't something they expected. Inside the breach was the only time you've ever heard Antagonists talk. If it was talk. You're not sure. Neither is the UN apparently. Inside the breaches is the only time Antagonists comm chatter had ever been detected. Well, you're sure the class can figure it out.
You fell asleep and actually slept through your alarm for the Monday morning classes. A plea and permission from the Arcology for a teleport directly into the classroom was the only reason you weren't late this morning.
It's evening now, and the Flight is practicing after hours, but you still feel a buzz at the back of your head from all the talking you had to endure yesterday evening, but at least you're no longer acting out the motions in a bleary daze.
But, well, here, in helping the flight practice, you don't think it would have made too much difference regardless of your condition.
"It will work, as long as there is material to visualize a solid connection."
Shuri waves her hand, tossing a handful of sand— and a long fan shaped crater explodes into existence in front of herself. Five hundred meters away, a target is obliterated, dashed to pieces by her Impeller. To her side, Yukari attempts to emulate the maneuver, but her Impeller loses cohesion and the attack fails before reaching more than a hundred meters, molten grains of sand simply evaporating into the air. Today, Sandra rotated the Flight off from the simulators to allow other flights to use the booking, so the Flight is aboveground, congregated in one of the arenas.
"Physical materials won't be helping you much anymore at your current Impeller strength. Begin with the full whips cord and halve the total length each time. You should be able to overcome the mental block very quickly."
Yukari nods and replaces her Impeller whip, carefully cutting the whip in half, before attempting the same attack. While Shuri gave Yukari pointers, you are sitting well to the side, helping the three other members of your flight.
"Cmon, Koji, puuuuuuuuush!"
"I am! I am!"
"Puuuuuuuuuuush!"
"We are trying our very best, Setsuna. Your encouragement is very welcome, but unneeded."
Juggling a dozen eggs above their heads each, the other three members strain, trying to push your Impeller back. You don't budge an inch. Well, not backwards anyway, but the Impeller pressure from your team members tickles. It tickles a lot. You squirm in place, doing your best not to scratch the itch on your Impeller or burst out in laughter. It's like having your finger licked by a particularly friendly dog, but you can't just laugh at your flight mates; that will not be nice.
"She's losing it! C'mon just a bit more!"
"Nnnnnngh! We're going to budge Anna this time, just a millimeter!"
"Ah— ! Prepare to be thrown, secure your eggs!"
"Hah?" "Wha?"
You can't hold it anymore. Your defending Impeller trembles mightily to scratch the itch as you clap your hands over your mouth to smother the giggles. With your field being what your three teammates were pushing on, the abrupt move sends all three flying away.
"Rescue the eggs at once!"
"On it! On it!" "Yes, your highness!"
"Setsuna, once again, I don't hold such hereditary titles!"
The three adjust their tumbles, reaching around and catching the eggs with their Impeller with varying degrees of success. Setsuna and Sandra are both meticulous with their control of Impeller, managing to catch the scattered eggs without breaking any that they catch, but their ranges of Impeller is short, neither cadet able to reach much further past three meters with precision. Koujirou's Impeller is much larger in range, but his control is much worse. Bright green water splashes inside Impellers as training eggs crack under rough handling and some splat into the floor. Ironically, the dropped eggs have a near equal survival rate to the ones Koujirou catches, the soft sand allowing a few to roll to a gentle stop.
You bring yourself under control, and throw a desperate look at Shuri, pleading for some other method that you could help. She catches your glance, but only waves a hand, a clear sign to continue.
Koujirou, Sandra and Setsuna glide back over, looking down at the ground. Shuri had drawn a grid of line in the sand, and tasked you with protecting it with a single layer of Impeller. Against your little domain, five meters in radius, she tasked your flight mates to push your field back as far as they could and erase the grid marking while making sure not to damage any of the eggs they are juggling inside their own fields. It was fine at first, but once the other three began trying to use Impeller disruption techniques, having to hold your own field still and avoid countering made your Impeller itch like mad.
"Did we make any progress, Anna?" Sandra asks, leaning over to look at the grid squares drawn into the sand.
"Ack, still not a millimeter of progress, drat," mutters Setsuna as you shake your head.
Koujirou just frowns and scratches his chin, looking thoughtfully at you.
"W— well, I did feel somewhat more pressure," you say, "And you rescued more eggs, and uh, none of the eggs broke while you were pushing."
Shuri said that you should be trying to actively fend them off with your one dedicated partition, but it didn't feel fair at all. A single one of your Impeller partitions is up to the task of holding out against the combined efforts of your three teammates, so fighting to keep them away would be completely overkill.
"Hang on a sec everyone, I have a plan," Koujirou declares with an upraised finger.
He falls silent, communicating with the other two with private comms.
On the side, Yukari manages to attack the five hundred meter target, this time with the cord channeling her Impeller whips broken down into four segments. The steady beat of her attacks and the air splitting crack of the cords breaking the sound barrier followed by the distant boom of the targets exploding helps you center yourself. You sit straight in your chair and steadily stare down your flight. You expect to be able to withstand whatever plan Koujirou has for this exercise without any issue.
…
It's been a minute, and Durga actually begins to express concerns with its nudges. You mentally wave it off, still gasping; while you don't need to breathe, your stomach still aches. Slowly righting yourself with your Impeller, you repair the smashed chair at your side, and rub your tummy. You didn't think you could laugh that hard. In front, Sandra and Setsuna cheer, tossing Koujirou into the air and catching him. It's a little awkward with all three in their frames, but the three ignore the occasional crash of contacting Impeller.
"Hip-hip, hooray!" the three laugh.
"That wasn't f-funny," you complain, sitting back down and staring disconsolately the smooth field around the chair, not a single line left in sight.
Who would tickle a poor girl into giving up? Tickling? The utter animals. You can't believe Sandra okay'd the plan. That was completely unfair. Just because you are ticklish doesn't mean that's the strategy that Koujirou should have picked.
"Ready to go again, Anna?" asks Koujirou, rubbing his hands together and looking eager.
Breaking out from your bout of self pity, you try to compose yourself. That was, you had to admit, a good tactic.
Okay.
You extend more components from Durga and redraw the lines. Your Impeller swells as the hazy, black mist of your solar dynamos boil off the surface of your frame.
"You may begin when ready," you declare.
"…Anna, would I be correct to assume that you are upset by our choice of strategy?" Sandra asks, pinned to the wall of the Arena next to a yelling Koujirou and a grumbling Setsuna. Green water runs down their frames and the arena wall from smashed eggs, drawing out interesting shapes and patterns.
You don't respond. It's completely unreasonable for them to expect you to be able to hear them while they are pinned to the wall by your Impeller a little over four hundred meters away. You shouldn't be able to hear a thing.
"Yep, she's mad," affirms Setsuna.
"I can't believe it worked, and I can't believe Anna got pissed," laughs Koujirou.
"Well then, I suppose we continue on with the same plan of attack?" Sandra asks.
Uh—
"Yeah, she is holding us up with her Impeller right?" Setsuna experimentally flexes her own Impeller and notes the clash.
Wait—
"Alright, same plan, guys. Think of feathers!" yells Koujirou.
N-nooooooooooo!
…
Shuri zips around, cleaning up after the flight, returning damaged target dummies for processing, sifting up eggs fragments from the ground and smoothing the ground out.
You'd normally help, but today… you feel like just lying down flat on the ground. Shuri passes by and glides over your prone form without a second glance.
Hmph
She always had a word of advice for the other members of your flight, but she didn't say a thing as you were defeated. Twice. You lost twice in a row. Where's your advice?
Sandra kneels down next to you, lowering her head to look you in the eyes. You puff out your cheeks and turn your head to look the other way. How could she allow this to happen to you, you can't believe this.
Sandra waits for a moment, and when you continue looking the other way, pouting, she sighs a little and reaches out, patting your head. You tense, but she isn't tickling you through your Impeller again, so you allow it.
"Come now, Anna. Don't you feel at least a little bit of joy that your students managed to finally win in an exercise against you?"
…Maybe. It was pretty clever of Koujirou.
"Not like this. I don't want to lose from tickling," you mutter into the ground.
Sandra continues patting your head, but with the Impellers shoving against each other, it is sort of noisy.
Still, it wasn't too bad.
"That was so uncool," you finally admit, "Losing to… tickling is so— It makes me look stupid."
Sandra hums, thinking for a moment, "I don't think so, Anna. It is perfectly normal for you to be a little ticklish. We wouldn't think you were being stupid to lose to tickling. You'll know what to expect for next time."
You grumble into the sand. Exactly how are you supposed to resist tickling? Maybe tickle them first? Who knows. You don't even want to think about it. There're plenty of ways you could prevent an attacker from using that style of Impeller disruption in a serious situation, but using any of those methods on your friends— no, no no no, not going to happen.
"Ah, Anna, I want to let you know, there is another reconstruction mission. I will be heading out and back intermittently over the next month. I want you to excuse yourself from this mission, at least for the incipient stages."
You turn over and sit up, frowning at Sandra.
"Why?"
"Thanks to your help, we're ahead of schedule for reconstruction projects within Asia. The United Nations Central Government has decided to reactivate the east Australian arcology of Sydney with the surplus of resources we have on hand," Sandra explains.
You nod, rapidly contextualising the recent movements of UN military and industrial resources. Sydney? A quick overview of damage reports suggested the Arcology was completely annihilated. Was there anything left to salvage? It would be an incredible amount of work to reactivate. So… why are you being delayed?
"I would be able to help at every stage of a reconstruction, why do you need me to stay back for approximately a week?"
"Our defeat at Sydney was total. Due to vast amount of civilian and military casualties incurred during the final battle of Sydney and the chaos of our retreat to Melbourne, the Arcology is not fully surveyed," Sandra says grimly, "Considerable numbers of the deceased may still be present within the Arcology. I do not wish to force you to join the clean up effort."
There is a faint tremble in your hands. You take a moment to force them still. There is no need for you to stay back, you'll be fine. Objectively speaking, the amount of time saved by your presence in a clean- in the clean… it would- it would be better if you are there helping- if you…
"…When should I join the mission?"
"I will notify you, once the reconstruction effort begins in full. Here are the full details of the assignment."
Sandra passes on a set of orders to you. Interestingly, they aren't from her office in the UNHCR, but rather the Oceania subdivision of the organization. It's also a direct order, rather than a request for your hours as a volunteer.
"In addition, I have been looking into your general legal standing," Sandra changes track, "It is complicated, more so than I was expecting. You were, technically speaking, a refugee-"
What?!
"-rather than a citizen of a UN constituent, so given your section fifty five status, the UNHCR previously held the authority to levy your economic capacity to whichever UN projects are in need of it. However, you are a citizen now, and enrolled in the UN Armed Forces, so you and your immediate relations are exempt from civic conscription. If you receive orders from UN civil officials, you may feel free to ignore them if you so wish."
"So I'm not a refugee right?" you demand.
"You are not. You have more than enough military and social credit, and now qualify as a full fledged UN citizen," Sandra assures you.
You relax and sit back, then jolt straight back up.
"What about Setsuna, Koujirou and Yukari? They are all refugees?" you ask, the results of a quick search alarming you.
"Presuming they do not volunteer for any social programs and continue with only their military courses, at the start of their third year in the Academy, whence their first tour of service of two years ends, Koujirou and Setsuna will be granted full citizenship. Yukari has some additional social credit, so she will be able to claim citizenship this August," Sandra replies.
Good, that's very good. Being a refugee is- there's… nothing good about being a refugee.
"As for the military chain of command, you, as the Valkyrie Ace, the number one of the Three Hundred, are equal to the highest authority in all situations that military law applies. This nebulously extends into situations outside of where you are directly engaged in combat, such as while on standby for deployment, and transferring for deployment to another theatre. It may even apply while you are completely uninvolved in any combat situation, as various decrees have established the entire surface of the Earth and the space around as a battlefield, but-" Sandra pauses.
She drums her finger on her thigh, thinking over her words, "It is not clear exactly how much of this authority is bound to the position of the Rank One Valkyrie and how much of it is bound to Jatayu Sen personally. The legalities all presume and are drafted such that Valkyrie Sen would hold the apex position in perpetuity. It's an unresolved issue at the moment, I've put through a case to the Military Courts, but there does not exist an urgent need for the moment to clarify it. Leaving the judgement in the air actually may be beneficial for you in the future."
Sandra leans forward, placing her hands on your knees.
Umm… you lean backwards. Sandra doesn't pursue, and draws back slightly, but she leaves her hands on your knees, leaning into you, looking up right into your face.
"I just want you to know, Anna. If you are ever demanded, ordered to do something, you can say no," she says.
"Yes! Yep, I got it. I know," you babble, leaning back a bit further. Gosh, Sandra's hair is so glossy, how does she do it? It's beyond mere chemicals, surely.
"Good," smiles Sandra, she stands and offers you a hand, "Come along now, it's time for dinner."
"Thanks I am okay I will make my own way down thank you very much I appreciate it," you call as you crab away with your Impeller and practically throw yourself into the tunnel leading to the elevators back into the Arcology.
There has been far too much close contact for you for the past few days.
XxXxXxXxXx
A few days later, Sandra makes ready to leave. To everyone's surprise, less than an hour before her departure, Shuri declares her intent to join Sandra for the first section of the reconstruction this time. Caught rather flat footed, the flight gets together to see the pair off at the transit station.
"So you're both leaving for a while?" asked Setsuna.
"Yep. I'll be back when Anna sets out," nodded Shuri.
"Who's going to teach us then?" piped up Koujirou.
"Just a couple of weeks, you have plenty of help already anyway. More than anyone else in your year, you'll deal," Shuri shrugs.
"You forgetting someone here, Koujirou?" Yukari interjects before Koujirou could reply, patting his head a bit more firmly than comfortable.
"Oh yeah, course, but well, y'know-" "Yessss?" "Uh, nothing. Yup. Nothing at all." "As your older sister, I cannot accept being dismissed in such a way! Come, we start immediately." "Woah, woah!" "Don't forget about me, onee-sama!" "See ya Sandra, Shuri! Take care! You coming, Anna?" "In a moment, Koujirou."
The three head off towards the simulators, waving their goodbyes to Sandra and Shuri, Yukari dragging Koujirou by the back of his collar and Setsuna primly sitting on Koujirou's ankles like he is a snow sled.
…no one even mentioned that you could try getting better at teaching and take care of them, even though Yukari had asked you to take care of those two at the start of the year.
Did you let her down too much with your bad teaching?
Sigh
You turn to Shuri as she slouches against the wall next to Sandra.
"Why are you going this time?"
"Because you aren't going," Shuri replies, "I'll be going to make sure nothing happens to her."
She jerks her chin in Sandra's direction.
"Something is going to happen to Sandra?" you ask. There had been plenty of clues within Sandra's service history, but she had never mentioned -and you had found no clues towards- an ongoing threat to her outside of the Antagonists.
And if one did exist? Well, then you'll end it.
"There is no credible threat to me, Anna. Shuri is being overprotective," Sandra replies, shooting an exasperated moue at Shuri, "Shuri, I have let you know that you do not need to feel so obliged."
Shuri nods, but makes no move to step off the shuttle away from Sandra.
"As you do then, Shuri. Anna, as said, I'll send you a message once the setup is completed," Sandra waves at you.
>>[Stand clear, doors closing.]
You wave back as the doors close and the shuttle departs for the surface.
XxXxXxXxXx
In the week that followed, despite Yukari's best efforts, as a third year with her own tasks, she did not have the same amount of time to provide personalised coaching to the pair as Shuri did. There is also some awkwardness within the Flight as to who should be leading in the absence of both Sandra and Shuri. Sandra officially designated Setsuna as her second, but Setsuna is content to follow Yukari's calls. The older girl seems rather determined to defer or include you in the decision making process, but Sandra already set Setsuna as her second, so you end up abstaining and shifting the decisions back to her. It was a silly cycle, and one that causes you to be glad that Sandra is normally in charge.
With you still running intensive modelling of ways to further extend the range of Wave Force, it's the weekend again before you know it and you're waiting for the call from Sandra, which was estimated to arrive any day now.
The flight is eating breakfast when Koujirou dramatically finishes his with a click of cutlery, placing his chopsticks firmly down next to his plate, then slides over to a stop next to you on the bench. You twitch in surprise and move a little to give him space. He slides closer again and moves to throw a friendly arm over your shoulder.
You slide all the way off the bench and around the round table to sit on your Impeller, "Yes Koujirou, what is it?"
He slides closer again, now also sitting on your Impeller, but stays at a comfortable distance this time, "So, Anna, I need help with long range combat, mostly with intercepting stuff and not taking as many hits as I close. Can you give me a hand? Yuka-nee and Setsuna are really good at theory learning, but I'm better with getting hands on, and no one else here can blast beams like you. You up for some practical demonstrations of longer range combat?"
Ah! This is your chance! Koujirou had been getting cheekier since that silly tickle contest, but now you can properly prove your reliability as a teacher.
"Of course I can. I can demonstrate many methods to defeat and counteract long range fire without the use of specific components."
"Cool, can we start today?"
"Absolutely," you nod, searching for and booking an appropriate stage- done, "I will be demonstrating some spatial techniques, so I have reserved unallocated land sector two thirty one. We may proceed when you are ready."
"Sure, sure, hey Setsu, Yuka-nee, I'll be heading off with Anna for some practice today. We'll be back…" Koujirou shoots you a questioning look.
"We can return at lunchtime," you provide.
"Wait a sec Koji," Setsuna asks, "You two? Alone?"
Koujirou raises an eyebrow, then grins widely. He slides closer to you and again tries to throw an arm over your shoulder. His attempt fails as you lift Yukari up and switch places with her, using her a shield.
"That's right, problem?" smirks Koujirou, hugging Yukari with one arm and leaning his chin on Yukari's shoulder as if that was his plan the whole time.
"No, why would I be concerned about what you do in your spare time? Don't come back to me for help if you fall behind in your studies again," snaps Setsuna.
Hey… you're not that bad of a teacher… are you?
"Kiddo, don't tease her like this," Yukari admonishes as she palms him away.
"Fine, fine. So Anna, when are we heading out?" Koujirou asks.
"Right now," you collect yourself and nod, "See you in a few hours, Yukari, Setsuna."
"Stay safe, both of you," Yukari waves.
"See ya Anna. Good luck Koujirou, don't send yourself to the med bay again," waves Setsuna.
You're turning away after putting Yukari back in her seat, so you don't think anyone catches the flinch.
"Hmph, don't worry, I already promised Anna, she won't hurt me," Koujirou brags.
You relax slightly. Reckless as he is, impossible to guarantee as the promise is, the thought helps.
XxXxXxXxXx
With a few minutes of travel, the two of your are standing under the harsh Australian sun.
"So, I looked it up and that place is pretty far. We taking a plane, or just flying there?"
"I'll be teleporting us. One moment."
"Oh cool! Y'know, I've never teleported before, so this is going to be-"
Shift.
"-my first time- woah! Slow down Anna, let me enjoy the experience too."
You glance quizzically at Koujirou. No one you know could described teleporting as enjoyable. Most found it unsettling and some felt the shift to be nauseating. Koujirou, insulated as he is by your Impeller, just looks around wide eyed, sensor ports around his helmet and extremity hardpoints wide open and taking in data.
"That is so damn cool. I thought there are supposed to be pretty obvious spatial distortions before and after a teleport? I'm not really reading anything here."
"Your sensor suite lacks fidelity, the local spatial geography is offset by ten to the negative eight percent to the Earth natural median at this time of the year."
Koujirou stares at you.
"Can… you give me a relatable example of how small that is?"
An immensely crude joke surges to the tip of your tongue and only your own shock at the thought allows you to bite it back.
Ahem. Okay, no.
That is very rude.
Also untrue. By statistical averages- Ah! No uh, you didn't, you didn't mean uhhhh- you- you were confirming his gender! It was a valid action to solve a reasonable query!
Also it invites counterattack about your own physique. Truthful counterattack at that. You unconsciously cross your arms over your chest, faintly annoyed at how easily your palms slot into your elbows. A bit of obstruction would have been nice. If you change the behaviour of Durga's plating to be always solid rather than malleable in deference to your own actions- alright.
Not productive.
Proposed course of action also avoids fundamental issue at hand.
Not that Koujirou has ever commented, but well- you need to be reasonably confident about being able to finish a fight before starting one.
…
Being around Koujirou may be getting to you.
Wait, no, y-you can't afford to look like a ditz here! You have got to show just how good a teacher you are! You expand your Impeller field outwards with the help of your energy dynamos, and extend one of your heavy particle projectors out a few kilometers away.
"Okay! I'll show you a bunch of things you can do to not get shot!"
"Awesome!"
"Here's the basic one. Syifa used this against Setsuna to win their first round. You make a mini-Impeller volume far ahead of your normal field, and it will ablate incoming reactive attacks, or set them off early as Syifa demonstrated."
You detach a small sphere of defensive Impeller from one of your partitions a hundred meters ahead of the two of you, making it opaque to allow Koujirou to see. After a moment of waving your shield around to draw attention to it, you fire a low power plasma blast your projector, taking care to set the projectile to decay into low wavelength visible light upon impact.
The glowing red pulse zooms in and smashes into your shield, erupting into mostly harmless light.
"Crap! Where'd that come from?" Koujirou yelled, lifting his own weaponry in the direction of your HPP and sliding into a defensive stance ahead of your with a pulse of thrust.
Aww, that's sweet of him, but really silly. Your Impeller is orders of magnitude more powerful than his. You gently push him back into his original bearing from you with your Impeller and explain.
"That's one of my cannons, I'm using it to demonstrate," you datalink with Koujirou and share your TACNET data.
"Four thousand meters? What are you using to extend your Impeller that far? Can you turn your black cloud thing transparent?"
"Close, but note quite, it's my cold and shiny mist," you smoothly adapt to Koujirou's terminology, explaining in a manner he would be able to understand.
"Ah righty, yeah, that's the one," Koujirou nods.
He gets it!
"Oh also, how come you like to extend your Impeller that far?" Koujirou asks, "The Instructors tell us to compress ours, so that it's stronger against attacks."
"Yes that's true, I use some pieces of Impeller for defence, but not these parts of my Impeller. They're useful for… "
A myriad of uses for an extended Impeller partition comes to mind, so rather than try to rank the most immediately useful, you decided to demonstrate.
A shift in your Impeller, and your storage opens just behind Koujirou. One of your spare Heavy Particle Projector barrels, disconnected from the firing chambers, extends out and pokes Koujirou gently in the small of his back.
With a high pitched yelp, Koujirou spins and flails.
"Holy sh-! You can do that?! Teleports behind you?! From h-how far away can you do that?"
There is no teleporting involved here, but it is true that teleporting within your own Impeller volume is very easy.
"Yes. Extended Impeller partitions are useful for a lot of things," you affirm, then wave your arm towards your first Heavy Particle Projector.
Koujirou easily reads the Implication of your gesture and after a moment of gaping, slowly asks, "So… you could extend your cannons- or your melee halberd and shank them from behind even if you are four klicks -or ever further- away?"
You shake your head at the idea, "Yes, but if they're only four kilometers away inside my Impeller, it's faster to shortcut to them, fly, and uh, 'shank' them from the front."
Koujirou swivels his head between the projector behind him, you, and in the direction of your other detached weapon.
"Right, uh, before anything else, can I defend against this? Someone just magicking up a weapon, or a nuke right up my bu- up my back?"
You immediately shake your head.
"Not yet. You don't have enough Impeller to keep such a large volume spread out."
"Tsk. Ok, one step at a time then, where were you heading, Anna?" Koujirou shakes his head ruefully.
You nod, glad that you seem to be doing an adequate job so far this time.
"Back to the Impeller shield technique. Its primary limitation is when there's a multitude of high intensity, short duration attacks like consecutive overcharged plasma caster bolts or burst fire from the hypervelocity cannon. Any multi-vector attack will also render the technique inefficient."
You forge ahead with the lesson, reinforcing your expansive Impeller and extending your own hypervelocity cannons near your heavy particle projector. Firing short bursts from both, you move their extension points around to simulate a strafing attacker. With your energy dynamos spread out through your perimeter Impeller, it is easy to adjust the energy of the dumb projectiles down to safe levels.
You move your shield around, making sure to slow down enough that some of the shots pass by to whiz through the target point.
Actually, visually speaking, this isn't a very effective demonstration, maybe placing a visual decoy or Impeller ghost- no, actually, you can just create an empty frame, you have enough spare components for sure. You construct and then extend a spare frame of armour into your target area, then adjust your Impeller so to simulate the setup a normal Valkyrie would use. With the glut of materials you have had access to, you can even afford to equip the spare frame with spare barrels and outputs from your weapon systems. Still technically a visual decoy, but a significantly advanced one.
If it wasn't for the fact that you had to be linked to this decoy with Impeller for the spare components to function, this would be great for strategic misdirection. Wait- maybe with gating- you can look into the viability of this another time.
The shots that pass by your shield now ricochet off the 'primary' Impeller of the decoy, making a much more impactful demonstration. You're going to name this one... uh, Durga number 2. You'll find a better name later, something really impressive sounding, something like…
Uh…
No, never mind, Durga Two is a fine name.
"When under concerted attack like this, using a multitude of targeted shields may not be possible for you. Rather than a targeted shield, an extended shell can be used as a form of spaced armour. A simple alternative would be to extend physical shielding from storage to take the brunt of the attack."
You demonstrate, expressing out more spare plating from your storage into the air around Durga Two. The spare plating swarms around the fame, intercepting the incoming attacks.
"You have to be careful of conservation of energy, if one of the attacks impacts your physical defence hard enough that your ablative armour is thrown into your main Impeller and triggers your automatic defence, it becomes an inefficient technique."
To demonstrate, you extend another heavy particle projector along with your free floating one, combine them into a double configuration, drain one of your capacitors and fire a full power shot at Durga Two, setting the beam to convert entirely into kinetic impulse upon impact. The swarm of plating around the decoy jerk into position along the path of the attack, forming a sandwich of armour. Five plates completely fail in the face of the attack, their exotic construction failing in the face of an opposing exotic force, and the entire stack of armour is sent careening into your decoy, a shotgun spread of armour plating still carrying most of the attack's energy. Flashes erupt all over the decoy as the Impeller around it catches the shrapnel.
"It will still be better than directly intercepting the attack, but try to avoid it. Both my black mist and my cold mist are basically extensions of this technique."
"Woah… damn, that's cool. Hey, how many components can you extend anyway? I thought it's a real pain to have more than you need hanging about and doing stuff."
"A lot," you succinctly reply, "I don't usually, as it slows me down."
"Ah righty, the uh, thrust to weight problem, and the concentration limit, right?"
"Partially, more importantly, despite the increase in Impeller volume, your speed, no I mean, your reactions, and um, control- uh, fidelity remains static. You have more Impeller, but you can still only do just as much as before, just… harder. Your control is worse, basically. It's why Arcologies and Valkyrie Battleships are so slow and insensitive with their Impeller. Also if you don't have enough stuff, and try to put too much Impeller on too few… uh, things, it can also collapse. That's very bad. Extending more is good if you can stay in place and prepare, but staying still is… don't stay still. They will get past."
"Even with your range? From your Impeller readings, it looks like you can reach even further," Koujirou asks, his eyes scanning down through the TACNET display.
"I can. Didn't matter."
Something in your tone causes Koujirou to pause, and he simply nods.
"Still, with this much Impeller ready to go and your speed, I see why you don't ever requisition drones, Anna."
You acknowledge his compliment of your efficiency in using resources-
Wait, you're getting side tracked again. You're here to try and help Koujirou shield himself, but, how do you help Koujirou practice? He said that he's a practical learner, so practicing under fire- that would require a simulator. You didn't end up demonstrating any techniques that required spatial manipulation either… darn it. Did you waste time by bringing Koujirou out here? Tricks such as compressing real space volume are still well outside Koujirou's abilities.
"Anyway Anna, I want to try that frame copying trick you're using," Koujirou says, looking excited, "That'll be so useful if I can get it down. Is it just like using a visual decoy? 'Cept you make a new frame inside your storage then get your Impeller to pretend it's your main frame?"
"Yes, that's right."
You nod, and wait, looking on, checking your immediate assessment that Koujirou won't be able to express an entire frame and move it around with his current Impeller capabilities. Koujirou's progress is very odd. Fast in some aspects and slow in others, completely different from both your own growth and that of the wider cadet cohort. Indeed, after a moment of concentration with his eyes closed, Koujirou's primary Impeller abruptly blooms outwards, vastly expanding in range to nearly fifty meters in radius, a seven fold increase in range. A white glow announces a copy of Kandakara emerging from Koujirou's storage. With your own field, you detect another two layers of Impeller appear, near identical to Koujirou's current field.
This is strange, no -a search confirms- this is unprecedented. To suddenly multiply Impeller field capacity- it is completely unheard of.
What is this?
The copy of Kandakara finishes expressing, and you note further oddities. The copy is shorter than Koujirou's primary by two centimetres and the proportions of the frame are different. The torso trunk is shorter, shoulders narrower, legs longer and hips wider. It looks like a frame for a girl. If it wasn't for the transparent full face visor showing the helmet is empty, you'd have thought that it was another Valkyrie who appeared.
Koujirou is a little girly, but nowhere near this extent. The decoy is also glaring at you. Head forwards, one leg thrown out, hips cocked and arms folded. Aggressive body language, but it's just an empty frame. You're not sure what to read from it.
What a strange resting pose.
"Oh, that's weird. It's changed back," Koujirou announces, sounding as surprised as you are.
"What do you mean?" you ask.
"I've had a look at the spare parts in my storage before, and they don't actually fit me. So I took them to a fab to get them resized, but they've changed back to their original size. Well, it doesn't seem to matter that much. When I try replacements, they instantly resize for me anyway."
You nod, filing it as another one of Koujirou's quirks.
"I'll name it… Hey Anna, can you play along for a sec?" Koujirou asks, clapping his hands and looking oddly gleeful, "I'm going to try and punch your copy with my copy, can you block it?"
… You nod, filing it as another one of Koujirou's quirks.
His decoy flies up to Durga Two, staring down your decoy. As much of a stare down as an obviously empty helmet can give an eyeless blank dome of a helmet anyway.
It's so weirdly human. You will call it K2, short for Kandakara Two.
"ORAAAA!" roars Koujirou, and K2 throws a wild haymaker at your decoy.
Wild, but very fast. Without a roughly baseline human inside, the frame can move at its maximum mechanical potential. You make a minimal adjustment to block the punch, nudging Durga Two to move upwards by 30 centimetres, changing the destination of the punch from the cheek to the chest.
Durga Two doesn't budge as the punch connects directly center of mass over your thickest armour. There is a crack of Impeller and faint sparks run across K2's arm as the nanocarbon muscles tear and overload from the strike stopping dead before full extension, Koujirou's Impeller unable to absorb the full shock.
" … Well, you didn't say anything, but it's pretty clear that punching is useless," Koujirou laughs slightly, putting an odd emphasis on his last word.
"I could have told you that," you helpfully suggest.
"Okay, thanks for letting me get that out of my system. How are we doing the shooting part?"
Koujirou sounds enthusiastic about it, but you feel a strong sense of aversion. You can tell its an empty frame, but even then…
"We'll be heading back to the Arcology and using a simulator," you declare.
"Oh, okay sure, lemme uh, get my stuff back," Koujirou said, sounding a little put out. Did he want to actually get shot at?
As usual, Koujirou perks up again quickly.
"Hey! Can you teleport slower this time? I want to see it properly this time around."
"You might feel sick," you warn.
"That's fine, doing something stupid despite warnings and then feeling sick for the next while is a privilege of our age!" beams Koujirou.
Uh, okay?
You teleport, drawing out the entrance -
Shift
- and exit.
"Woah…" whispers Koujirou.
Koujirou doesn't seem nauseated by the teleport but he does look dazed, staring into the distance.
"Koujirou?" you ask, concerned.
"Nah, sorry, that was just- wow," Koujrou mutters, still looking into the distance, "I'm not sure, but I thought I… saw something in between, in there."
You check your telemetry and your internal mental clock. Between your entrance and exiting the shift, no time passed at all. You check with Koujirou's datapad and find no discrepancy in time keeping. In between the entrance and exit of a shift is just the tunnel connection between here and there. It should be instantaneous, an overlap in space, and therefore, time. While a traveller could stay inside the overlap, that was dangerous and did not really constitute travel time. For something that could be seen during the overlap… there should not be anything. The spatial tunnel is sealed. To an observer solely within the shift, there is no spatial difference in flat, unaltered spacetime and that of the shift tunnel.
Theoretically.
"I didn't see anything, sorry," you shake your head, "Can you forward your frame log data? I might be able to analyse what you saw."
"It's not in there. Yeah nah, I- I dunno if I actually saw it or not," muttered Koujirou. Shaking his head, his eyes regain focus and he waves a hand, as if to brush away the memory, "Let's head to the sims. I want to see how much I can abuse that double frame thing."
You nod, heading down into the Sims with Koujirou, filing an open discussion on the forums of teleportation specialists you joined a few weeks ago.
>"Possible detection of unknown phenomenon between entrance and exit of teleportation."
XxXxXxXxXx
Special research discovery:
Target Rich Environment specialisation: Legion of One
XxXxXxXxXx
It's another early Monday morning when Sandra finally sends you a message asking for your assistance in the reconstruction of Sydney. After a quick word to your flight, you set out.
Thanks to the time zone differences and the speed limits, you're set to arrive as the sun begins to set behind you.
With plenty of time to think, you browse through the updated mission briefing Sandra passed on.
Unexpected delays in reconstruction. Requires your personal estimation of time required to reconstruct primary power generation, power distribution, and time required to clear large volumes of debris and set up docking collars for a new Arcology core. Previous construction schedule impossible to maintain. Previous bureau for reconstruction detained for investigation, currently schedule is ad hoc under various local section supervisors.
The people in charge of the reconstruction have been arrested? What? All of them? You look around and see an investigation ongoing from UN Public Order.
Sandra had just arrested everyone? No, investigation order is from Shuri. Shuri arrested everyone. Valkyries are police?
What the heck? Shuri's supposed to be there to help Sandra, not go around arresting people who are there to help Sandra.
Pushing the questions into your queue, you take a moment to browse Sydney's history itself.
Sydney Arcology was a Renaissance period design, dreamt up and realised in the short burst of prosperity and excess that humans enjoyed in the era after the discovery of the Valkyrie cores, but before First Contact with the Antagonists. As typical of that time, Sydney was extraordinarily ostentatious. The grand capital of the Pacific, one of the Great Australian Four. Along with Darwin in the north, Perth in the West and Melbourne in the South, Sydney was the pinnace of the East. A peak population of twenty five million and covering an area of four thousand, three hundred square kilometers, Sydney had been a boastful statement of what Valkyrie frames are capable of. You feel yourself somewhat agog at the sheer scale of… waste that was present in Sydney's design as compared to the relatively muted functionality of Perth.
The main body of the Arcology used to extend far to the east and out to sea, a gossamer web of residences simply floating above the ocean under the cover of a weather moderation field maintained purely through Higgs use. A long arch bridge and some weird, white triangular theatre, local attractions of the Pre-Impact city, had been salvaged and restored from the seabed, and placed at the mouth of the city, moving out further to sea as the city grew. Huge swaths of gardens and biomes supporting populations of exotic flora and fauna connected the web of houses. Not even apartments, houses. The majority of accommodation in Sydney used to be individual houses for family units or even individuals.
These grand mansions could sprawl across the ocean surface with over one thousand square meters of living space. Each.
You could have done a lot with a thousand square meters of tropical land.
A lot of people could have done with a thousand meters of land.
Hundreds.
Of course, after the Antagonists emerged, the Arcology withdrew to a more defensible form. The residential sections retracted towards the industrial core of the Arcology and the vacated space on the sprawling girders were converted to defence uses. A new residential area was hurriedly constructed on land, set half in a traditional pre Impact sprawl and half set underground like a proper armoured Arcology. The city had been converting itself further and further underground, until major Antagonists attacks began reaching Sydney in 56PI after the fall of New Zealand. Despite a fierce defence, the Arcology was declared a loss after nearly five hundred days of battle and the UN withdrew, bitterly leaving behind the funeral pyre of a million UNAF servicemen, seven hundred Valkyries and the five million remaining civilians trapped in the doomed city.
… You take a break, and focus on finishing your construction estimates, then back into the Wave Force.
The truth of the situation is unavoidable as you close in on Australian east coast however.
Half a year on from the end of the fighting, the area around Sydney is still a blasted moonscape. Radiation ticks steadily higher as you fly closer to Sydney and force of habit has you check to see if anyone is wandering around into hotspots of the invisible poison.
Of course, the land surrounding the city is completely empty of life, human or otherwise. Where a lush landscape of forests and rolling hills once girded the city, energised by the Post Impact climate change, charred ruin is all that is left now for hundreds of kilometres up and down the coast and dozens more inland.
Closer now, within a hundred kilometres of the city, and there is a smooth, shining plain, stretching out from the city for dozens of kilometres. Trinitite, the glassy residue left behind by the intense heat of HYWs and energy weaponry, glimmers an iridescent red in the late afternoon sun. Radiation eaters slowly plod across the land here and there, fighting their endless war, slowly containing and suppressing the deadly ionising radiation.
The battle had been so intense that no trees, no shrubs, no bushes, not even blasted stumps, had been left to break up the flat fields of glass. Dips here and there, darker than the surrounding dirt, showed where ruined war machines had died. Much larger, mirror like lakes where water pooled in shallow impact craters showed where spaceships had plunged into the earth, digging their own tombs. None remained now. The valuable wreckage had been vacuumed up by the scavengers. Closer to the Arcology, deeper, gaping craters, ringed by slagged metal, broke up the plains here and there, like holes stabbed in a map, showing where high level Antagonist had fired into the ground to blast at Sydney's outlying tunnels and habitats. Small lakes often glimmered near those breaches, the shallow pools formed in the hypocentres of powerful high yield weaponry. Sand and salt whistles across the land, carried by the howling sea winds, whipping over the flat lands.
Ascending slightly to clear some air lanes, you finally see the primary residential tower. The spectacle forces a shaky breath out from you.
By design, the topmost levels of the enclosed residential tower should have been some seventy meters below ground, with another fifty or sixty meters of infrastructure built up in a low, shield shaped dome rising above the land. The entire shaft of the residential tower now stood exposed to the sun, the surrounding ground carved into a bowl like depression, as if a giant had reached down and scooped away an inverted mountain from the earth. The remains of the residential tower, a spindly lattice of exotic materials with strands of stubborn metals hanging off from spars here and there, is all that is left of the homes and workplaces of maybe two million people. The ground above the arcology, the topmost armoured plate and some five hundred meters of dense, vertical construction had been all cleared away with nary a trace, vapourised. So much metal had been blasted into the air and then fell back down as molten rain that the topsoil is caked with centimetres of metallic slag for kilometres around.
The fact that the skeleton of the residential tower, constructed of exotic materials that didn't fail even in such circumstances, is still recognisable… Perth's residential tower is the exact same design, and if…
The outer edge of the residential tower is completely unrecognisable, warped beyond recognition. Robbed of their supporting structure in the central column, the levels and plates slump inwards, like the wax collar around a burnt down candle wick, a ring of slag slowly collapsing inwards. Even as you watch, a distant rolling rumble accompanies a dense cloud of dust to announce another landslide, thousands of tons of husked out tenements collapsing down into a heap of rubble. The UN had declared the peripheral sections completely unsalvageable aside from mineral scrap. Valkyries and large scale builders do exactly that as you watch. Here and there, huge sections of rubble glowed soft white and shrink as Valkyries take in the materials into their storage, letting their cores sort the slag. The titanic large scale builders are less discerning, the machines slowly plodding around the perimeter of the residential tower, indiscriminately stripping away material, and leaving trails of compressed cubic aggregate interspersed with blocks of recycled alloys.
The giant machines find steady footing on the same battered field of metal that the remains of the central column teeters on, and you recognise it as the secondary armour plate only after consulting the schematics again.
The secondary armour plate itself is heavily damaged, twice penetrated by some horrendously powerful direct fire weapon, and jammed partially open from a hole torn right through the plate. Something unimaginably strong (Class C Type Zero Herakles, your search returns) had wrenched part of the armoured plate open, exotic alloys layered through the plate and Impeller reinforcement be damned, tearing through the barrier like a rotten orange rind. Despite the huge scar, hundreds of meters of armour buckled and pulled upwards, the actual breach wasn't that large, only a few meters across at the widest. Herakles didn't need to tear a massive hole, just one large enough for itself, Sekhmet, Raksha and Dahaka to fly through, bypassing the Higgs boosted interdiction field deployed through the arcology.
The four Type Zeros had managed to sneak within kilometers of the Arcology boundary. Once sprung, they'd cleared the remaining distance, through the compromised upper armoured plate and then torn through the secondary armoured plate in minutes. Two Valkyrie squadrons attempted to follow the Types into the lower residential tower to reinforce the two reserve squadrons already below the plate.
However, none of the squadrons were Zero rated. A hundred or so Valkyries of mixed ranks, none of them Aces, to contest against four Type Zeros, two of them close range specialists, and their attendant high level Antagonists, within the confines of an Arcology?
Sixty survivors managed to retreat, half into the surrounding structures, half back through the plate.
In a bitter irony, the survivors who retreated back above the secondary plate and into the air above the Arcology were killed as they attempted to stem the flow of Antagonists pouring into the breached upper citadel. Both those surviving Valkyries and the invading hordes of high level Antagonists they warred against were reduced to collateral damage as Last Word were intercepted by Class A Nokomis and its Type Zero escorts just over Sydney.
With no one left to help her, the Lord Mayor Leanne Ellis Hughes stood no chance once Sekhmet found her.
The Impeller fields fell.
With that, the centralised UN CIC, STRATNET node South-West, enters downtime. The UN forces fell back to local networks and commanders, practically anarchy in such a fast and vast battlefield. Antagonists flooded the defenders and the city with high yield weaponry. Few reach the Arcology proper, intercepted by Last Word as the vengeful suppression squadron tears through the Antagonists, searching for Type Zeros to kill. However, Sydney is not spared, as in yet another frustrating innovation of tactics, the aliens begin teleport the bombs into strategic locations in Sydney, copying a favoured tactic of the UN in dealing with particularly stubborn redoubts.
Generalised interdiction from reinforcing Valkyries reduces the accuracy of the incoming ordinance and foresights in design against this very tactic mitigates some of the damage, but many of the weapons nonetheless reach. More mortal wounds against an already crippled Arcology.
Nokomis escapes in the subsequent chaos.
The mayor Valkyrie slain, the upper citadel torn open, the supplies stored there destroyed, and the vast majority of Sydney was lost; thereby, so was the battle. The UN retreated in a barely organised rout, and, unable to extract all the entrenched forces off the coast and around the Arcology, were forced to leave them behind to buy time. The majority of Antagonists forces chased, pushing west to smash themselves against Darwin and Adelaide, leaving only a relatively small force to move down into the citadel to exterminate the surviving citizenry.
Casualty rate within the lower citadel was one hundred percent.
A horrible, slow four month long, systematic and thorough siege as bunker after bunker was destroyed, shelter after shelter was breached by Antagonists. The Antagonists didn't use any high level forms or Types. There had been no need. The heavy defence units had all been destroyed during the initial foray into the Arcology by the Type Zeros and their attendants, and with the large scale fabricators and all primary power generation destroyed or depowered, they could not be replenished. The surviving soldiers and independent interior defence grids held for a time on reserve resources and power, fighting over every corridor and choke point on their dwindling supplies. The defence units still operational, static turrets, second line drones and the occasional crushing trap corridor could never do more than buy time. What small arms the civilians could make with their fabricators they had power for were hopelessly underpowered.
So, even here, even here, it is the same.
The Antagonists hadn't rushed. Even collapsing the bottom levels of the residential tower had not saved the survivors, the Antagonists going to the time to dig through the rubble until they confirmed that every single human had been killed. The last shelters above the defunct geothermal generators in the very deepest levels were finally found, breached, and torched, killing the very last survivors. They died one hour and five minutes before the United Nations retook the territory around Sydney in the lead up for the Alaskan Offensive.
Of course they would.
Of course they will.
With the efficient slaughter from the Antagonist clearing force, structural damage to habitation infrastructure of the lower citadel is… minimal.
… These aliens. These monsters. I am going to kill all of them-
Yes, we will, but focus.
TACNET reveals hundreds of Valkyries in the surrounding tactical space, working in groups on various projects. A beacon for Sandra's position within the lower citadel periodically squawks, and you angle down.
The silence over the comm channels is unnerving. The general channels are open as usual, but no one is talking over it, only the electronic announcements for standing orders in the area looping in the background. Your own channels remain just as empty.
This is odd. Sandra would usually greet you once you entered her TACNET range, and you did inform her you were on your way.
Exiting a conduit under the secondary armoured plate and flying into the lower residential tower proper, the lights are muffled by a yawning darkness under you. The navigation lights of drones shine, a swarm of red and green blinking in the gloom below. Two pillars of sunlight still weakly shine into the lower citadel, entering through the rents cut into the armoured plate above. The weak red light, filtered through the dust, is easily swallowed in the cavernous lower chamber of the Arcology.
Where the upper residential tower consisted of discrete residential plates connecting to the central shaft, with enough room around them to see the skybox from almost every level as the plates rotated, the plates in the lower tower are continuous, merging into a helical corkscrew, curving downwards into the earth. Walking 'outside' on the upper layer of the screw thread would have been much like standing on the side of a hill, the ground curving up and down out of sight to either side.
The Valkyries and drones down here are deconstructing the lower residential tower, slowly working their way down. Taking advantage of the still salvageable fabricators in the lower citadel, Sydney is to be repurposed to another industrial Arcology like Armstrong base rather than a residential mixed use design.
There, inside one of the towers that hung suspended from the 'ceiling', Sandra's beacon pulsed.
Stepping through an airlock, you take in the interior with surprise.
The lights are on.
Strangely pristine hallways greet you, undamaged illumination and decoration panels providing soft yellow light, dimming with the time of day. Programmed scenes still play out over the walls, holoscreens mirroring the time of day of the world outside the Arcology as it appeared from before the battle. The sounds of the foliage rustling under the wind, electronic and dead to your discerning ears, accompany you through the false valleys of red afternoon skies, orange clouds and green trees.
You enter a small biome and a burst of noise from startled birds wash over you. Colourful parrots swarm you, begging for food. They perch all over Durga, craning their necks into every nook and cranny of your armour A search shows the auto-feeder system idle, out of food for the birds. A ticket for a refill sits unallocated, completely neglected in the face of more important tasks.
Luckily for the birds, food ran out only within the last day. You give them some of your spare bread, selecting some of the more nutritious loaves. Distributing enough to make sure there is no fighting over the food, you carry on, leaving the biome behind.
The doors to elevators sit open, the shafts left open to allow for faster access up, down and through the residential tower. There is no need for ordinary safety precautions, there are no civilians in Sydney anymore. Red warning lights pulse as you float into the shaft, winds howling around you as atmospheric balancing systems fight against the naturally uneven pressures at the top and bottom of the elevator shaft.
Exiting the shaft on the five hundredth floor, strange ion readings from an otherwise unremarkable wall gives you pause, and you recognise a silhouette. This is… a faint ion flash shadow, from low power plasma weaponry-
Five.
Three adults. Two children. Adolescents? Does not matter. Did not matter.
Larger shadow from drone, personal convenience and transport type. Likely Holden model F2306 variant. People were running. Drone rushing towards source of attack. Shadow overlap. Two plasma attacks. Short timeframe-
Your fist buries itself into the wall, smashing the metal inwards-
What? What are you doing?
You jerk away from the wall and continue, fleeing the scene as the corridor collapsed behind you.
You hate these corridors, so small and straight and narrow and long and barren and thin and so easy to shoot down, tearing through all these thin, thin, thin walls.
It's the same, the same, the same, the same.
I don't want to be here.
You have to calm down. You need to calm down. You couldn't have done anything here, anything there, not back then, not back then. You couldn't do anything. You will. From now, you will.
Focus.
Firstly. Distance to destination; 800 meters.
The lights grow dimmer and intermittent as you close in on Sandra's location, hallways now taking on an eerie tone as red emergency lighting and wall panels showing stark warning announcements appear.
>>[Emergency situation. Your nearest shelter is not safe. Proceed this → way toward [invalid] shelters.]
The internal networks are still in chaos, unconnected to wider networks and their updates. Crawling processions of yellow guidance lights contradict each other, arrows pointing one way then the other. Some isolated networks still assure you that everything is under control, either having been reset by Valkyries or perhaps never verifying the emergency alerts in the first place.
Ignoring the warning panels beseeching you, you continue to follow Sandra's beacon and soon come to a shelter. This shelter was abandoned early on in the battle, built in a structurally weaker layer in the Arcology, one that would not give proper protection in the event of a large scale incursion.
No one had died in this one.
The door has been replaced, oily exotic alloy clearly different from the surrounding material, the Impeller shadow and interdiction field you feel saturating the chamber behind the walls are clearly both from Shuri.
The comms panel is dead, so you walk up to the door and knock twice.
Shuri's Impeller reaches out, brushes over you, and then the door disappears back into her storage.
Shuri stands in the doorway, Konark fully expressed, golden plates glimmering in the dim light. She gives a nod and steps aside, gesturing vaguely at one of the corners of the room.
The prefab interior structures had been cleared, and aside from some privacy dividers, the only furniture is a single bed, surrounded by a rack of computers.
Sandra sits up, blearily rubbing her eyes before a flash of announces her partially extending Albion.
After a moment to compose herself, Sandra removes her helmet and floats off the bed. A smile is directed your way, but it is thin, and a flinty look in her eyes persists before she blinks and shakes her head wearily.
"Anna, good evening. I didn't expect you to arrive early, I meant to meet you outside."
Expected time of arrival deviation; plus two seconds, within margin of error.
"Hello Sandra. I am not early."
But you are not very late either.
Sandra's eyes flicker to side, consulting one of the computers, then towards Shuri briefly.
"I… I overslept. My apologies."
"Sorry."
"The fault lies with me. How did your estimates for the reconstruction go?"
"It's done," you affirm and forward your work to Sandra.
With a flick of a finger, Sandra turns on a projector and throws your estimates onto one of the walls, other forms and charts rapidly appearing and intersecting as she manipulates the data. Sandra struggles to bite down a yawn, then gropes around blindly over her table with a hand before Shuri expresses a mug in front of her. Sandra absentmindedly grasps the mug and takes a sip, only to sputter and cough, the graphics projected on the wall flickering and seizing.
You step forwards in alarm, but Sandra appears fine, and a quick chemical analysis of the drink Shuri gave her was a mug of perfectly normal, if somewhat strong-
"Energy drink, Shuri?!" Sandra snaps, marching over and waving the mug under Shuri's nose.
"Instant espresso with a blend of different stimulant syrups and other stuff. Woke you up. Much faster than tea." Shuri unapologetically admits, taking the mug back from Sandra and slamming the drink down.
"You- you unapologetic deplorable!" Sandra exclaims after a moment of dumbfounded gaping.
"I also added vodka, just the way you like it," Shuri deadpans.
Sandra wordlessly expresses a cup of tea and attempts to force it onto Shuri. Shuri dodges Sandra's hand, then slides away when Sandra attempts to grab her with Impeller.
"Anna's here now. I'm back to babysit. Take care. Remember your current upper limit, two hours of sleep every twenty."
With that, Shuri flies out the door, chuckling.
Sandra stares after her, wide eyed for a second, before she sighs, and takes a long drink from her cup.
"Well, this is much better. Anna, do not ask Shuri for help in arising," Sandra says, "I need a few minutes to look over your report. My apologies for the delay."
"It's okay," you repeat, before changing subjects, "Why was Shuri using Interdiction? Why did she arrest everyone helping you? Are there still Antagonists nearby?"
Sandra takes a moment before replying, choosing her words carefully, "There were some complications with the effort so far. Oversights or sabotage that have significantly slowed down the reconstruction efforts. Investigations are ongoing, but if deliberate action, the perpetrator would have required teleportation to access some of the areas damaged. Shuri... had some suspicions, and she wished to act to cover all possible eventualities."
Perpetrator. Not Antagonist.
No.
Antagonist. She means Antagonists.
You pull up and review the incidents. Inconclusive investigations. Either extremely unlucky accidents and errors, or very subtle and near untraceable sabotage. Near mundane issues, concrete mixture quantities incorrect, steel provided not up to technical standards, mismatches between manifests, inventory missing important components, drones loaded with incorrect task lists and priorities. Small errors, but far above the normal rates in occurrence. Serious issues have cropped up too. Sydney's geothermal generators, the least damaged of the power systems, upon startup, failed due to undiscovered blockages within pressure relief channels, both the primary and all backups, despite a flow check mere hours before. One of the supporting struts for the new core of the arcology was riddled with faults, as if the steel and concrete developed cavities. A heavy builder given erroneous instructions and its networking turned off, almost caving in parts of the lower citadel. Spontaneous power outages and network downtime in the surveillance grids, leaving records spotty. Too many errors in too short a period of time to be dismissed as coincidence.
"Type eighteens? Or sevens?"
For the more common Types capable of shifting, you believe a Type 7 is more likely to conduct low key sabotage. Until you met Type 2s and then Sekhmet, the 7s were the smartest and trickiest enemies by far. Compared to Type 18s which acted like equipment, 7s are local commanders. For the longest time, destroying a Type 7 was the fastest way to reduce the aliens back into a disorganised mob. Some high level Antagonists are also capable of shifting, but you doubt anything aside from a Type would be so discreet.
"We have insufficient evidence for conclusions," Sandra sighs, dancing around the topic.
You let it lapse, uncomfortable with trying to dig any further, leaving Sandra to read over your amended reconstruction plan. A ball of stress twists your stomach. You can't do this again. Suspecting everyone. He said. She said. You are happy- no, not happy- relieved that Shuri arrested every suspect. You don't always have to keep watching over your back.
But did she really though? What if she missed someone? What if by detaining everyone, she made someone else angry enough to make a point? A stupid, meaningless point for pride?
-You don't listen, so this… this is a message for you to see!-
A tremble runs through your Impeller and weapon system extend unconsciously out from your storage, Durga reacting to your feelings.
No, here is different. You are different. No one will be sneaking anything past, you can make sure of it. You retract your weapons and wait.
After a minute of processing your plan, Sandra nods decisively.
"This is good news. We may be able to make up for the delays if we are able to maintain the pace you outline."
XxXxXxXxXxx
As with most Arcologies, Sydney had more than a single power generation source. Higgs, tidal, wind, solar, fusion and geothermal generation were all originally part of Sydney's power income, but as the war progressed, the energy density and relative security of fusion and Higgs generators relegated the other sources to back up power.
Higgs generators are finite, with the only source of new units from downed Type Zeros and Antagonist Breaches. Sydney would gain a new generator, but it would arrive with the new Arcology core, far too precious a component to be left onsite alone.
High power fusion reactors are unavoidably volatile and fail deadly at criticality and beyond, and thus generators at the scale that an Arcology demanded needed to be placed well beyond the perimeter of the Arcology. Rather than attempt to construct one on site, the UN loaded up a space force dreadnought that was in refit full of materials, and then deorbited it, settling it down a dozen kilometres to the south west of Sydney. The naval 2 terawatt reactor isn't nearly enough to fulfil the energy budget of the planned Arcology, but it's a vital start that frees Valkyries from being forced to stand around with power lines running into their storage to power parts of the reconstruction process themselves.
You spend half an hour meticulously checking over the entire generator and all the power connectors through the Arcology alongside several flights of other Valkyries before you settle in next to the generator to begin its start up sequence. Energy is injected, activating powerful electromagnets and exotic elements that locally weaken the Coulomb force, then hydrogen is heated and injected into the disk. More and more power is required, pushing the reactions along until it finally reaches criticality. Your presence speeds up the startup sequence substantially, firstly as your triad of modified generators at their emergency maximum output allowed you to push nearly twenty terawatts of power by yourself, more than two hundred times the specified power of the standard fusion generator included in most Valkyrie frames. Secondly, your Impeller is powerful enough that you can simply stand inside the fusion chamber and adjust the plasma disk directly with your Impeller and Heavy Particle Projectors.
Within minutes, the fusion chamber reaches a million kelvin and radiation pressure begins to press down on your Impeller as you watch over the reaction. A minute later of your encouragement and the temperature doubles, then increases by a couple of million kelvin again every minute after that. It is at 103 million degrees Kelvin when your outer Impeller partitions begin to strain, even the specially crafted layers of Impeller slowly begin to buckle from the extreme conditions. Radiation crashes into the sides of the containment chamber, and the exotic construction walls glow as they reflect nearly all of the energy back into the plasma disc. A few minutes after that, and your spatial techniques reducing your real space volume also start wavering from the mass and energy in the space around you continuing to rise. You exit the centre of the fusion disk and watch from the perimeter of the reactor chamber where you are exposed to only the radiation, and the effective temperature is a few dozen million degrees lower.
At 170 million kelvin, the reactor is at 81 percent maximum power, and the fusion process finally achieves criticality, with enough power generated that the generator will no longer be at a deficit. Helical streamers of plasma are drawn from the axis of the disk and herded into the powerplants above and below the reactor. You still watch carefully, your Impeller extended throughout the entire complex, but not invasively adjusting the process. The power plants begin to correctly output electricity, and you watch with a grin of satisfaction as Valkyries begin slowly disconnecting from the Arcology power grid, allowing the new generator to take up their slack as it steps up its output steadily.
With a careful teleport, you first emerge into the air forty kilometres above Sydney, absorbing the excess energy you brought with you into your batteries, and then down to Sandra, back on the surface above the generator.
"It worked," you practically gush, waving your arms about as you try to find words, "I…"
That was fun.
You hold back the words and quickly sober yourself up. Here is not a place to be having fun.
"It is running. There will be enough power for the local fabricators to run at full power again."
Sandra nods, simultaneously keeping an eye out on diagrams of the powergrid, telemetry from the reactor, and the status reports of the various fabricators as they immediately began drawing on the newly available power, "That you are able to start a tee three generator in under an hour, astonishing as always. How fares the new security systems you installed?"
"They all work," you nod, keying Sandra into the system after a quick check, "They will alert you and other high ranking personnel if they detect issues."
In light of the sabotage, you had stuffed the generator complex full of security measures. So far, none of the sabotage had been life threatening to the purely Valkyrie workforce on site, but you, and everyone else, agreed that there could be no mistakes with an installation of fusion generators.
A flight of Valkyries patrol through the hallways, chatting as they make their rounds through the facility, menial work for Elite rank combat Valkyries, but necessary until the reactor is taken in by the Impeller of the new Arcology. You peek into their public comms for a moment, wondering what they think of their work.
"-polished enough that can actually see my own face in the walls." "That's how you know that black Ace is the real deal Simone, first mirror that hasn't cracked trying to reflect-" "Piss off." "- your face." "I found another scratch in the floor, nearly two millimetres long, fifteen microns deep too! That's three in the last kilometre of corridor." "Ok." "Yeah, only human after all." "Don't you reckon the amount of sensors is a bit excessive? It's filtered, but I can see all your footsteps with the seismic sensors." "It's pretty over the top, yeah. Like, I can actually analyse all this filtered data and isolate the your heartbeats from the seismic data." "Hey, y'know- even with all this around us- what if, whoever that fucker is, does what the black Ace did?" "Just teleport into the fusion chamber?" "No way right? That black Ace wasn't normal, I don't think anyone outside of the doubles digits could do that." "Yeah, that's nuts." "Yeah, totally nuts. Want to try it?" "I'm pretty fucking bored, but not that bored." "Sim it once we rotate, but no. Seriously, no. That's an actual order if you are wondering. Do not fucking try to open any spatial routes into a terawatt class fusion reactor." "You can't anyway, it's interdicted now." "Not technically true, the exotic elements screwing with space around here are on a pretty complicated pattern, but if you're an Ace and you know how it works, you can get through it." "Aren't these space encryption system supposed to still be prototypes?" "That's what I thought too, they started making them cause of, well… what happened here, right?" "Yeah, they're still too dangerous to use I thought?" "Ladies, welcome to the world premier. Look pretty, you're all on the catwalk… cept for you, Simone, we wouldn't want to subject any crowds to that." "Piss off."
"They seem rather bored," you remark to Sandra.
"With the standard of entertainment we have and could yet be subjected to, bored is good," Sandra sighs in return.
She turns away, taking a step back towards the Arcology, trusting in your designs.
"Anna, shall we leave them to it?"
"Ok."
You will do your best to help Sandra make the rest of the week as boring as possible.
XxXxXxXxXx
As if waiting for your resolution, less than a minute later, you receive an alert from TACNET.
>>[Power/material draw anomaly: sector 2-210rM: structure 11]
You're holding one end of a massive support strut in place, the other end being manipulated by a flight of Valkyries, as the alert comes in.
Continuing to hold the thousands of tons of metal in place, you fly closer to Sandra and watch the updates.
Two Valkyries flights closer to the problem are automatically tasked to investigate. A search of the location reveals that it's a food and other organic synthesis superstructure in the lower citadel. Five sets of twenty gigalitre scale organic vats, each individual unit capable of producing over eighty tons of organically complex proteins per day and the entire structure capable of outputting three million tons per annum.
The power draw for the structure at maximum operational capacity is meant to be in the range of two hundred megawatts. It is currently drawing in nearly eight times as much power. The structure was not even scheduled to power up at this moment.
>>[Network anomaly: sector 2-210]
>>[Amending alert: Network anomaly: sector 2. Enemy action likely. Recommend increasing alert level.]
TACNET's attempts to access surveillance assets around the area fail. The cameras and other sensors disabled, their reboot upon connecting back into the main power grid failing. Network relays report errors, dropping out and back in. A power surge trips a breaker somewhere, causing a brief but widespread cascading blackout across the lower citadel.
You're completely speechless, first with shock, then rage.
You had just checked every single piece of electrical equipment attached the main lines in the Arcology. Less than an hour ago.
Sabotage.
The officer in charge of the lower citadel is fast to respond.
"Ward Flight, cut the power to that building, now! Flight Bornstein, Flight Feng, hurry it up," orders Wing Commander Zaya, simultaneously declaring Alert Two over TACNET.
You shift your Impeller, preparing a teleport- but cut it off as you glance over at Sandra. She shakes her head and points at her ear, then behind and above her. The fusion reactor. You reach for an update- and find everything in order. The Valkyries guarding the reactor are now tense and silent, but report no anomalies. You understand Sandra's general point though, and nod silently in reply, Durga shifting uneasily around you as you expand your Impeller to reach throughout your local area of the arcology, but do nothing else at the moment.
A ripple of space announces the two flights of Valkyries entering the dark area with teleports and you clench your jaw. Waiting, straining to watch everything. Your Impeller continues to expand, encroaching towards the region of the disturbance. Valkyries you accidently bump with your Impeller jump, weapons swivelling as they search for a hostile before you reassure them it's you.
Ten seconds pass. TACNET is a riot of status updates, but the comms are silent as Valkyries swarm around power connections, making repairs and again sweeping for anomalies. Your Impeller is now at the arcology superstructure's doorstep, progressing slowly as you strain to keep coherency. You need more components expressed for this volume.
Twenty seconds, most of the checks throughout the Arcology by the other Valkyries are done, but the air remains tensely silent, everyone holding their breaths. You double check their checks just to be sure. Perimeter patrols accelerate their routes, searching for signs of exfiltration.
Thirty seconds. You're going to hold the all of Sydney in your Impeller soon.
They won't get past again. Not this time.
Never again.
Forty seconds, TACNET updates.
>[Situation under control. Unknown micromachine weaponry co-opted food production machines to gestate bionic weaponry. Active platforms destroyed. Area partially sanitized with radiation to terminate micromachine cluster formations.]
>[Onsite requests assistance with investigation and clean up.]
Ah? It's… over?
Your Impeller finally reaches the structure.
"Undersecretary ma'am, situation under control," reports Commander Zaya, "Is the- that Special Constable you mentioned, is she around? The first responders are trying to secure the scene but it's still chaos."
You have a quick search and find no one with that role- wait. It's you. You have been temporarily vested as some sort of civilian officer by the UNHCR with a lot of legal power.
>'My Impeller has reached the site of the incident, I am investigating now.'
You burst comm to the Commander.
"Very good, ma'am. Do you have our log data?"
>'Standby.'
You prioritise your salvage through what records remained in the local systems within the building. Data corruption is rife, the micromachines riding through the energy and material rich metal and optical lines of the power and network cables as usual and attacking computing equipment through them.
It is within these cables that you first find intact samples of the hostile micromachines. You poke at it for a moment, unable to understand its design before you take it into your storage and realise that the singular machine you found is an inception unit with an exhausted exotic power supply. A micromachine that produced larger actuating units that formed the bulk of the swarm and did the actual mechanical work. Part of it is twisted, failed self termination.
Not a UN archived design. Technologically and practically feasible, but unlikely to be manufactured. Limited use cases as weapon. Only suitable against large volumes of complex organic materials or complex cellular life in a high energy environment.
As your Impeller envelopes the rest of the building, you grimace. This massive food production has both in spades. With an inception unit of the attacking nanomachine in hand, your Impeller wrapped around the building to feel it out, and the records from the first responder Flights, you quickly construct a likely scenario of what happened.
Inside the protein production facilities where massive vats cultivated meat kelp to grow beef, pork, mutton and chicken, something had planted the virus micromachine into the culture fluid and disabled the safeties. Given the presumed rate of growth, the inception units would have been planted over two weeks ago, slowly growing the actuator units with power from passive heat and their tiny exotic power cells, the creeping growth missed by sweeps through the area. A check of the sweep procedures reveals that they almost certainly would have missed this particular infection. When the power was reconnected, rather than grow neat and orderly tubers of muscle and fat, a shambling mindless leviathan bloomed and thrashed out of the nutrient soup. The micromachines would have simultaneously infiltrated the surrounding networking infrastructure and injected viral code. That fact perversely makes you feel better about yourself, it wasn't your oversight that allowed someone to attack the network. The monstrosity that finally awakened was nearly as physically strong as a high level Antagonist. It's mindless spasms badly damaged the building and nearly collapsed the entire substructure as it continuously grew.
It is as this stage that the responding Valkyries arrive. The abomination is still largely mutated muscle and bones, with none of the durability of a combat form Antagonist. Five VML rounds from a Valkyrie blew it apart. Its attempt to reform is thwarted as the Valkyries blast ionising radiation to terminate the micromachines.
You forward your findings to Sandra and begin to search for evidence.
…
An hour later, and despite practically combing through the structure, but find neither a culprit, nor evidence leading to one.
Even though you investigated every possibility and the paths of everyone within Sydney, you couldn't find anything conclusive. An Antagonist… or something else snuck in approximately two weeks ago, unregistered on any sensor functioning in the lower Arcology. Anger burns through your entire body as you worked to salvage what useable materials remained from the hulk of the dead leviathan and repair the food fabricating building.
XxXxXxXxXx
Morale was low and tempers high, but no more serious incidents occurred, and work continued.
Now, a week later, still on planned schedule, the citadel for the new Arcology hovers a few hundred meters above sea level, aligning itself with its foundation braces built over the old residential tower.
A towering spire nearly a kilometre tall and two thirds that in diameter, the air rumbles as it begins to descend, casting a deep shadow out to sea in the waning afternoon sun. Formerly Valkyrie battleship Tehran, the rather dated frame is used as the heart of the rebuilt Arcology. With the former Iranian capital back in human hands and rebuilt as Sydney is, Tehran would be retired from the Space Force roster of names for Valkyrie battleships. Same with Valkyrie battleship Sydney. With Sydney Arcology on track to be rebuilt, the state of the art ship is scheduled to renamed to Algiers once Sydney is officially reopened in the next few hours.
Sandra makes a short speech as the docking procedure proceeds, and you again beg off from making an appearance.
There are already too many people here in Sydney who recognise you now. They stare at you with… expectations. Or is it wariness? There is a faint tremor in your Impeller and you quickly clamp it down. Constantly being on the lookout, watching everyone, just guessing about who you could trust, wondering why they might be asking you to do something…
The stress you have been feeling over the last week slowly abates as your finally feel the heavy weight of the Arcology's Impeller presses down on you. It's like a heavy gust of warm wind, brushing over you for just a moment, before the Impeller layer moves on, reaching outwards to find and connect the peripheral components of Sydney.
>>[All systems secured. I have control.]
The announcement finally arrives over STRATNET and you release a long sigh. Descending to the ground and sitting down, you finally relax a little, only to jerk back upright as Durga murmurs about a Higgs particle reaction.
Sandra concludes her speech and the lands around Sydney twist and churn, a massive spatial technique. From within the bubbles of elsewhere, plants erupted from beneath the baked and ruined soil of the surroundings. Dust explodes everywhere as the topsoil is explosively displaced upwards by the vegetation and fertile soil rising from their closed space pockets. A bass boom shakes the air and a bright blue flash of Higgs expenditure shines from Sydney, and the dust in the air is cleared all at once.
In a flash, the surrounding hundred kilometres is vegetated again, a disc of green on the barren red shore.
A fresh breeze washes over you, carrying the faint smell of spring rain, of wild flowers and free of the faint buzz of radiation.
Wow.
You knew it was coming, but even so, it's a miraculous sight.
A relieved laugh burst out of you as the worries of the last week seem to fly away and you clap and cheer with everyone else.
XxXxXxXxXx
After the preliminary reopening of Sydney, Sandra and you return to Perth. You offered Sandra a ride on your Impeller, but Sandra countered with an offer to make the trip back in her jet. Apparently it was flying back from New Zealand, and it could make a detour to stop in Sydney, but you don't really care about the details, after all-
Sandra owns a jet.
A jet. Her own jet.
You are utterly star struck at the thought. The stories of the rich men with unimaginable wealth and power from the old and tattered magazines always mentioned a private jet. Comfortable couches, beds and freshly made food, all the while in the air above the clouds, far from the troubles of the earth and the masses below them.
You had eagerly accepted her invitation, and minutes later an airliner appears in the hanger.
A massive delta wing painted in UN blue with eight engines, Sandra's jet is even larger than strategic bombers, and far larger than the slim and sleek courier jets or angular military transport jets. The only larger purely mechanical flying vehicles you know of are the UN Air Carriers.
"Does it have a name? Like Trade Winds, or Jet Stream, or Polar Express or Air Force One?"
"Well yes, but nothing so prestigious as the last I am sorry to say," Sandra chuckles, "This is the Blue Moon. A joke in poor taste originally, but we decided to adopt the moniker."
You practically bounce up and down as you scan the aircraft, but it is well shielded and you can't see through most of the plane. Too eager to wait for the jet to dock and release its boarding ramp, you turn on Sandra and impatiently ask.
"Does it have food?"
"Yes, though nowhere near as plentiful or varied as Perth Academy."
"What about beds?"
"There is comfortable medium term accommodation for passenger and crew of two hundred."
"What about a pool? Does it have a pool?"
"Yes actually, but it is rather small," Sandra laughs, "No need to wait for me, have some fun exploring it. I will need to catch some rest."
Given permission to board by Sandra, you gleefully bypass the wait, grab Sandra, and teleport the both of you onboard. Finding her room (She has her own room!) you put her down and fly away to explore.
There is a pool! Pools! A 12 meter long cold lap pool ringed by a few hot, bubbling spa pools. A small biome along the top of the jet with a transparent plasti-steel ceiling. A large dining room, with a pair of surprised waiters. A plate is dropped, but you don't even have to help as the man catches it again, fast as greased lightning. Skilled waiters! A kitchen, complete with a chef fumbling at his data pad as he startles to his feet. Fish swim a tank. Fresh ingredients! Many bedrooms, with comfortable beds, bathrooms with showers, holoscreens and small fridges filled with colourful drinks in tiny crystal bottles. You can't help but retract Durga and jump into the bed of the first room you enter, mussing up the neatly pressed blankets. A shift in gravity announces the jet taking off and you rush out of the bed to the belly observation deck, standing on the deceptively fragile looking plasti-steel as the ground rushes away beneath you. There's even chair and lounges here, anyone sitting here would feel like they are sitting on the clouds!
Haaaa…
This is great!
You zoom back to Sandra's side, ready to gush about how amazing her plane is, but you find that she is already asleep. You have a quick look through the records and it seems that she practically keeled over asleep nearly as soon as you put her down.
Oh… well, it is her plane, so you guess she wouldn't find it that exciting.
You also suppress your own yawn as you sit down. It has been a trying week.
With one last check of the surrounding airspace, you go to your own room, thoroughly wrap yourself up, and go to sleep.
XxXxXxXxXx
Heavy. Dark, all around. Are you buried? Which way is up? Dig, must dig yourself out.
You pull and claw. Forcing yourself forwards.
Arm over arm, twisting and squirming.
Nothing changes.
How long have you been here?
The pressure gets heavier, but you can't feel anything under your hands, your legs kick at nothing.
Then, the pressure disappears and light surrounds you.
Something holds your hand, giving assurance.
You snap awake.
Another incomprehensible dream. You take a moment to attempt to recreate the mental patterns that lead you to see whatever that was, but as usual, the output is garbage. Strange. You can cast memories to holofilm with ease, but these dreams…
You shake your head and climb out of bed, the jet had just arrived back to Perth and finished its docking procedure according to the network notices. You're a little disappointed that you slept through the flight instead of… drinking expensive wine while lounging in the pool or whatever the rich and powerful did, but odd dreams aside, you do feel rather refreshed.
You make your way over to Sandra's room and find that she's still asleep. The flight had only taken a little over two hours, so it made sense. You gently pick her up and teleport to her room inside the Arcology. The door slides open without query as you walk up to it. You're not sure the door is meant to do that. Quickly reviewing the locking protocols on the door, you realise Sandra has it set to recognise anyone from your Flight as having permissions to come and go. That's very trusting of her.
You walk in, and take a quick glance around. Its arrangement is much like yours, a hallway into a kitchen and living room area, then bedrooms and bathroom along the far side. You take a peek into both bedrooms and you're fairly confident that you know which one is Sandra's room.
One bedroom is filled with books and electronic displays, idle screens drawn across all 4 walls, heavyset dark coloured furniture frames are arranged in a loose welcoming circle around the room. The other is spartan, a bed and shelf crammed against the wall, and the rest of the space sits unused. The shelf itself sits nearly empty, only 3 empty physical picture frames alone in occupying all the space.
>'Back?'
Message from Shuri.
>'Yes.'
>'Sandra asleep?'
>'Yes.'
>'Good, thank you.'
>'You're welcome.'
>'Anything happen?'
You hesitate.
>'She hurt?'
>'No.'
>'Good. Catch anyone?'
>'No.'
>'Ok.'
When Shuri doesn't send anything else after a full second, you assume she's done with the laconic conversation. Very to the point, as usual.
You pull a blanket over to tuck Sandra in, then pause.
Sandra had not changed out of her fancy dress that she wore during the opening ceremony. She slept in it on the plane, and the synthetic material looked comfortable, but the dress is bulky. Are you meant to… help her into her sleepwear? You cast an eye around the room and stare at Sandra's wardrobe for a long second.
What on earth? You quickly retreat a step. Why would Sandra need so many different articles of clothing of so many functions of so many different styles? You wouldn't even know where to begin.
Maybe Sandra just sleeps in her underthings?
Should you ask Shuri?
No, no, no. You don't really need to know, you don't feel like doing that, Shuri might not even know, you don't want Shuri to know that you want to know. Will she laugh at you? Will she be silently judging? She totally will be. Totally.
You dither around the room for a minute, then leave the blanket over and Sandra as she is and retreat from the room.
Now, what is there to do? Classes have ended.
You spend some time silently observing your flight mates.
Koujirou and Setsuna are practically bouncing to the cafeteria, enthusiastic in their dash down the corridors as they stage an impromptu foot race. Both have changed significantly since the start of term months ago, no more staggering out from the sims with overuse aches for Koujirou, and Setsuna looks completely fresh. They're improving very quickly compared to the cohort at large.
Shuri slowly walks after them, demonstrating an Impeller technique to her trailing group of fans. Shuri's fans seem to have recovered slightly in number from the rapid fall at the start of the year. Her limp is getting more pronounced. You're sure that some of those around her have now begun to notice the slight hitch in her movements and subtly uneven pitch in her steps now, the Instructors at least, if no one else. You analyse and confirm your suspicion. Shuri appears to have good and bad days, and today is a particularly bad day, but her physical capability is dropping. A worsening injury, or degrading prosthetics? On a Valkyrie? Her abilities as a Valkyrie Core partner have not degraded as far as you can tell, so you are at a loss as to why this is happening. Sandra should know, but she's never spoken a word about it. Shuri doesn't follow the other first years, breaking from the steam of cadets to head back to her room, waving away her followers.
You switch over to a camera feed from an air patrol showing Yukari and her third year squadron. Several cadets chat with her as they fly back from their lessons, most enthusiastically the cadet Ace O'Connor that you met on the first day here, gesticulating wildly with her arms and Impeller as she talks about the practical lesson. Yukari is mostly listening, but the atmosphere appears amiable enough. She breaks off from the main group of the third year cadets with a few farewells during a lull and slides into a route towards the usual cafeteria that Koujirou and Setsuna use. You notice a few of the cadets around O'Connor pat her and shake their heads.
>"Hey! Welcome back, Sandra, Anna. We saw you two on the show. Amazing work!"
>"Yeah, what you all managed to do was amazing!"
Koujirou and Setsuna call you on the flight group chat.
The show? Oh, Sydney's opening ceremony was broadcasted. The UN actually showed the destroyed Arcology? Wouldn't that be bad for morale?
>"Sandra is asleep. Thank you. I was in the show?"
>"Yeah they had this time lapse of the progress done. We could recognise you from all the stuff you were doing at the same time."
>"It looked like you picked up the entire secondary armoured plate. Was that by yourself?"
>"Not the entire plate. Just the damaged sections. What are you planning to do after dinner today?"
You change subjects, not willing to spend too long talking about Sydney.
>"Oh, elective classes, since we weren't sure when you two would be getting back. Setsu said that something must have come up cause you should have been back midday latest or something."
>"Well, we both know how fast you can fly, and the regs wouldn't have slowed you two down that much, so … did anything happen?"
>"Sandra owns a jet!"
>"Huh? Oh yeah, Blue Moon, cause the UN only come around to help once a-"
>"Oi, c'mon now, Setsu. Sandra isn't like that, and we're UN now, too. Uh yeah, we've seen that plane around, Anna, you got to ride in it?"
>"That's right! It's amazing. It's got a swimming pool in it."
>"… Does it really now."
>"A pool? They spent money on a pool on a jet? Well that's… nice, yeah."
You pause, not sure what to say. Neither Koujirou nor Setsuna seem all that excited, or happy about Sandra's jet. You search around, and make yet another subject switch.
>"How was your week?"
Thankfully, the discussion is normal from then on, and you reach the cafeteria along with Yukari for a brief catch up dinner with your two other flight mates.
It's a quick affair, as both Koujirou and Setsuna have to rush to reach their Martial Arts elective class.
"Martial arts? You beat each other up? Or where you… grab onto each other?" you ask apprehensively, shrinking back and crossing your arms defensively on instinct.
"No! Anna, that wasn't getting grabby to-! Argh. Look it was an attempt at a joint lock." Koujirou protests, waving his arms around.
Setsuna's stare is looking dangerous, but she hasn't grabbed anything dangerous yet, so you leave her alone.
"Then, what about injuries, what if you hurt each other?"
"Yeah, don't worry, we're watched by armoured up Instructors so all the injuries are pretty light ones," Koujirou jumps at the opportunity to get back on track, "Anyways, we'll all practicing hard to impress when you come over to visit."
"Practicing what?" you ask.
"A certain, ah, activity that Shuri introduced, that you'll probably be very good at." Koujirou smirks.
"Is this the thumb war thing?" you ask, patient in your exasperation.
"Wait, how'd you know?" Setsuna gasps, "We were going to surprise you with that one."
"Shuri and the Instructors demonstrated it to me a few weeks ago."
"You- Shuri and the Instructors? Wait, a few weeks ago? Damn, this I have got to see," Setsuna buries her nose into her datapad and taps at it frantically.
Koujirou leans over Setsuna's shoulder to peek.
"You two, don't just bury your noses into your pads and- ah jeez."
Yukari gives you an apologetic smile and turns back to her own meal.
A glance into their network traffic shows that the two are eagerly browsing videos of your practice with the Instructors, focusing especially on the thumb war rehearsal with Instructor Meyer. Not helping matters is the fact that the mudra looks much more dramatic from the perspective of the camera person than it actually was, it looks like an actual contest rather than a rehearsal of motions. There was (yet another) heated discussion about your exact capabilities and specifically your close quarters capability. Your deflection against Koujirou's sword attack had also been posted into the same thread, someone having dove into the simulators and pulling the records up to replay it. People found it impressive, and almost immediately in the minutes after an edit is made of you flicking Type Zero Ananke and destroying it in an exaggerated fashion. Bread is mentioned in the thread soon after, and you stop browsing.
As usual, the discussion about you has become incomprehensible.
You faintly shake your head. Really, you don't have a habit of flicking things with your thumb, you're sure that the time you used it to deflect Koujirou's attack is the only time in your life you had done such a thing. It was just an efficient move to deflect the attack.
Koujirou and Setsuna seem to find it all quite fascinating however.
"Damn! Well, we're going to have to practice harder," laughed Koujirou, somehow stuffing half a plate down seemingly in a single mouthful and jumping up.
"Yeah, we'll be looking forward to your visit, Anna. This time, we won't need any tickling to give you a workout," Setsuna nods in agreement.
You notice several nearby cadets look over curiously at that.
… If any videos of you getting tickled into submission are posted, you are going to take drastic action and classify them right into the Black DECEMBER secrecy schema.
XxXxXxXxXx
Yukari quickly wraps up her own dinner and follows after the two other first years, waving a goodbye as you head to your own elective class, the Gambling elective class.
You take a quick look at their course outline and their open hours while walking- and find you plans ruined as your search throws up a notice.
>>"We've gone to Macau to have some fun ruining other people's fun. Back when we're sober. -Jabami Tsukihime - Class President."
'When sober'? What, when was that supposed to be? Further searches yield no results, but there is an area alert for 'Australian ruffians who are disturbing the peace' through the Guangzhou Arcology administrative area.
Rather put out, you search a bit further.
Interestingly, most of their materials are still accessible. Their typical classroom setup is mirrored online as a virtual room.
Curious, you enter and 'look' around. Gambling machines and their plans line one side of the room, and dissertations on game theory models for the war filled up the walls on the other.
You take a moment to browse their modelling theories on the Antagonists and find them satisfactory, then move on to their gambling machines. It seemed like the class had set up something of a museum, showing gambling games and mechanism through the ages. The physical models are kept in an actual casino in the residential tower, but these electronic models, patent plans and design blueprints are fascinating enough. Prominently placed well ahead of the game machines though, there is an interface with only a single button, labelled as a luck tester.
>>Press to generate any 9 random numbers from 1-9, try to guess what you will get! 100% certified unpredictably random in baseline reality!
Ok?
You tap the button. Nine digits flash up. All ones. Rare. You tap it again. Nine digits of two. Surely not. You tap it again. Nine digits of threes. Again. Nine digits of fours. Nine fives. Again with sixes. Same with sevens. Nine eights. Nine by nine.
You verify the output is not a network issue. The output log from the so called luck tester verifies itself. Probability of such a sequence is less than one in three by ten to the power of six hundred and twenty six thousand.
Curious, you press the button once more.
>>1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
This is ridiculous. Certified random? Improbable.
You move on, looking towards the file folders with playing cards on prominent display. The displays go to great lengths to show the statistical odds, and how the majority of gambling establishments relied on schemes that appeared equal but only allows the house to win over a long period of time. There are then listed examples of currently running gambling schemes in commercial service today and a breakdown of expected outcomes. It's all rather dreary reading.
Despite being called the gambling elective class, the entire class appears to be built around discouraging students to gamble.
After a moment of thinking about it, you decide that this class seems rather sensible. If they're discouraging taking excessive risk, this is probably a staid and collected class.
Surely.
XxXxXxXxXx
There is only a few weeks of relatively normal classes before another call for volunteers arrives from the UNHCR.
Norilsk, northern Krasnoyarsk krai, central Siberia. A sprawling industrial city with a civilian population of 41,000, and the first of the UNHCR projects for the week.
The Impact triggered nuclear first strike from the US automatic Dead Hand missiles had been limited to western Russia, the SAC bombers and submarines choosing to ignore the automatic orders, men restraining themselves even as PERIMETR fired back in the days after. With the limited nature of the exchange, much of the vast, but sparse territories to the east had been spared the direct effects of Impact and the following nuclear exchange. Being Russians who were used to living in Russia, the following Impact winter and catastrophic climate change were met with resigned shrugs from the locals, and they carried on as best as they could.
Not even the Russians could stay apathetic as the Antagonists emerged, and as attacks from the American Breaches from over the poles intensified along with the UN response, Siberia rapidly became a massive and disjointed front in the war. With China to the south barring any of the displaced Russians from entering to seek refuge and the demands of the mineral resources abundant in Siberia from the UN war machine, the Russians civilians were forced to bunker down and fortify, rubbing elbows with the UN Armed Forces of UN North East as they built up in the region.
Previously deemed too risky of a theatre to enter, the elimination of three minor breaches on the North American continent allowed for the UNHCR to begin relief work throughout Siberia.
Compared to the reconstruction in north east Asia, the atmosphere in the Siberia settlements is tense. All the towns through this region have attached military bases or depots, and seemingly as a rule, the two populations did not mix well, the military and the locals largely keeping to themselves. Norilsk is relatively calm, with no overt conflict yet, but the atmosphere is bad. The soldiers are stiff and brusque, polite to the letter of decorum and not an inch further, and the civilians simply appear exhausted and resentful going about their daily lives. Your Impeller overhears many muttered complaints from both sides about the other.
Dangerous. Very dangerous.
This situation is… bad. At least the UNHCR workforce is welcomed by both sides and some of the silent tension between the two sides eased where the UNHCR agents worked. Still, you keep a wary eye above as you expand the underground shelter network. Previously, the shelters had only consisted of lazily reinforced mining tunnels. Narrow, damp and stifling and with few access routes, the tunnels were still deemed sufficient while the UN construction assets were tied up with other projects.
>[Alert Condition Two. Make ready for combat deployment.]
STRATNET alert.
Antagonists movement near Saint Petersburg detected by UN air force elements in the Barents sea. Land based sensors confirm.
You reinforce your work and teleport to the surface. A low siren rings across the military base to the north of the town. More information appears.
Emissions suggest brigade sized detachment, approximately 45,000 units. Air units shadowing ground units. Likely normal distribution of high level Antagonists within formation. Normal outside northwest North America that is.
The various other cadets also drop what they are doing and muster as well. Strangely, the point of muster is different from the other quick response units in the neighbouring base. A quick search reveals that currently as a UNHCR volunteer group, the cadets from Perth are not an active combat unit, and are still under civilian control at the moment. A roar announces two local Valkyrie flights moving east, leading a massive UN air carrier, the colossal aircraft shaking the group as it lifted off with a pulse of anti-gravity and turned ponderously west. Manned and drone aircraft swarm up, tiny in the shadow of the kilometre wide shadow of the air carrier, waiting for their mothership to achieve stable flight before landing on it.
More information arrives. High orbit observation suggests no accompanying movement from major Antagonist forces. High possibility of uncoordinated movement.
You are ordered to deploy.
"Sandra, can I?"
Your flight leader is speaking with someone else on comms, and she holds up her finger, asking you to wait.
You oblige, but impatiently, browsing the rapidly updating information, as one second passes, then another.
"I understand. You all are hereby activated as a combat unit, designation Samhain Squadron. Deploy as ordered," Sandra says tightly, "I'll be very disappointed if any of you have to retire before graduating."
She stares at you for a moment, hesitating, but settles for a silent salute.
You nod to Sandra and take off, quickly followed the third year cadets.
You almost pull to a stop, hands raised, a word of warning stuck in your throat.
Of course. The third year cadet Valkyries here are all combat eligible. Twenty one Valkyries of various ranks. They're going with you. Together, towards the Antagonists.
With you. Towards the Antagonists.
-don't come! Stay back! Stay back, you can't-
They should- they shouldn't- you could- by yourself, you must-
We can't.
No. It won't work. You'll need everyone else. The United Nations, they have been fighting for longer than you.
They have been winning.
You resume flight and catch up with the rest as terse chatter is traded back and forth while the small squadron assembles into rough formation.
"Combat supply will be en route." "We got enough to make three flights. Any ideas?" "We have any near full Flights?" "No." "Nope." "Positions?" "Leave it to TACNET?" "Who's local?" "Just go with standard formations?" "Op area will have higher local." "Not in our area." "If we're in direct range, an Instructor will be dropped in." "Takes too long, need a secondary before that." "We're mule duty." "Always be prepared." "Who has highest hours?" "Hey Cassie, you got anything to say about your first year?" "She's not with us, and no, nothing." "Oi, not the time to be coy. Spit it out."
You browse through everyone else's service records. Third year Elite cadets Cheung and Maya are the only ones in the ad hoc squadron whom have combat hours against actual Antagonists, gained during the battles over New Zealand and Alaska. Neither have over a hundred hours of actual combat, though everyone with you has over three thousand hours of sim time. None of the other senior cadets have been deployed and participated in active combat yet. It is still early in the year.
Today may be the first for all these cadets.
Should you take command? Will you have to take command?
TACNET takes the decision out of your hands.
>>[Second Lieutenant Anna Sanchez is designated as Samhain Squadron leader.]
>>[Proceed to Nyda for combat resupply and standby as active reserve.]
>>[Further orders to arrive.]
You are in charge now.
Eight thousand five hundred and three. No more.
"El-tee? You're commissioned? Uh, ma'am," asks cadet Maya.
"Yes," you reply curtly, "Formation Wing Seven, I will be Vanguard. I designate Cadet Yang Yue as my second."
"Yes ma'am," the other cadets chorus.
The other cadets drop back into a firing line seven hundred meters behind. Anti-type formation, engage with Vanguards, and the rest of the Squadron blasts the Types apart while the Vanguards run interference.
They're not far enough back, when they come, they -your responsibility- will still in range- no. You can't think like this. Your field of view seems to narrow, a faint buzz in your mind. They shouldn't come.
As you grapple with your conflicted emotions, the third years reorganise themselves, shifting enlisted rank cadets Keeler and Mosley towards the center of the line, where it is the safest, as Ace Yue takes left flank and Elite Maya takes the right flank, the most exposed positions.
"Ma'am, I can take second guard position-" "Maintain formation. Your priority is to maintain rearline integrity." "…Yes ma'am."
You instantly deny Cadet Yue's offer.
The small squadron does not follow the two Flights of Valkyries and the air carrier from Norilsk, taking a more southerly heading, TACNET directing the flight towards the depot at Nyda for a combat supply and a ferry mission. With you leading the way, and combat speeds permitted, the seven hundred kilometre flight is complete in just over two minutes.
The port base is nothing more than a massive concrete field, cranes and massive towers of containers standing tall, and practically gridded by rail tracks. As you approach, another squadron of Valkyries take off, the white glow of containers disappearing into storage casting brief shadows across the gantries as they ascend. None of your squadron actually need a resupply, so immediately you head for the logistics bay where the goods the squadron is to transport are located. Racks upon racks of aerial hunter killer drones, fresh off fabricators, some still inside their wrapping, lie in wait. You quickly assign your squad loads appropriate for their Impeller abilities and they disperse and begin.
As the Valkyrie with the greatest storage capacity and the fastest expression and retracting time, you take the lion's share of the drones, taking nearly eleven hundred drones into your storage. You feel... not very different. You expected to feel slightly fuller after taking in so many drones, but it appears you still have storage space to spare. The destruction of your heavy particle projectors, and the subsequent refactoring you did to recreate them from the parts has left a massive amount of space to spare, even with your massive fusion reactors taking some of that room.
With nearly two thousand multirole hunter killer drones in storage, the Squadron sets out.
"See, mule duty." "Comm discipline." "We're two thousand out and at low alert level." "If we're under jamming, comms won't have automatic quash." "We're not under jamming, are we?" "Hey, learn good habits now, this is serious." "Serious? What, we not allowed to be funny?" "You were never funny, why start now?"
A chorus of uneasy laughter runs through the Squadron channel.
You don't join in, eyeing the tactical feed.
The bulk of the rogue brigade of Antagonists are moving steadily east at around one hundred kilometers per hour, constrained by their slowest units. That they have not scattered into discrete groups means Types are present. Approximate time to contact with intercepting UN frontline detachments; two hours. UN Interception force of drone units outmatched 4:1. Expected losses; 100%. Reconnaissance in force.
Your own squadron is to ferry your drones to a point some one thousand kilometers behind the expected point of contact, then hold as reserve forces, retreating to maintain distance the Antagonists advanced.
With another two minutes of flight covering another 600 kilometres to the vicinity of the town of Saranpaul, the Squadron releases their drones.
In successive waves, the automated multirole combat aircraft appear in bright flashes of light and fly for the front. A near surreal sight, each of the drones are larger than the Valkyries from which they emerge, yet every Valkyrie carries dozens of, or in your case a thousand, drones. A river of metal flying on a road burning gas, appearing from a white glow in the air. The Wings of drones form up into massive waves and accelerate towards the front. The rumbling of two thousand pairs of turbojet engines echoes across the tundra, shaking the snow from trees, sendiong nearby wildlife fleeing.
Done with the deployment, your Squadron… waits.
One minute passes.
…
This is wrong. You can't just… wait around here!
You check your tactical feed again.
Approximate distance between you and the Antagonist forces, 1280 kilometres. Your heavy particle projectors reconfigure, a pair of two by one configurations. Approximate firing angle, minus 5.749 degrees. Approximate duration of obstruction along path of fire, 1277 kilometers.
You change your cannons into a four by one configuration. Length of obstruction is high, no post actualisation exotic effects possible, beam properties will degrade into radiation. Not problematic. Degradation will be instantaneous, slow release not possible at this range. Not problematic. Projector beam velocity slower than normal, projector beam energy loss greater than normal, projector power consumption higher than normal. Problematic, can be mitigated.
Target drift, rotation of earth, movement of solar system relative to higgs background; accounted for. You have fusion reactors, these attacks won't cripple your energy budget. You have networked sensors, you can actually see the enemies at this range.
You are in range.
You can begin firing at this Antagonist force right now. Well before they join combat against UN forces.
Well before they start killing.
All you need is targeting data.
You quickly put through a request to STRATNET for detailed targeting data. Surprisingly, the supercomputer does not immediately reply to you.
You wait, your heavy particle projectors ready, and you are kept waiting for seventeen long seconds.
>>[Abort. Reveal of such capacity not appropriate for this situation.]
>>[Addendum; Withdraw from active reserve to previous activity. Conceal location from Antagonists.]
You stare at the communique.
What?
STRATNET wants you to avoid combat? You're to leave the rest of your Squadron behind and return?
You demand a justification, and STRATNET delivers it with its usual alacrity.
This Antagonist detachment is not assessed to be particularly dangerous to UN forces, projected UN expenditure to be purely in drones and high yield weaponry expenditure. The Breaches are partitioned existences, there is a high probability that the Berlin Major Breach does not have the full intelligence of your existence and abilities. If the Antagonists subservient to the Berlin breach are aware of you, it is likely they are unsure of your usual operational area and range. Use of your heavy particle projectors would drain your capacitors and power budget against an enemy group without priority targets, degrading your response readiness, in case something that does demand your attention appear. An unlikely scenario that may appear is that the Antagonists may back trace your attacks on their forward element and teleport in Types for their own suicidal recon in force against the weapon platform that can launch such attacks. If a sufficiently large force arrives, it will place significant risks on certain members of both your Squadron and of the nearby town of Saranpaul.
You glance the tactical map again.
Leading UN elements approaching the Antagonist sally are all automated units. Valkyries squadrons cautiously hover a few hundred kilometers out, the conventional UN forces further back. You work it out yourself. Presuming the force estimation is correct, and there have been several such small scale sallies from the Helsinki breach before, the UN forces will wear down and destroy the Antagonist units without much issue, the Valkyries drawing away and then crushing the Types with superior numbers and then returning to suppress the anti air forces of the Antagonists. High Yield Weaponry will be used to scatter the Antagonists formations, after which the UN first contact elements will engage and destroy the scattered Antagonists. The UN manned conventional forces would not even have to engage.
Presuming force estimates are correct.
There is still nearly two hours before the first elements of the UN engages the Antagonists.
You look back at your Squadron. The various third year cadets all tensely waiting with you. You scan their faces. A plethora of emotion stare back at you. Swathes of tension and fear, some blank apathy and dropping boredom, a smirk and chuckling amusement. Eh? You concentrate on Cadet Maya for a moment, and after analysing the reflection in her iris you see the laughing cadet is watching videos that compiled UN missile saturation attacks against Antagonist units.
There are… there are all sorts.
Looking back at your Squadron of Senior cadets, you suddenly think of Yukari, and Sibel's request.
XxXxXxXxXx
Do you engage, or wait? No write-in. Due to previous drama, I will note in advance that this is a vote of some significance.
[] Wait. STRATNET's assessment appears correct. You will hold, unless something goes seriously awry. You should do your best to not place your squadron in danger, the drones are quickly replaceable and expendable. Keeping your ability, or that of your Heavy Particle Projectors to make such long range attacks through terrain secret will be strategically significant in the medium term future.
[] Engage. STRATNET's assessment appears correct, however the possibility of a the Antagonists counterattacking your position with long range teleports is remote, and easily intercepted by your Interdiction unless the Antagonists use an exorbitant volume of Higgs. The risk you and your squadron will bear is minimal compared to the potential lives saved by your attacks at the Antagonist formations. Revealing your ability to attack at extreme ranges through obstructions to the Antagonists is not consequential in the short term.
Is there anything you can do to help Yukari? Do you even know what's wrong?
-[]You cannot meaningfully help Yukari at this moment in time.
-[]You can help.
--[]Somehow...
XxXxXxXxXx
The votes below will be continued in the next update post.
Still to come;
[X] Holiday Activity
-[X] Spend time with:
--[X] Yukari and Setsuna: Say Anna, what do you do in your time off? What do you say about dressing up a little, how about your room? Do you have enough furniture?
--[X] Sandra: Greetings Anna, while we have become closer as a Flight in the past month, but I don't feel as if we've gotten to truly know each other as people, or maybe even this country. What do you say to a short trip around Australia?
--[X] Ask Sandra for help in spending some time with Shuri. Out of everyone in the flight, she and you are most distant. And if you're going to be relying on her in battle, well, you'll need to know her better. (2 days)
--[X] Contact one or more of the other top ranked valkyries, ask to meet and talk shop. See if they have advice on training, on how to prepare yourself with top-level UN-supported combat, which you have not experienced before. See if any of your abilities are unique enough to contribute something no one else brings (wave excepted of course). See if they have advice on development of the wave force. (2 days)
--[X] Try one of the historical simulator scenarios solo. What difference would a lone valkyrie of your caliber have made? Ask Sandra for a recommendation, she knows the context to the history involved better than you do. (1 day)
--[X] Beach Episode: Yukari is gathering the flight together to spend a day in the beach biome in Perth. Somehow this feels inevitable to you. (1 Day)
--[X] Movie Marathon: When Sandra was looking for things for the flight to bond over, Koujirou suggested something called a 'Movie Marathon'. Now your flight is going to spend two days watching several cinematic creations together. Errm, what are you supposed to pick? (2 Days)[/I][/I]
4. The archetypal exemplar of every Versus Debate we've suffered
-[X] Attend Instructor training sessions.
-[X] Attend general Flight training sessions.
-[X] Volunteer again for Sandra's UNHCR reconstruction activities.
-[X] Train skills
--[X] Remainder to Blue Wave - 150 points.
Deferred;
[X] Holiday Activity
-[X] Spend time with:
--[X] Koujirou: I guess it all came down to me not being able to stop those missiles in the earlier rounds, clearly I need help with long range things. Gimme a hand?
--[X] Yukari and Setsuna: Say Anna, what do you do in your time off? What do you say about dressing up a little, how about your room? Do you have enough furniture?
--[X] Sandra: Greetings Anna, while we have become closer as a Flight in the past month, but I don't feel as if we've gotten to truly know each other as people, or maybe even this country. What do you say to a short trip around Australia?
--[X] Ask Sandra for help in spending some time with Shuri. Out of everyone in the flight, she and you are most distant. And if you're going to be relying on her in battle, well, you'll need to know her better. (2 days)
--[X] Contact one or more of the other top ranked valkyries, ask to meet and talk shop. See if they have advice on training, on how to prepare yourself with top-level UN-supported combat, which you have not experienced before. See if any of your abilities are unique enough to contribute something no one else brings (wave excepted of course). See if they have advice on development of the wave force. (2 days)
--[X] Try one of the historical simulator scenarios solo. What difference would a lone valkyrie of your caliber have made? Ask Sandra for a recommendation, she knows the context to the history involved better than you do. (1 day)
--[X] Beach Episode: Yukari is gathering the flight together to spend a day in the beach biome in Perth. Somehow this feels inevitable to you. (1 Day)
--[X] Movie Marathon: When Sandra was looking for things for the flight to bond over, Koujirou suggested something called a 'Movie Marathon'. Now your flight is going to spend two days watching several cinematic creations together. Errm, what are you supposed to pick? (2 Days)
XxXxXxXxXx
A/N: ANOTHER LESSON LEARNT, THANKS MR SV
XxXxXxXxXx
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>>Notice: You have placed this topic on your ignore list.
XxXxXxXxXx
It's 1100, and you're still in bed.
It's the Sunday morning after the Vanguard tournament, and the controversy over Shuri and you skipping out on it hasn't declined at all.
You had been a little shocked that there was a controversy at all. Then you had rather glumly monitored the online discourse until you felt it was in your best interests to completely ignore it.
Rolling over onto your back, you breathe in and let out a long sigh. It's just- you don't understand.
These people, why are they so angry that you hadn't decided to participate?
It's like you personally insulted them or something.
Some cadets called you a coward.
…
They'd been dogpiled with dissenting opinions, your friends, cadets from other years, some passing acquaintances from elective classes and even a few instructors wading into that mess.
Cowardice.
You grab an armful of blankets and roll back onto your belly. Technically, they're not wrong.
Technically.
You don't want to kill anyone else.
But…
The implication you won't be useful against the Antagonists hurt. It- it is infuriating. Anger quickly burns away the confusion and dismay.
You're not scared of Antagonists! Maybe you were, at the start, but you always did what people needed you to do! It's just here, these people, these kids, why did they care how proficiently someone could kill someone else? What was the point of proving you were willing to hurt someone else? What did it prove? What could you have shown, there in the simulator? Every match, a single strike across the arena. The mechanical capabilities of your four real weapons alone are capable of power so far beyond what the other cadets could possibly have brought to bear. You knew how it would end. So did they, they must have.
How quickly even Types would die, you'd shown it, gladly, in the combat simulations you'd found time to participate in.
A single human. Wrapped in metal and conceit? What chance did they stand?
They knew! They know! You don't need to prove it again by killing someone! You'll kill Antagonists! You will-
The bedframe snaps as your hand grips just a bit too hard, oak panelling powdering under your fingers and steel bars bending slightly.
You bury yourself deeper into your blankets, and wrench your mind onto a different tract, resetting. Taking a deep breath, as it were.
Repairing the bed frame, you check your schedule. It's been a few weeks since Instructor Langston had offered you the opportunity to join the group training the Instructors did on weekends.
Confirming its clear to fill the day with your personal activities, you message Instructor Langston. After a few overly stiff and formal starts, you elect to send a business-like message. It is the best that you get to the point, you're not really sure how people do, well, any of this.
>"Instructor Langston, you mentioned the possibility of taking part in the Instructor group training sessions during the weekends. Is the offer still open?"
Despite the message being sent without any priority markers, a reply arrives immediately from the young Instructor.
>"Of course Anna. We meet up around lunchtime every weekend and practice a few hours. You have an open invite to join. We're actually just about to get started for the day, do you want to come?"
A new event pops up on your schedule, detailing time and location that the Instructors typically met at.
The regular Sunday session usually begins in just a few minutes from now. You consider for a moment, then deciding you didn't really have any other activities in mind for the afternoon, you answer in the affirmative.
Making sure your room is in order, which basically only consists of making sure your RC car is stowed away properly so that its exploration and mapping module doesn't take it for another trip around the Arcology, you stand up and make your way towards the surface.
After a moment of waiting in the dazzling sunlight of the surface for the Arcology to grant permission, you set off for Ordnance Testing Ground Three Five Eight. About three hundred kilometers northeast of Perth, OTG 358 it is a shorter trip than your now regular flights to OTG 507, but with your reluctant adherence to the terribly slow local airspeed limits, you will be late by more than half an hour.
Still, you can see some of the Instructors almost immediately as you leave the Arcology. Two groups, fifty kilometers above sea level and rising. Possibly a race. TACNET informed you of more Instructors in the general area, but still below the horizon.
With time to spare as you fly, you take some time to review the situation on the local TACNET. The Academy has a total of forty four Instructors rostered, a pair of Instructors for every first year squadron, a single Instructor for every second year squadron, an Instructor for every two third year squadrons, and two in reserve.
You eye those last two with no small amount of surprise. What possible situation in an Academy entailed two Ace rank Valkyries to standby on reserve, especially when there's already another forty already present? That oddity aside, of the forty four, today there's an odd two dozen here, but a quick review of the flight history of the airspace surrounding Perth showed that Instructors joined and dropped out on their own schedule.
A search for an agenda for the day comes up empty. Compared the rather rigorously scheduled classes they set out for the cadets, the Instructors seem to just wing it. You are not the only cadet participating, there are a few third and second year Ace and Elite ranked cadets scattered here and there with the Instructors. A ping from your Flight IFF identifies Shuri amongst them. It's not really a surprise, you suppose. Shuri did leave the Arcology every weekend, and a quick browse of her fan site for confirmation shows plenty of footage of her with the Academy's Instructors.
A few hundred kilometers out, you receive and accept an invitation with the encryption key to the Instructor's voice channel. You already have permission to listen in thanks to your rank, but it was a nice gesture.
"Hello," you greet everyone on the channel.
"Anna!" "G'day, welcome." "It's an honour to finally speak with you." "Welcome, Coroner." "Hey."
"Is there a plan for the session? I could not see an agenda."
"Oh activities are created on a uhm, need to do basis—" "She means that we don't have plans." "You're destroying our 'carefully cultivated' image of authority." "It's the Coroner, like a stiff upper lip—" "ANYWAY, Fiona, Cereza, she's your girl, what first?" "Sorry, gimme a min—Cez, can you—?" "Of course."
Instructor Leonhart waves lazily at you as she breaks from a group of Instructors and descends, flashing a waypoint on the ground.
The two of you land, and after taking a moment to flatten the dust with her impeller, the instructor expresses out a pair of couches and sits down.
"Come Anna, make yourself comfortable."
Instructor Leonhart actually uses her voice rather than radio, despite the cacophony of sonic booms, rocket and jet engines, and impeller clashes in the background from the other Valkyries. She realises how awkward that is right away and with a flash, a living room expresses out around the pair of you, completely cutting off the sound from the outside despite the visually normal construction of the walls and windows.
Wait, you recognise this room—the curtains, that table, still set with food, but different dishes—
You only have time for the briefest of glimpses before the room morphs with a flicker. The warmer reds and yellows in the upholstery is replaced by neutral faded blues and browns, the curtains completely drawn and rolled up, decorations removed, the dining table emptied, left with a lonely bowl of decorative fruit. With a few changes, the room loses much of its welcoming personality.
Leonhart doesn't give you a meaningful look, a sideways glance or... anything, really, but you still shuffle uncomfortably, alert to the fact that you had seen something Leonhart preferred to keep to herself. While you are busy grappling with the guilt, Leonhart disappears around a corner and comes back with a jar and a pair of mugs.
"No need to stand about," says the Instructor as she sets down her jar and the mugs.
You look upwards uneasily, but everything inside Instructor Leonhart's house is covered in solid layers of her Impeller, some of the densest and most stable you've seen from any other Valkyrie. You retract Durga and gingerly sit down, wincing at the groan from the couch as it sags slightly under your weight. Wooden frame, not reinforced steel. You take most of the support back onto your Impeller before the couch is strained any further.
This time, the Instructor does give you a sideways glance, before quietly muttering under her breath as she digs deeper into the jar, "No cookies then, maybe just some wafer crackers... "
Uh— you— that was— You're not fat, you're just tall... and dense.
Besides, her jar is empty—
The Instructor pulls out a few wafer crackers.
Oh, of course, she's just pulling food from within her storage.
Leonhart uses the crockery as placeholders as she bustles, pulling snacks and pouring drinks from her storage, quickly handing you a mug of something that tastes like aromatic, sweet and frothy milk tea, and a small plate of colourful wafer crackers.
You munch on a cracker silently as the Instructor pulls open the drawer of the coffee table, pulling out a thick binder of paper.
"You're an awfully hard girl to find snacks for, you know," the Instructor muses as she flips through her binder.
You glance down at it and blink at the video recordings playing out on the surface of the paper. Not a projector or LED film, but colonies upon colonies of colourful micromachines living on the surface of the wood fibres, using Van der Waals forces and Plateau–Rayleigh instability to swim to the surface of the page and sort themselves into pictures. A rather profligate way to use micromachines, but the mechanical precision and elegance of the moving ink colonies is so mesmerising you almost miss what the pictures are actually showing.
It is you, eating, recordings from the ceiling cameras in the cafeteria.
A quick glance reveals the title for the binder to be "Anna's favs" and the microchip inside informs you its stuffed full of notes from the Instructor on what kind of food and activities you like the most. At least, what Leonhart guessed to be your favourites from looking over the academy records at least. You smile in slight confusion, it surely would have been easier to just ask, right?
I don't know. Anything is fine.
You take another sip from your mug and pause, looking down at your mug and smacking your tongue. Now the drink is inside your storage, you get a proper feel for what it is. Several different lipids and gasoline? Sure enough, you can see it evaporating from your mug. Despite proportionally having a lot of hydrocarbons, it tastes good. No, it tastes fantastic. You quickly chug down the drink before more of it evaporates and let out a satisfied sigh.
"How did you make something with butane in it taste so good?" you ask Leonhart in awe, placing down your mug after discreetly scooping out the last drops with your Impeller. You've already analysed the drink's composition, but you'd never expect it to taste so good from looking at the composition.
"Oh, don't try making that for your friends," chuckled the Instructor, "I made the drink specially for you, I don't think they'd like it that much. Seconds?"
"Please, thank you very much," you nod, accepting another mug and taking a few more crackers.
Getting down to business, the Instructor blinks at the window, turning on an embedded screen and linking a sprawl of technical manuals.
"Anna, we practice a lot with group skills, and we don't have any records of you using them. How about we start today with some testing for group Impeller actions?"
You nod, nursing your drink.
"Alright, have you reviewed the documentation we have on Impeller Synergy and Group Skills?"
"One moment," you ask.
"Of course—"
"I just did," you answer. Well, not all of it, just the texts for Cadets on Leonhart's screen.
Instructor Leonhart chuckles at that. "Should've expected that. Well, let's start then."
She holds out her hand and a layer of her Impeller extends outwards.
You compose yourself, folding your hands in your lap and trying to relax, reaching out with your own Impeller.
The two fields contact— and clash as usual.
Ok. Now you have to try and synchronize and combine the fields, the exact opposite of what you would usually do to crush another Impeller. That way both Valkyries can manipulate the same Impeller partition.
…
Synchronize the fields? How are you supposed to do that?
"Wow," whispers Leonhart, "Your field is… fierce. It's very territorial. Try to relax a little Anna. Don't try to lash out all the time, imagine it like holding hands— wow! Shaking hands, not holding, shaking hands."
You squirm and manage to fight down a blush. Instructor Leonhart just gives you a knowing look, which doesn't help at all and you hide your face behind your hands until you calm down. From her folder, you know that she knows about your short and brief visit to the Matchmaking elective class.
Ah-hawawa…
Ahem.
You try again, and reach out with your field. Instructor Leonhart reciprocates, and the two of you try again.
…
You don't get it. How are you supposed to enter someone else's Impeller? The two of you try many things. The Instructor holding her Impeller quiescent and you trying to synchronize with it, then vice versa. Then the two of you trying to dynamically match each other. More than one partition on one side, then both, to try to synchronize one whilst using the other as the control. Instructor Meyer entered the house and she had helped Instructor Leonhart demonstrate Impeller synchronization for you in hopes that you could replicate it.
None of it works. It just feels too… scary— no, you're not scared. It feels creepy and weird.
You can't let someone into your Impeller. Or even enter another Impeller while leaving it intact. While your Impeller is intact. It's too dangerous. You must not, you must never. Never again.
Any Impeller you meet, you destroy with your own field instinctively, and you can't seem to rein the reaction in.
After four fruitless hours of experimentation, Instructor Leonhard reclines into her couch and lays a cool cloth over her brow, massaging her temples slowly. You hover at her side, knowing that the overuse strain wasn't really something you could help with, but trying to find something to do anyway. Having her Impeller layers ground down to near zero dozens and dozens of times by you pushed even an experienced Ace like the Instructor to her limit.
"I don't suppose you think it will go any better with another Instructor, do you?" asks Instructor Leonhart.
"I don't think so," you say.
Instructor Leonhart hums and speaks slowly, "I'll have to ask around about this, Anna. For the moment, how about you have a look around at what everyone else is doing? Seems like people are lining up for thumb war hour again."
"Thumb war hour?" you echo. What on earth is that?
"Yes, something that Shuri introduced. Apparently she was inspired by a sim exercise that your flight had."
Ah?
… Ah!
God bless it, Shuri as well? Really?
You sigh and exit Instructor Leonhart's house, leaving her to recover, noting that the Impeller layers covering her house remain as steady and solid as ever, as if she hadn't been exhausting herself for the last few hours.
Three kilometers away, you can indeed see the various Instructors pairing up and a… line forming up near Shuri? What?
The pairs of Valkyries rise to a hundred meters in the air, accompanied by a spotter. They clasp right hands— then incandescent lights of Impeller interference light up between them.
They are actually playing thumb wars against one another. Using Impellers and their whole bodies— explosions light up— scratch that, their entire arsenals at zero range.
This— this is incredibly dangerous. This is not a sim. There are no hardcoded safeties. You swallow and clench your hands, sensors straining to watch every pair— but you don't seem to need to have worried. The rules appear to be limited to Impeller partitions over the arms, after all, once one Valkyrie won the struggle over the Impeller over their clasped hands, there is not much the other can do to avoid defeat.
You almost start relaxing. Then Instructor Mulyani expresses a pair of charged particle cannons right into Shuri's chest.
Shuri shoves them with her free hand, and a lightning quick twist of her right wrenches the Instructor around to force her own cannons against her head. You're already moving— and stumble to a stop. They're both interdicting.
A twist of Shuri's Impeller sends a partition into Mulyani's storage, and the cannons fire. Even then, their spotter, Instructor Yap, doesn't move, hovering close and watching.
>"Anna, wait. This is safe. We guarantee it."
Instructor Meyer sends to you with high density comms.
>"Confirm?"
>"Confirm. The only thing that will be hurt here is pride."
Instructor Meyer assures you.
Instructor Mulyani reels from the impact, but she is more stunned than hurt by the strike, her Impeller easily up to the task of deflecting the hits. A twist of space and reactor plasma blasts towards Shuri, but Shuri easily catches it in a spatial torus with her own Impeller and absorbs it.
You bite down on your lip, still tensed and ready to leap forwards.
The Instructor tries to draw a melee halberd, but Shuri grasps her elbow, then with a fluid tug, wrenches open the Instructor's guard and rams a forearm across her chest in a sharp chop, Impeller swirling around her arm in a destructive piercing formation. Instructor Mulyani gasps and slumps in the air, her core Impeller brought down to a couple of tenuous layers by the strike, but Shuri holds her up by their connected hands. It is only now that you notice Shuri has the Instructor's thumb pinned beneath her own on their right hands.
Mulyani tries a desperate spatial shearing attack, but Shuri crushes it with her interdiction barely after the attack leaves the Instructor's Impeller.
"Ten count. Valkyrie Kravala wins," Instructor Yap declares.
An explosion of grumbled swearing over open comms from Instructor Mulyani rocks you back on your heels, making you forget your worry for a moment.
Who said that only pride would be hurt here? Your poor ears.
You quickly uninstall your bahasa Indonesian translator, but it doesn't help. You've already learnt the language off it. You grumble as you manually sort around the software floating around inside your storage. Organizing information like software in your storage is always slipperier than a physical component, even if they are the same thing at the lowest level. After a second of struggling, you give it up as a bad job and filter the general comm channel instead.
"Instructor!" you protest to her over a direct line, scandalized, "That— that's going to set a bad example!"
"Hey, Anna! Uh, sorry, are you here for a turn as well?" Instructor Mulyani sounds a little breathless, and a hint of a slur colours her words as she responds, but at least she's no longer swearing.
"Wait, but I'm next," protests Instructor Vitala, barging into the line.
"You actually here for a match?" Shuri asks skeptically over her own direct line.
A bit of an argument between the Instructors start in the background, some for and some against allowing you to cut in line and you feel your shoulders sagging in disbelief. As if you are here to do that.
"No, no I am not," you deny, crossing your hands in negatory, "What are you doing anyway?"
"Teaching. They're Valkyrie Aces, so they can learn techniques more efficiently than the cadets are capable of."
"You're teaching the Instructors?"
"You aren't?"
What? Of course not— wait, Langston said— and Vivas with the wave force— oh. Well, you are really just expanding your own capabilities and it just so happens that uh… ok. That is a good point.
"Valid," you admit.
Shuri inclines her head at you, then closes the channel.
God bless it.
"Alright then, let's set up, Shuri. You spotting again Dyana?" questions Instructor Vitala, as the Instructors fall back into their queue.
Instructor Yap gives a quick thumbs up and the Instructors all get set up again. Are they really just going to continue like this?
"Want to have a round, Anna?" Instructor Meyer floats over and asks.
Boom
A plume of red dust erupts in the background as Shuri slams Instructor Vitala into the ground, thrusters blazing and igniting the dust as she pins the Instructor. Instructor Yap floats lazily down after them, still unconcerned as ever. An Impeller ghost from Shuri completely fools Vitala, who throws her Impeller to guard against an illusionary attack. A bright strobe of synchrotron radiation flashes as Vitala barely recovers to deflect a pair of beam attacks from Shuri. Moments after the quick exchange, Vitala attempts to pull them back into the air, but a throw from Shuri causes both Valkyries to disappear underground with another massive explosion of dust.
"Are— are we going to do that? I don't want to," you shake your head.
"I doubt you'll need that much effort to beat me at thumb war, Anna," chuckles Instructor Meyer, "Think about it this way, if we can learn from getting matches from you, less of us are getting slapped around by Shuri."
But they're still be getting… pushed around by you, and you— no actually. You can absolutely use less force than what Shuri is using right now to win against the Instructors in thumb war. It's easily in your capabilities, but… Instructor Leonhart had been exhausted simply trying to synchronize fields with you, and you'd very nearly hit Instructor Langston with a blast of corrosion. If you reacted badly in this kind of exercise, you don't want to imagine the consequences.
"No, I don't want to risk an accident."
"Fair. You got any advice for us? Shuri explains things well, and for most of us it's just a matter of putting theory into practice, but maybe you've got some insights to share?"
"My explanations are confu— my flight mates tell me they are hard to understand."
"Oh we're all very, very familiar with your way of explaining things, no need to worry," Instructor Meyer waves your concern off, "You can just demonstrate if you need to, we can talk it out with our Impellers."
Well, if she's sure…
You point at a pair of Instructors.
"They're being really round." "Mmhm." "It could work, but they need more bubbles moving, like a blizzard." "…Mmhm." "It's still too fuzzy, it needs to be sharper, like bzzt, not sssh." "Uh, okay." "That's… just a little slow. You see? It's too slow. The pulling and twisting isn't whiny enough." "…" "That's really thorough, she got higher, but it's too hasty." "Hmm, Anna, can you translate your process into a graphic and transmit it to me instead, like the way we're doing with the project?"
Oh yes, of course. The three members on your flight that needed the help with their Impeller formation the most can't process volumes of data like this, and these types of Impeller techniques are orders of magnitude less complex than the Wave Force, so it won't take you days to compose messages and then wait for days for the Instructors to process them.
…
You send a graphical explanation over to Instructor Meyer and she takes a few minutes to think. You wait, somewhat nervously eyeing the continuing competitions. Dust thrown up by the melee grows thicker in the air, and with so many spatial attacks being thrown around, you begin to notice ripples in spacetime forming, the ebbs and flows of strange colour and sparks of photons from vacuum energy actualizing. It's not much compared to the aftermath of a teleport or the signal of an open gate, but it is beginning to remind you of the aftereffects of Wave Force once a few hours have passed. Now it would be easier to form spatial techniques, but harder to control them.
Then in this case… your initial recommendations need to be changed.
You compose a new set of graphics, with improved accuracy, and send them to Meyer.
Hmm, taking into account the degrading spatial conditions, the risk of using, or being the target of Corrosion as well the general complications in use of other manipulation techniques…
You compose a new set of graphics, with improved accuracy, and send them to Meyer.
Accounting for and predicting multitarget reactions, using the wild Impeller partitions of the other participants— though with the careful spacing and tight control of the other competitors, a difficult prospect— to your own advantage…
This may take a minute.
You compose a new set of graphics, with improved accuracy, and— the channel is closed.
"Alright, Anna. I am declaring myself a kinaesthetic learner," declares Instructor Meyer, sticking out her hand, "Revision two, movement set two hundred and thirty, path variation eight leading into set five hundred; I'm having trouble with it. Can you demonstrate for me?"
But revision two is now two major revisions out of date— but, if it's just a rote movement like that, then no problem.
You grasp her hand and wait for Meyer to attack, then appropriately demonstrate the countermoves as described.
"Alright, now for five hundred, let's try the variations leading into the nine hundreds."
Sure.
"From nine hundred, let's go through the four kays."
Movement set four thousand? That set is a low probability set since one competitor should have won.
"That's an undeveloped set, there's no proper terminus for the branches."
"The end state could lead back into the seven hundreds or one thousand two hundreds right? Just direct it whichever way, update me live."
You have enough spare capacity, you can do that.
You weaken your own Impeller significantly, emulating the preconditions for the four thousandths move set and allow Meyer to push forwards, suggesting different methods of attack as the two of you explored which Impeller moves would be most appropriate in the current situation, except—
"That's a ten count, Meyer. You've lost."
Instructor Madrigal taps on Meyer's Impeller.
Oh, right. You belatedly release Meyer's thumb from under your own. The two of you busy yourselves for a moment with smoothing out the terrain around you and cooling down molten rock.
"Sorry Instructor, that was just the most likely outcome from all the plausible developments."
Instructor Meyer doesn't seem displeased at all, smothering a few fires with her Impeller and grinning up at you, "See, Anna? That wasn't too bad, was it? Having a teaching match?"
Wait. You— you were tricked!
But it actually wasn't bad?
Mmmmrgh
You spin on a heel, pouting, and studiously ignore the Instructor for a moment, reaching further out with your Impeller, filling in some craters and levelling a few newly made hills. With this many high powered Impellers around, it would quickly become a mess again, but you needed something to do while digesting the last few minutes.
"No… it wasn't too bad," you finally admit, but—
Instructor Meyer leans close and claps a hand on your arm, "Just keep it slow, and you will be fine. Anyways, we're about done for the day, how do you feel like trying again next weekend?"
You sigh, but nod. You felt… fine. There had been no impulses. Keeping it to a calculated and pre-determined, uh, lesson plan, managed to remove all feeling of threat from the game. It was just procedure. So, it wasn't too bad, but—
Teaching the Instructors? Is this okay? It doesn't feel okay.
"Besides, you think anyone will be wondering why you don't bother competing with other cadets after this?" muses Instructor Meyer, shooting a shadowed glance towards some of the nearby Second and Third year cadets who are watching on.
"…oh, was this just—"
"No, don't misunderstand. You really will be helping us out here as well. Practice makes perfect applies to us as well, we would be grateful. We are. That I could give those little snits a slap about the head is just a bonus."
"…Alright. I… thanks. Thank you, Instructor."
You slowly squeeze Meyers hand and step back, turning and preparing to return to Perth.
XxXxXxXxXx
You have discovered a research dead end. The warrior-monster character cannot perform group Impeller actions. This limit may be removed by special actions or plot events.
XxXxXxXxXx
Your somewhat buoyant mood sinks as you head for the next elective class on your list, the Foreign Languages elective class, but spy a pair of people in your way through the cameras.
Ehhh…
You flutter back and forth across the hallway a little, but you can't really see an efficient route around them. Maybe you can come back tomorrow? They might just wait for you here again though.
With a sigh of resignation, you continue on your path.
Spotting you, cadets Sibel Neuer and Mindy Hatono drop into simultaneous bows. They're both even wearing a full set of dress whites.
"Valkyrie Sanchez, I am here on behalf of the crafty— uh, crafting class to deliver an invitation," the president of the Crafting elective class intones, her solemn atmosphere damaged by the slight slip.
You give an awkward smile and nod back as formally as you can. They sure are crafty; they learnt pretty quickly that you were not someone to turn tail and run from a reasonable request. You might turn it down, but teleporting away from someone just trying to talk to you is just rude, so you've forced yourself to stay around and listen as long as they aren't being obnoxious. Now they've changed their approach to be polite and unobtrusive. How crafty. They aren't aggravating, not really, but their enthusiasm, it's way too strong for you. At least this time it's just two members on the lookout for you.
You take the letter, prepared to politely turn down yet another invitation to give a lecture, but pause when you scan its contents.
It's an invitation to Beijing, for a longer term collaborative work between the crafting elective classes of the Beijing Valkyrie Academy and a panel of UN engineers with regards to your Heavy Particle Projectors. It looks like enough work has been done that plans for serious production planning could start being drawn up for some components, though there are still some serious roadblocks in the production methods for the most vital features in the acceleration rail, ammunition generation and configuration, and system reconfiguration and synergy design.
…Uh.
Those are all three of the distinguishing features of your cannons versus standard model particle projectors. Are they saying they're stuck and have nothing to progress on at the moment?
You're immediately tempted to attend, but you hold back on an immediate answer. You're not sure on the exact timing of your UNHCR missions, and those missions in particular you do not want to miss.
"I will check my schedule closer to the event. I may be busy. I see there is no option for remote attendance?"
Uncharacteristically remaining serious, Sibel nods solemnly.
"Under my role as the deputy director of UNARD Oceania, I am informing you that the Relativistic Particle Projectors and the Onium Capacitors have been raised to Beta Eight, Schema Blue One October First. Further transmissions and details of the projects must be through direct laser communications."
Hmm? Strange, why the sudden increase in secrecy? A quick check through your own service record and attached projects doesn't show any direct changes related to you. A development you are not aware of then.
"Most of the membership of the crafting elective class do not meet this classification rating," you half state, half ask.
"We all had a long chat with UNOMI and we have been elevated in Blue Schema all the way to Beta Eight for just this project," nods Sibel, "Rumour is that there's been an incident in Santiago; not sure of the details, neither is my source."
You search for it as soon as Sibel mentions it, but aside from news of an unexpected power outage to the highest ring of the elevated Arcology, there is no particular news on the Wider Area Network. Santiago Arcology also did not file any AARs. Officially, the second of March was a normal day, nothing happened. Record of generator activity, publicly available requisition requests for resupply of armaments for the Santiago police department and missing inventory reports from the UN Air Force suggest differently.
"Okay," you reply, perturbed, "I should be able to visit, but I cannot lock down a timeframe at this moment."
Sibel nods, but she doesn't leave.
"Um, Anna, how is Yukari doing?" she asks carefully.
Yukari? She's—
Sitting on a beach, one hundred and twenty six kilometers north of Perth, according to her transponder and a quick look through the eyes of a patrolling sensor drone. Resolution insufficient for further analysis. Her status on the Flight's chat is set as away.
How is she doing?
You… don't know. She seems happy with the flight.
"I'm not sure," you admit, "She seems ok."
Sibel smiles slightly, "I'm glad to hear that. With that whole business with Malik, I was worried. She was part of our year originally, but after transferring back down, she hasn't really reconnected with the rest of us, I think she doesn't want to. If she's happy now, if you can, Anna... please look after her."
She bows again, then glides away on the travelators.
Taking care of Yukari? What— how does she need taking care of? She asked you to take care of Koujirou and Setsuna, or teach them, at least. You can't say you've made good progress there.
You… are not the person for this. Why did Sibel ask you to try to do this? What should you do? You need a plan.
You need to look after Yukari. So, first find out if she is ok. If not, you need to deal with whatever it is which is making her not ok.
First, investigate.
Trawls across social media come up relatively empty. She is involved with a few Third Year flights, but peripherally, mostly at get togethers. Checks across guest lists reveal she declines most invitations. Outside of your flight, Yukari doesn't appear to have any close friends. Any… extant close friends. Close friends. Do you count as one? One recent disciplinary event on record for Rokusabe Yukari, involving Javeria Malik. Details unclear, Arcology recording systems malfunctioned. Resulted in no physical injuries to either party, minor damage to Arcology hallways. No complaint lodged by Rokusabe Yukari, case was closed at her request after both cadets completed some tasks served as disciplinary action.
You clench your jaw at that last one, but unhappy push it aside given Yukari's requests.
Besides this event, already lodged as resolved, circumstantial evidence is inconclusive.
…
>>"Are you ok?"
You message Yukari. Once she sets herself as available on flight chat, she will update you.
So far, good progress.
Now, onwards for the Foreign Languages elective class—
>>"I'm fine, Anna, taking some time off right now. Why'd you ask?"
Yukari is apparently still looking at her messages despite being listed as away.
You are now presented with a dilemma. Yukari expresses that she is not in any way not ok. One issue resolved, another created. In asking you rather than Yukari herself, Sibel appears to be asking for discretion with her own concern. Abruptly expressing concern aroused suspicion. You have not prepared an adequate excuse in preparation. You require a deflection. No, textual log too clearly in focus compared to vocal conversation. You will carefully construct a statement that omits some facts but remains factually sound.
>>"I uh, was— um, trying to help you out. Because you have helped me quite often. I am reciprocating."
>>"Oh, Anna. No need to worry, I'm doing alright. Thanks for asking."
The channel closes. You pace back and forth in the hallway, considering the message. Is the issue resolved? Should you update Sibel Neuer?
No.
Issue remains outstanding. Additional action is required.
You push it into your queue, and eye it uneasily.
You don't know what to do.
For now, vacillate on the issue, visit elective class. Possibly seek inspiration.
You enter, and a wall of language meets you.
People are chatting in every language, over all sorts of topics.
There are two major huddles in the classroom, one around a series of computers, another around the holographic display board. You quickly recognise the code on the computers; it's your translator program, the general purpose one in use by the UN Armed Forces. One module of it at least, relating specifically of translations of a dialect of Chinese into English. The holoboard displays some mathematical transformations. After a moment of looking, you figure them to be partial encryption schemas.
A ripple of movement runs across the classroom as other cadets notice, and glance over. After a short moment, one cadet separates from the huddle around the holodisplays and waves you over.
Oh, you recognise her. Callsign Rhythms in April. She was one of the cadets working on the reconstruction project in northern Asia with you, often helping Sandra with paperwork and optimising the software for the network hubs. In an inversion from the usual, she only kept her callsign visible, rather than her name, so it's only today that you see her name is Yang Yue.
"Valkyrie Anna, long time no see. I'm Yang Yue, assistant cat herder. Welcome to the Languages class. There's two things we always end up doing here: translation, and cryptology. Have you tried either as a hobby?"
What. Assistant cat herder? Who is the head cat herder then? Instructor Lewis? She has it on her qualifications? She doesn't own cats, though?
…
Uh, right. Moving along.
"I have both the United Nations translation program and their communications packages." You reply to Cadet Yang.
"Well yes, I mean, everyone has the machine translator and the comm ciphers— ok," She cuts herself off with a shake of her head, "Do you have any feedback for our work? Any opinion on how to improve the speed and fluidity of the translator in particular?"
You take a moment to review. It has worked quite well so far, but you have not spent a lot of time talking to people who speak anything other than English. Or that much time talking to people at all.
There is one thing that stands out in your mind however.
"Does the translator program really need such an in-depth translation of curse words?"
"Curse wor— you mean swearing? From a completeness perspective, of course. What's wrong?"
"It's… rude. Isn't it?"
Cadet Yang stares at you silently for a second, eyebrows climbing into her hairline. The silence stretches and quickly grows awkward as she opens her mouth a few times only to abort her responses.
"Well, I mean, it has to be," she finally replies, "If the translator doesn't convey the contextual vulgarity of what the other party is expressing, it may lose nuance or urgency. The nuance subroutine is one of the most important and hardest to modify without breaking other modules. Like hearing antagonist and Antagonist, there's a reason the translator allows you to hear the capital letter. Another example, still relevant from centuries ago, you don't translate British English of 'We're in a spot of bother' directly into Australian English word for word; you have to reword it into something along the lines of 'We're in a shower of cunts, need help' or— what? What is it?"
You pull your hands off your ears, chagrined by your Impeller flawlessly transmitting her swearing to you.
"It's nothing," you mumble, drawing your Impeller back, "So, I have to keep the library of swear words?"
"Well, you can customise your library to reflect the nuance of your own preferences to take the edge off if you'd like, we'd be able to help with that. Wait a second. You're an Ace, if it's urgent enough to require swearing to convey, you can directly stream TACNET data through jamming from any source of comms in combat. You don't even have to talk to anyone."
If only.
"No," you shake your head emphatically, "I can't do that. I have to be able to talk to people. I need to be able to talk to people and understand what they are saying. Otherwise… when I'm wrong, there will be… misunderstandings."
Cadet Yang does not pry, succinctly nodding and rerailing the conversation.
"Well then, we can customise a translation package for you. It should be a pretty painless process. I'll let the linguist group know."
XxXxXxXxXx
Painless. Painless?
Language is hard.
Personalised social contextual analysis, which lay at the heart of the translator, was harder, and far, far away from your area of expertise to boot.
You had to talk so much. Provide your social norms and expectations against hundreds of hypotheticals. That was exhausting.
You were so tired that by the end, when the other focus of the class, the cryptology group, asked you for any experience for Antagonists communication, you dumped them your records of the few interceptions you managed inside the Saskatoon breach and fled while the class descended into pandemonium. It probably wasn't something they expected. Inside the breach was the only time you've ever heard Antagonists talk. If it was talk. You're not sure. Neither is the UN apparently. Inside the breaches is the only time Antagonists comm chatter had ever been detected. Well, you're sure the class can figure it out.
You fell asleep and actually slept through your alarm for the Monday morning classes. A plea and permission from the Arcology for a teleport directly into the classroom was the only reason you weren't late this morning.
It's evening now, and the Flight is practicing after hours, but you still feel a buzz at the back of your head from all the talking you had to endure yesterday evening, but at least you're no longer acting out the motions in a bleary daze.
But, well, here, in helping the flight practice, you don't think it would have made too much difference regardless of your condition.
"It will work, as long as there is material to visualize a solid connection."
Shuri waves her hand, tossing a handful of sand— and a long fan shaped crater explodes into existence in front of herself. Five hundred meters away, a target is obliterated, dashed to pieces by her Impeller. To her side, Yukari attempts to emulate the maneuver, but her Impeller loses cohesion and the attack fails before reaching more than a hundred meters, molten grains of sand simply evaporating into the air. Today, Sandra rotated the Flight off from the simulators to allow other flights to use the booking, so the Flight is aboveground, congregated in one of the arenas.
"Physical materials won't be helping you much anymore at your current Impeller strength. Begin with the full whips cord and halve the total length each time. You should be able to overcome the mental block very quickly."
Yukari nods and replaces her Impeller whip, carefully cutting the whip in half, before attempting the same attack. While Shuri gave Yukari pointers, you are sitting well to the side, helping the three other members of your flight.
"Cmon, Koji, puuuuuuuuush!"
"I am! I am!"
"Puuuuuuuuuuush!"
"We are trying our very best, Setsuna. Your encouragement is very welcome, but unneeded."
Juggling a dozen eggs above their heads each, the other three members strain, trying to push your Impeller back. You don't budge an inch. Well, not backwards anyway, but the Impeller pressure from your team members tickles. It tickles a lot. You squirm in place, doing your best not to scratch the itch on your Impeller or burst out in laughter. It's like having your finger licked by a particularly friendly dog, but you can't just laugh at your flight mates; that will not be nice.
"She's losing it! C'mon just a bit more!"
"Nnnnnngh! We're going to budge Anna this time, just a millimeter!"
"Ah— ! Prepare to be thrown, secure your eggs!"
"Hah?" "Wha?"
You can't hold it anymore. Your defending Impeller trembles mightily to scratch the itch as you clap your hands over your mouth to smother the giggles. With your field being what your three teammates were pushing on, the abrupt move sends all three flying away.
"Rescue the eggs at once!"
"On it! On it!" "Yes, your highness!"
"Setsuna, once again, I don't hold such hereditary titles!"
The three adjust their tumbles, reaching around and catching the eggs with their Impeller with varying degrees of success. Setsuna and Sandra are both meticulous with their control of Impeller, managing to catch the scattered eggs without breaking any that they catch, but their ranges of Impeller is short, neither cadet able to reach much further past three meters with precision. Koujirou's Impeller is much larger in range, but his control is much worse. Bright green water splashes inside Impellers as training eggs crack under rough handling and some splat into the floor. Ironically, the dropped eggs have a near equal survival rate to the ones Koujirou catches, the soft sand allowing a few to roll to a gentle stop.
You bring yourself under control, and throw a desperate look at Shuri, pleading for some other method that you could help. She catches your glance, but only waves a hand, a clear sign to continue.
Koujirou, Sandra and Setsuna glide back over, looking down at the ground. Shuri had drawn a grid of line in the sand, and tasked you with protecting it with a single layer of Impeller. Against your little domain, five meters in radius, she tasked your flight mates to push your field back as far as they could and erase the grid marking while making sure not to damage any of the eggs they are juggling inside their own fields. It was fine at first, but once the other three began trying to use Impeller disruption techniques, having to hold your own field still and avoid countering made your Impeller itch like mad.
"Did we make any progress, Anna?" Sandra asks, leaning over to look at the grid squares drawn into the sand.
"Ack, still not a millimeter of progress, drat," mutters Setsuna as you shake your head.
Koujirou just frowns and scratches his chin, looking thoughtfully at you.
"W— well, I did feel somewhat more pressure," you say, "And you rescued more eggs, and uh, none of the eggs broke while you were pushing."
Shuri said that you should be trying to actively fend them off with your one dedicated partition, but it didn't feel fair at all. A single one of your Impeller partitions is up to the task of holding out against the combined efforts of your three teammates, so fighting to keep them away would be completely overkill.
"Hang on a sec everyone, I have a plan," Koujirou declares with an upraised finger.
He falls silent, communicating with the other two with private comms.
On the side, Yukari manages to attack the five hundred meter target, this time with the cord channeling her Impeller whips broken down into four segments. The steady beat of her attacks and the air splitting crack of the cords breaking the sound barrier followed by the distant boom of the targets exploding helps you center yourself. You sit straight in your chair and steadily stare down your flight. You expect to be able to withstand whatever plan Koujirou has for this exercise without any issue.
…
It's been a minute, and Durga actually begins to express concerns with its nudges. You mentally wave it off, still gasping; while you don't need to breathe, your stomach still aches. Slowly righting yourself with your Impeller, you repair the smashed chair at your side, and rub your tummy. You didn't think you could laugh that hard. In front, Sandra and Setsuna cheer, tossing Koujirou into the air and catching him. It's a little awkward with all three in their frames, but the three ignore the occasional crash of contacting Impeller.
"Hip-hip, hooray!" the three laugh.
"That wasn't f-funny," you complain, sitting back down and staring disconsolately the smooth field around the chair, not a single line left in sight.
Who would tickle a poor girl into giving up? Tickling? The utter animals. You can't believe Sandra okay'd the plan. That was completely unfair. Just because you are ticklish doesn't mean that's the strategy that Koujirou should have picked.
"Ready to go again, Anna?" asks Koujirou, rubbing his hands together and looking eager.
Breaking out from your bout of self pity, you try to compose yourself. That was, you had to admit, a good tactic.
Okay.
You extend more components from Durga and redraw the lines. Your Impeller swells as the hazy, black mist of your solar dynamos boil off the surface of your frame.
"You may begin when ready," you declare.
"…Anna, would I be correct to assume that you are upset by our choice of strategy?" Sandra asks, pinned to the wall of the Arena next to a yelling Koujirou and a grumbling Setsuna. Green water runs down their frames and the arena wall from smashed eggs, drawing out interesting shapes and patterns.
You don't respond. It's completely unreasonable for them to expect you to be able to hear them while they are pinned to the wall by your Impeller a little over four hundred meters away. You shouldn't be able to hear a thing.
"Yep, she's mad," affirms Setsuna.
"I can't believe it worked, and I can't believe Anna got pissed," laughs Koujirou.
"Well then, I suppose we continue on with the same plan of attack?" Sandra asks.
Uh—
"Yeah, she is holding us up with her Impeller right?" Setsuna experimentally flexes her own Impeller and notes the clash.
Wait—
"Alright, same plan, guys. Think of feathers!" yells Koujirou.
N-nooooooooooo!
…
Shuri zips around, cleaning up after the flight, returning damaged target dummies for processing, sifting up eggs fragments from the ground and smoothing the ground out.
You'd normally help, but today… you feel like just lying down flat on the ground. Shuri passes by and glides over your prone form without a second glance.
Hmph
She always had a word of advice for the other members of your flight, but she didn't say a thing as you were defeated. Twice. You lost twice in a row. Where's your advice?
Sandra kneels down next to you, lowering her head to look you in the eyes. You puff out your cheeks and turn your head to look the other way. How could she allow this to happen to you, you can't believe this.
Sandra waits for a moment, and when you continue looking the other way, pouting, she sighs a little and reaches out, patting your head. You tense, but she isn't tickling you through your Impeller again, so you allow it.
"Come now, Anna. Don't you feel at least a little bit of joy that your students managed to finally win in an exercise against you?"
…Maybe. It was pretty clever of Koujirou.
"Not like this. I don't want to lose from tickling," you mutter into the ground.
Sandra continues patting your head, but with the Impellers shoving against each other, it is sort of noisy.
Still, it wasn't too bad.
"That was so uncool," you finally admit, "Losing to… tickling is so— It makes me look stupid."
Sandra hums, thinking for a moment, "I don't think so, Anna. It is perfectly normal for you to be a little ticklish. We wouldn't think you were being stupid to lose to tickling. You'll know what to expect for next time."
You grumble into the sand. Exactly how are you supposed to resist tickling? Maybe tickle them first? Who knows. You don't even want to think about it. There're plenty of ways you could prevent an attacker from using that style of Impeller disruption in a serious situation, but using any of those methods on your friends— no, no no no, not going to happen.
"Ah, Anna, I want to let you know, there is another reconstruction mission. I will be heading out and back intermittently over the next month. I want you to excuse yourself from this mission, at least for the incipient stages."
You turn over and sit up, frowning at Sandra.
"Why?"
"Thanks to your help, we're ahead of schedule for reconstruction projects within Asia. The United Nations Central Government has decided to reactivate the east Australian arcology of Sydney with the surplus of resources we have on hand," Sandra explains.
You nod, rapidly contextualising the recent movements of UN military and industrial resources. Sydney? A quick overview of damage reports suggested the Arcology was completely annihilated. Was there anything left to salvage? It would be an incredible amount of work to reactivate. So… why are you being delayed?
"I would be able to help at every stage of a reconstruction, why do you need me to stay back for approximately a week?"
"Our defeat at Sydney was total. Due to vast amount of civilian and military casualties incurred during the final battle of Sydney and the chaos of our retreat to Melbourne, the Arcology is not fully surveyed," Sandra says grimly, "Considerable numbers of the deceased may still be present within the Arcology. I do not wish to force you to join the clean up effort."
There is a faint tremble in your hands. You take a moment to force them still. There is no need for you to stay back, you'll be fine. Objectively speaking, the amount of time saved by your presence in a clean- in the clean… it would- it would be better if you are there helping- if you…
"…When should I join the mission?"
"I will notify you, once the reconstruction effort begins in full. Here are the full details of the assignment."
Sandra passes on a set of orders to you. Interestingly, they aren't from her office in the UNHCR, but rather the Oceania subdivision of the organization. It's also a direct order, rather than a request for your hours as a volunteer.
"In addition, I have been looking into your general legal standing," Sandra changes track, "It is complicated, more so than I was expecting. You were, technically speaking, a refugee-"
What?!
"-rather than a citizen of a UN constituent, so given your section fifty five status, the UNHCR previously held the authority to levy your economic capacity to whichever UN projects are in need of it. However, you are a citizen now, and enrolled in the UN Armed Forces, so you and your immediate relations are exempt from civic conscription. If you receive orders from UN civil officials, you may feel free to ignore them if you so wish."
"So I'm not a refugee right?" you demand.
"You are not. You have more than enough military and social credit, and now qualify as a full fledged UN citizen," Sandra assures you.
You relax and sit back, then jolt straight back up.
"What about Setsuna, Koujirou and Yukari? They are all refugees?" you ask, the results of a quick search alarming you.
"Presuming they do not volunteer for any social programs and continue with only their military courses, at the start of their third year in the Academy, whence their first tour of service of two years ends, Koujirou and Setsuna will be granted full citizenship. Yukari has some additional social credit, so she will be able to claim citizenship this August," Sandra replies.
Good, that's very good. Being a refugee is- there's… nothing good about being a refugee.
"As for the military chain of command, you, as the Valkyrie Ace, the number one of the Three Hundred, are equal to the highest authority in all situations that military law applies. This nebulously extends into situations outside of where you are directly engaged in combat, such as while on standby for deployment, and transferring for deployment to another theatre. It may even apply while you are completely uninvolved in any combat situation, as various decrees have established the entire surface of the Earth and the space around as a battlefield, but-" Sandra pauses.
She drums her finger on her thigh, thinking over her words, "It is not clear exactly how much of this authority is bound to the position of the Rank One Valkyrie and how much of it is bound to Jatayu Sen personally. The legalities all presume and are drafted such that Valkyrie Sen would hold the apex position in perpetuity. It's an unresolved issue at the moment, I've put through a case to the Military Courts, but there does not exist an urgent need for the moment to clarify it. Leaving the judgement in the air actually may be beneficial for you in the future."
Sandra leans forward, placing her hands on your knees.
Umm… you lean backwards. Sandra doesn't pursue, and draws back slightly, but she leaves her hands on your knees, leaning into you, looking up right into your face.
"I just want you to know, Anna. If you are ever demanded, ordered to do something, you can say no," she says.
"Yes! Yep, I got it. I know," you babble, leaning back a bit further. Gosh, Sandra's hair is so glossy, how does she do it? It's beyond mere chemicals, surely.
"Good," smiles Sandra, she stands and offers you a hand, "Come along now, it's time for dinner."
"Thanks I am okay I will make my own way down thank you very much I appreciate it," you call as you crab away with your Impeller and practically throw yourself into the tunnel leading to the elevators back into the Arcology.
There has been far too much close contact for you for the past few days.
XxXxXxXxXx
A few days later, Sandra makes ready to leave. To everyone's surprise, less than an hour before her departure, Shuri declares her intent to join Sandra for the first section of the reconstruction this time. Caught rather flat footed, the flight gets together to see the pair off at the transit station.
"So you're both leaving for a while?" asked Setsuna.
"Yep. I'll be back when Anna sets out," nodded Shuri.
"Who's going to teach us then?" piped up Koujirou.
"Just a couple of weeks, you have plenty of help already anyway. More than anyone else in your year, you'll deal," Shuri shrugs.
"You forgetting someone here, Koujirou?" Yukari interjects before Koujirou could reply, patting his head a bit more firmly than comfortable.
"Oh yeah, course, but well, y'know-" "Yessss?" "Uh, nothing. Yup. Nothing at all." "As your older sister, I cannot accept being dismissed in such a way! Come, we start immediately." "Woah, woah!" "Don't forget about me, onee-sama!" "See ya Sandra, Shuri! Take care! You coming, Anna?" "In a moment, Koujirou."
The three head off towards the simulators, waving their goodbyes to Sandra and Shuri, Yukari dragging Koujirou by the back of his collar and Setsuna primly sitting on Koujirou's ankles like he is a snow sled.
…no one even mentioned that you could try getting better at teaching and take care of them, even though Yukari had asked you to take care of those two at the start of the year.
Did you let her down too much with your bad teaching?
Sigh
You turn to Shuri as she slouches against the wall next to Sandra.
"Why are you going this time?"
"Because you aren't going," Shuri replies, "I'll be going to make sure nothing happens to her."
She jerks her chin in Sandra's direction.
"Something is going to happen to Sandra?" you ask. There had been plenty of clues within Sandra's service history, but she had never mentioned -and you had found no clues towards- an ongoing threat to her outside of the Antagonists.
And if one did exist? Well, then you'll end it.
"There is no credible threat to me, Anna. Shuri is being overprotective," Sandra replies, shooting an exasperated moue at Shuri, "Shuri, I have let you know that you do not need to feel so obliged."
Shuri nods, but makes no move to step off the shuttle away from Sandra.
"As you do then, Shuri. Anna, as said, I'll send you a message once the setup is completed," Sandra waves at you.
>>[Stand clear, doors closing.]
You wave back as the doors close and the shuttle departs for the surface.
XxXxXxXxXx
In the week that followed, despite Yukari's best efforts, as a third year with her own tasks, she did not have the same amount of time to provide personalised coaching to the pair as Shuri did. There is also some awkwardness within the Flight as to who should be leading in the absence of both Sandra and Shuri. Sandra officially designated Setsuna as her second, but Setsuna is content to follow Yukari's calls. The older girl seems rather determined to defer or include you in the decision making process, but Sandra already set Setsuna as her second, so you end up abstaining and shifting the decisions back to her. It was a silly cycle, and one that causes you to be glad that Sandra is normally in charge.
With you still running intensive modelling of ways to further extend the range of Wave Force, it's the weekend again before you know it and you're waiting for the call from Sandra, which was estimated to arrive any day now.
The flight is eating breakfast when Koujirou dramatically finishes his with a click of cutlery, placing his chopsticks firmly down next to his plate, then slides over to a stop next to you on the bench. You twitch in surprise and move a little to give him space. He slides closer again and moves to throw a friendly arm over your shoulder.
You slide all the way off the bench and around the round table to sit on your Impeller, "Yes Koujirou, what is it?"
He slides closer again, now also sitting on your Impeller, but stays at a comfortable distance this time, "So, Anna, I need help with long range combat, mostly with intercepting stuff and not taking as many hits as I close. Can you give me a hand? Yuka-nee and Setsuna are really good at theory learning, but I'm better with getting hands on, and no one else here can blast beams like you. You up for some practical demonstrations of longer range combat?"
Ah! This is your chance! Koujirou had been getting cheekier since that silly tickle contest, but now you can properly prove your reliability as a teacher.
"Of course I can. I can demonstrate many methods to defeat and counteract long range fire without the use of specific components."
"Cool, can we start today?"
"Absolutely," you nod, searching for and booking an appropriate stage- done, "I will be demonstrating some spatial techniques, so I have reserved unallocated land sector two thirty one. We may proceed when you are ready."
"Sure, sure, hey Setsu, Yuka-nee, I'll be heading off with Anna for some practice today. We'll be back…" Koujirou shoots you a questioning look.
"We can return at lunchtime," you provide.
"Wait a sec Koji," Setsuna asks, "You two? Alone?"
Koujirou raises an eyebrow, then grins widely. He slides closer to you and again tries to throw an arm over your shoulder. His attempt fails as you lift Yukari up and switch places with her, using her a shield.
"That's right, problem?" smirks Koujirou, hugging Yukari with one arm and leaning his chin on Yukari's shoulder as if that was his plan the whole time.
"No, why would I be concerned about what you do in your spare time? Don't come back to me for help if you fall behind in your studies again," snaps Setsuna.
Hey… you're not that bad of a teacher… are you?
"Kiddo, don't tease her like this," Yukari admonishes as she palms him away.
"Fine, fine. So Anna, when are we heading out?" Koujirou asks.
"Right now," you collect yourself and nod, "See you in a few hours, Yukari, Setsuna."
"Stay safe, both of you," Yukari waves.
"See ya Anna. Good luck Koujirou, don't send yourself to the med bay again," waves Setsuna.
You're turning away after putting Yukari back in her seat, so you don't think anyone catches the flinch.
"Hmph, don't worry, I already promised Anna, she won't hurt me," Koujirou brags.
You relax slightly. Reckless as he is, impossible to guarantee as the promise is, the thought helps.
XxXxXxXxXx
With a few minutes of travel, the two of your are standing under the harsh Australian sun.
"So, I looked it up and that place is pretty far. We taking a plane, or just flying there?"
"I'll be teleporting us. One moment."
"Oh cool! Y'know, I've never teleported before, so this is going to be-"
Shift.
"-my first time- woah! Slow down Anna, let me enjoy the experience too."
You glance quizzically at Koujirou. No one you know could described teleporting as enjoyable. Most found it unsettling and some felt the shift to be nauseating. Koujirou, insulated as he is by your Impeller, just looks around wide eyed, sensor ports around his helmet and extremity hardpoints wide open and taking in data.
"That is so damn cool. I thought there are supposed to be pretty obvious spatial distortions before and after a teleport? I'm not really reading anything here."
"Your sensor suite lacks fidelity, the local spatial geography is offset by ten to the negative eight percent to the Earth natural median at this time of the year."
Koujirou stares at you.
"Can… you give me a relatable example of how small that is?"
An immensely crude joke surges to the tip of your tongue and only your own shock at the thought allows you to bite it back.
Ahem. Okay, no.
That is very rude.
Also untrue. By statistical averages- Ah! No uh, you didn't, you didn't mean uhhhh- you- you were confirming his gender! It was a valid action to solve a reasonable query!
Also it invites counterattack about your own physique. Truthful counterattack at that. You unconsciously cross your arms over your chest, faintly annoyed at how easily your palms slot into your elbows. A bit of obstruction would have been nice. If you change the behaviour of Durga's plating to be always solid rather than malleable in deference to your own actions- alright.
Not productive.
Proposed course of action also avoids fundamental issue at hand.
Not that Koujirou has ever commented, but well- you need to be reasonably confident about being able to finish a fight before starting one.
…
Being around Koujirou may be getting to you.
Wait, no, y-you can't afford to look like a ditz here! You have got to show just how good a teacher you are! You expand your Impeller field outwards with the help of your energy dynamos, and extend one of your heavy particle projectors out a few kilometers away.
"Okay! I'll show you a bunch of things you can do to not get shot!"
"Awesome!"
"Here's the basic one. Syifa used this against Setsuna to win their first round. You make a mini-Impeller volume far ahead of your normal field, and it will ablate incoming reactive attacks, or set them off early as Syifa demonstrated."
You detach a small sphere of defensive Impeller from one of your partitions a hundred meters ahead of the two of you, making it opaque to allow Koujirou to see. After a moment of waving your shield around to draw attention to it, you fire a low power plasma blast your projector, taking care to set the projectile to decay into low wavelength visible light upon impact.
The glowing red pulse zooms in and smashes into your shield, erupting into mostly harmless light.
"Crap! Where'd that come from?" Koujirou yelled, lifting his own weaponry in the direction of your HPP and sliding into a defensive stance ahead of your with a pulse of thrust.
Aww, that's sweet of him, but really silly. Your Impeller is orders of magnitude more powerful than his. You gently push him back into his original bearing from you with your Impeller and explain.
"That's one of my cannons, I'm using it to demonstrate," you datalink with Koujirou and share your TACNET data.
"Four thousand meters? What are you using to extend your Impeller that far? Can you turn your black cloud thing transparent?"
"Close, but note quite, it's my cold and shiny mist," you smoothly adapt to Koujirou's terminology, explaining in a manner he would be able to understand.
"Ah righty, yeah, that's the one," Koujirou nods.
He gets it!
"Oh also, how come you like to extend your Impeller that far?" Koujirou asks, "The Instructors tell us to compress ours, so that it's stronger against attacks."
"Yes that's true, I use some pieces of Impeller for defence, but not these parts of my Impeller. They're useful for… "
A myriad of uses for an extended Impeller partition comes to mind, so rather than try to rank the most immediately useful, you decided to demonstrate.
A shift in your Impeller, and your storage opens just behind Koujirou. One of your spare Heavy Particle Projector barrels, disconnected from the firing chambers, extends out and pokes Koujirou gently in the small of his back.
With a high pitched yelp, Koujirou spins and flails.
"Holy sh-! You can do that?! Teleports behind you?! From h-how far away can you do that?"
There is no teleporting involved here, but it is true that teleporting within your own Impeller volume is very easy.
"Yes. Extended Impeller partitions are useful for a lot of things," you affirm, then wave your arm towards your first Heavy Particle Projector.
Koujirou easily reads the Implication of your gesture and after a moment of gaping, slowly asks, "So… you could extend your cannons- or your melee halberd and shank them from behind even if you are four klicks -or ever further- away?"
You shake your head at the idea, "Yes, but if they're only four kilometers away inside my Impeller, it's faster to shortcut to them, fly, and uh, 'shank' them from the front."
Koujirou swivels his head between the projector behind him, you, and in the direction of your other detached weapon.
"Right, uh, before anything else, can I defend against this? Someone just magicking up a weapon, or a nuke right up my bu- up my back?"
You immediately shake your head.
"Not yet. You don't have enough Impeller to keep such a large volume spread out."
"Tsk. Ok, one step at a time then, where were you heading, Anna?" Koujirou shakes his head ruefully.
You nod, glad that you seem to be doing an adequate job so far this time.
"Back to the Impeller shield technique. Its primary limitation is when there's a multitude of high intensity, short duration attacks like consecutive overcharged plasma caster bolts or burst fire from the hypervelocity cannon. Any multi-vector attack will also render the technique inefficient."
You forge ahead with the lesson, reinforcing your expansive Impeller and extending your own hypervelocity cannons near your heavy particle projector. Firing short bursts from both, you move their extension points around to simulate a strafing attacker. With your energy dynamos spread out through your perimeter Impeller, it is easy to adjust the energy of the dumb projectiles down to safe levels.
You move your shield around, making sure to slow down enough that some of the shots pass by to whiz through the target point.
Actually, visually speaking, this isn't a very effective demonstration, maybe placing a visual decoy or Impeller ghost- no, actually, you can just create an empty frame, you have enough spare components for sure. You construct and then extend a spare frame of armour into your target area, then adjust your Impeller so to simulate the setup a normal Valkyrie would use. With the glut of materials you have had access to, you can even afford to equip the spare frame with spare barrels and outputs from your weapon systems. Still technically a visual decoy, but a significantly advanced one.
If it wasn't for the fact that you had to be linked to this decoy with Impeller for the spare components to function, this would be great for strategic misdirection. Wait- maybe with gating- you can look into the viability of this another time.
The shots that pass by your shield now ricochet off the 'primary' Impeller of the decoy, making a much more impactful demonstration. You're going to name this one... uh, Durga number 2. You'll find a better name later, something really impressive sounding, something like…
Uh…
No, never mind, Durga Two is a fine name.
"When under concerted attack like this, using a multitude of targeted shields may not be possible for you. Rather than a targeted shield, an extended shell can be used as a form of spaced armour. A simple alternative would be to extend physical shielding from storage to take the brunt of the attack."
You demonstrate, expressing out more spare plating from your storage into the air around Durga Two. The spare plating swarms around the fame, intercepting the incoming attacks.
"You have to be careful of conservation of energy, if one of the attacks impacts your physical defence hard enough that your ablative armour is thrown into your main Impeller and triggers your automatic defence, it becomes an inefficient technique."
To demonstrate, you extend another heavy particle projector along with your free floating one, combine them into a double configuration, drain one of your capacitors and fire a full power shot at Durga Two, setting the beam to convert entirely into kinetic impulse upon impact. The swarm of plating around the decoy jerk into position along the path of the attack, forming a sandwich of armour. Five plates completely fail in the face of the attack, their exotic construction failing in the face of an opposing exotic force, and the entire stack of armour is sent careening into your decoy, a shotgun spread of armour plating still carrying most of the attack's energy. Flashes erupt all over the decoy as the Impeller around it catches the shrapnel.
"It will still be better than directly intercepting the attack, but try to avoid it. Both my black mist and my cold mist are basically extensions of this technique."
"Woah… damn, that's cool. Hey, how many components can you extend anyway? I thought it's a real pain to have more than you need hanging about and doing stuff."
"A lot," you succinctly reply, "I don't usually, as it slows me down."
"Ah righty, the uh, thrust to weight problem, and the concentration limit, right?"
"Partially, more importantly, despite the increase in Impeller volume, your speed, no I mean, your reactions, and um, control- uh, fidelity remains static. You have more Impeller, but you can still only do just as much as before, just… harder. Your control is worse, basically. It's why Arcologies and Valkyrie Battleships are so slow and insensitive with their Impeller. Also if you don't have enough stuff, and try to put too much Impeller on too few… uh, things, it can also collapse. That's very bad. Extending more is good if you can stay in place and prepare, but staying still is… don't stay still. They will get past."
"Even with your range? From your Impeller readings, it looks like you can reach even further," Koujirou asks, his eyes scanning down through the TACNET display.
"I can. Didn't matter."
Something in your tone causes Koujirou to pause, and he simply nods.
"Still, with this much Impeller ready to go and your speed, I see why you don't ever requisition drones, Anna."
You acknowledge his compliment of your efficiency in using resources-
Wait, you're getting side tracked again. You're here to try and help Koujirou shield himself, but, how do you help Koujirou practice? He said that he's a practical learner, so practicing under fire- that would require a simulator. You didn't end up demonstrating any techniques that required spatial manipulation either… darn it. Did you waste time by bringing Koujirou out here? Tricks such as compressing real space volume are still well outside Koujirou's abilities.
"Anyway Anna, I want to try that frame copying trick you're using," Koujirou says, looking excited, "That'll be so useful if I can get it down. Is it just like using a visual decoy? 'Cept you make a new frame inside your storage then get your Impeller to pretend it's your main frame?"
"Yes, that's right."
You nod, and wait, looking on, checking your immediate assessment that Koujirou won't be able to express an entire frame and move it around with his current Impeller capabilities. Koujirou's progress is very odd. Fast in some aspects and slow in others, completely different from both your own growth and that of the wider cadet cohort. Indeed, after a moment of concentration with his eyes closed, Koujirou's primary Impeller abruptly blooms outwards, vastly expanding in range to nearly fifty meters in radius, a seven fold increase in range. A white glow announces a copy of Kandakara emerging from Koujirou's storage. With your own field, you detect another two layers of Impeller appear, near identical to Koujirou's current field.
This is strange, no -a search confirms- this is unprecedented. To suddenly multiply Impeller field capacity- it is completely unheard of.
What is this?
The copy of Kandakara finishes expressing, and you note further oddities. The copy is shorter than Koujirou's primary by two centimetres and the proportions of the frame are different. The torso trunk is shorter, shoulders narrower, legs longer and hips wider. It looks like a frame for a girl. If it wasn't for the transparent full face visor showing the helmet is empty, you'd have thought that it was another Valkyrie who appeared.
Koujirou is a little girly, but nowhere near this extent. The decoy is also glaring at you. Head forwards, one leg thrown out, hips cocked and arms folded. Aggressive body language, but it's just an empty frame. You're not sure what to read from it.
What a strange resting pose.
"Oh, that's weird. It's changed back," Koujirou announces, sounding as surprised as you are.
"What do you mean?" you ask.
"I've had a look at the spare parts in my storage before, and they don't actually fit me. So I took them to a fab to get them resized, but they've changed back to their original size. Well, it doesn't seem to matter that much. When I try replacements, they instantly resize for me anyway."
You nod, filing it as another one of Koujirou's quirks.
"I'll name it… Hey Anna, can you play along for a sec?" Koujirou asks, clapping his hands and looking oddly gleeful, "I'm going to try and punch your copy with my copy, can you block it?"
… You nod, filing it as another one of Koujirou's quirks.
His decoy flies up to Durga Two, staring down your decoy. As much of a stare down as an obviously empty helmet can give an eyeless blank dome of a helmet anyway.
It's so weirdly human. You will call it K2, short for Kandakara Two.
"ORAAAA!" roars Koujirou, and K2 throws a wild haymaker at your decoy.
Wild, but very fast. Without a roughly baseline human inside, the frame can move at its maximum mechanical potential. You make a minimal adjustment to block the punch, nudging Durga Two to move upwards by 30 centimetres, changing the destination of the punch from the cheek to the chest.
Durga Two doesn't budge as the punch connects directly center of mass over your thickest armour. There is a crack of Impeller and faint sparks run across K2's arm as the nanocarbon muscles tear and overload from the strike stopping dead before full extension, Koujirou's Impeller unable to absorb the full shock.
" … Well, you didn't say anything, but it's pretty clear that punching is useless," Koujirou laughs slightly, putting an odd emphasis on his last word.
"I could have told you that," you helpfully suggest.
"Okay, thanks for letting me get that out of my system. How are we doing the shooting part?"
Koujirou sounds enthusiastic about it, but you feel a strong sense of aversion. You can tell its an empty frame, but even then…
"We'll be heading back to the Arcology and using a simulator," you declare.
"Oh, okay sure, lemme uh, get my stuff back," Koujirou said, sounding a little put out. Did he want to actually get shot at?
As usual, Koujirou perks up again quickly.
"Hey! Can you teleport slower this time? I want to see it properly this time around."
"You might feel sick," you warn.
"That's fine, doing something stupid despite warnings and then feeling sick for the next while is a privilege of our age!" beams Koujirou.
Uh, okay?
You teleport, drawing out the entrance -
Shift
- and exit.
"Woah…" whispers Koujirou.
Koujirou doesn't seem nauseated by the teleport but he does look dazed, staring into the distance.
"Koujirou?" you ask, concerned.
"Nah, sorry, that was just- wow," Koujrou mutters, still looking into the distance, "I'm not sure, but I thought I… saw something in between, in there."
You check your telemetry and your internal mental clock. Between your entrance and exiting the shift, no time passed at all. You check with Koujirou's datapad and find no discrepancy in time keeping. In between the entrance and exit of a shift is just the tunnel connection between here and there. It should be instantaneous, an overlap in space, and therefore, time. While a traveller could stay inside the overlap, that was dangerous and did not really constitute travel time. For something that could be seen during the overlap… there should not be anything. The spatial tunnel is sealed. To an observer solely within the shift, there is no spatial difference in flat, unaltered spacetime and that of the shift tunnel.
Theoretically.
"I didn't see anything, sorry," you shake your head, "Can you forward your frame log data? I might be able to analyse what you saw."
"It's not in there. Yeah nah, I- I dunno if I actually saw it or not," muttered Koujirou. Shaking his head, his eyes regain focus and he waves a hand, as if to brush away the memory, "Let's head to the sims. I want to see how much I can abuse that double frame thing."
You nod, heading down into the Sims with Koujirou, filing an open discussion on the forums of teleportation specialists you joined a few weeks ago.
>"Possible detection of unknown phenomenon between entrance and exit of teleportation."
XxXxXxXxXx
Special research discovery:
Target Rich Environment specialisation: Legion of One
XxXxXxXxXx
It's another early Monday morning when Sandra finally sends you a message asking for your assistance in the reconstruction of Sydney. After a quick word to your flight, you set out.
Thanks to the time zone differences and the speed limits, you're set to arrive as the sun begins to set behind you.
With plenty of time to think, you browse through the updated mission briefing Sandra passed on.
Unexpected delays in reconstruction. Requires your personal estimation of time required to reconstruct primary power generation, power distribution, and time required to clear large volumes of debris and set up docking collars for a new Arcology core. Previous construction schedule impossible to maintain. Previous bureau for reconstruction detained for investigation, currently schedule is ad hoc under various local section supervisors.
The people in charge of the reconstruction have been arrested? What? All of them? You look around and see an investigation ongoing from UN Public Order.
Sandra had just arrested everyone? No, investigation order is from Shuri. Shuri arrested everyone. Valkyries are police?
What the heck? Shuri's supposed to be there to help Sandra, not go around arresting people who are there to help Sandra.
Pushing the questions into your queue, you take a moment to browse Sydney's history itself.
Sydney Arcology was a Renaissance period design, dreamt up and realised in the short burst of prosperity and excess that humans enjoyed in the era after the discovery of the Valkyrie cores, but before First Contact with the Antagonists. As typical of that time, Sydney was extraordinarily ostentatious. The grand capital of the Pacific, one of the Great Australian Four. Along with Darwin in the north, Perth in the West and Melbourne in the South, Sydney was the pinnace of the East. A peak population of twenty five million and covering an area of four thousand, three hundred square kilometers, Sydney had been a boastful statement of what Valkyrie frames are capable of. You feel yourself somewhat agog at the sheer scale of… waste that was present in Sydney's design as compared to the relatively muted functionality of Perth.
The main body of the Arcology used to extend far to the east and out to sea, a gossamer web of residences simply floating above the ocean under the cover of a weather moderation field maintained purely through Higgs use. A long arch bridge and some weird, white triangular theatre, local attractions of the Pre-Impact city, had been salvaged and restored from the seabed, and placed at the mouth of the city, moving out further to sea as the city grew. Huge swaths of gardens and biomes supporting populations of exotic flora and fauna connected the web of houses. Not even apartments, houses. The majority of accommodation in Sydney used to be individual houses for family units or even individuals.
These grand mansions could sprawl across the ocean surface with over one thousand square meters of living space. Each.
You could have done a lot with a thousand square meters of tropical land.
A lot of people could have done with a thousand meters of land.
Hundreds.
Of course, after the Antagonists emerged, the Arcology withdrew to a more defensible form. The residential sections retracted towards the industrial core of the Arcology and the vacated space on the sprawling girders were converted to defence uses. A new residential area was hurriedly constructed on land, set half in a traditional pre Impact sprawl and half set underground like a proper armoured Arcology. The city had been converting itself further and further underground, until major Antagonists attacks began reaching Sydney in 56PI after the fall of New Zealand. Despite a fierce defence, the Arcology was declared a loss after nearly five hundred days of battle and the UN withdrew, bitterly leaving behind the funeral pyre of a million UNAF servicemen, seven hundred Valkyries and the five million remaining civilians trapped in the doomed city.
… You take a break, and focus on finishing your construction estimates, then back into the Wave Force.
The truth of the situation is unavoidable as you close in on Australian east coast however.
Half a year on from the end of the fighting, the area around Sydney is still a blasted moonscape. Radiation ticks steadily higher as you fly closer to Sydney and force of habit has you check to see if anyone is wandering around into hotspots of the invisible poison.
Of course, the land surrounding the city is completely empty of life, human or otherwise. Where a lush landscape of forests and rolling hills once girded the city, energised by the Post Impact climate change, charred ruin is all that is left now for hundreds of kilometres up and down the coast and dozens more inland.
Closer now, within a hundred kilometres of the city, and there is a smooth, shining plain, stretching out from the city for dozens of kilometres. Trinitite, the glassy residue left behind by the intense heat of HYWs and energy weaponry, glimmers an iridescent red in the late afternoon sun. Radiation eaters slowly plod across the land here and there, fighting their endless war, slowly containing and suppressing the deadly ionising radiation.
The battle had been so intense that no trees, no shrubs, no bushes, not even blasted stumps, had been left to break up the flat fields of glass. Dips here and there, darker than the surrounding dirt, showed where ruined war machines had died. Much larger, mirror like lakes where water pooled in shallow impact craters showed where spaceships had plunged into the earth, digging their own tombs. None remained now. The valuable wreckage had been vacuumed up by the scavengers. Closer to the Arcology, deeper, gaping craters, ringed by slagged metal, broke up the plains here and there, like holes stabbed in a map, showing where high level Antagonist had fired into the ground to blast at Sydney's outlying tunnels and habitats. Small lakes often glimmered near those breaches, the shallow pools formed in the hypocentres of powerful high yield weaponry. Sand and salt whistles across the land, carried by the howling sea winds, whipping over the flat lands.
Ascending slightly to clear some air lanes, you finally see the primary residential tower. The spectacle forces a shaky breath out from you.
By design, the topmost levels of the enclosed residential tower should have been some seventy meters below ground, with another fifty or sixty meters of infrastructure built up in a low, shield shaped dome rising above the land. The entire shaft of the residential tower now stood exposed to the sun, the surrounding ground carved into a bowl like depression, as if a giant had reached down and scooped away an inverted mountain from the earth. The remains of the residential tower, a spindly lattice of exotic materials with strands of stubborn metals hanging off from spars here and there, is all that is left of the homes and workplaces of maybe two million people. The ground above the arcology, the topmost armoured plate and some five hundred meters of dense, vertical construction had been all cleared away with nary a trace, vapourised. So much metal had been blasted into the air and then fell back down as molten rain that the topsoil is caked with centimetres of metallic slag for kilometres around.
The fact that the skeleton of the residential tower, constructed of exotic materials that didn't fail even in such circumstances, is still recognisable… Perth's residential tower is the exact same design, and if…
The outer edge of the residential tower is completely unrecognisable, warped beyond recognition. Robbed of their supporting structure in the central column, the levels and plates slump inwards, like the wax collar around a burnt down candle wick, a ring of slag slowly collapsing inwards. Even as you watch, a distant rolling rumble accompanies a dense cloud of dust to announce another landslide, thousands of tons of husked out tenements collapsing down into a heap of rubble. The UN had declared the peripheral sections completely unsalvageable aside from mineral scrap. Valkyries and large scale builders do exactly that as you watch. Here and there, huge sections of rubble glowed soft white and shrink as Valkyries take in the materials into their storage, letting their cores sort the slag. The titanic large scale builders are less discerning, the machines slowly plodding around the perimeter of the residential tower, indiscriminately stripping away material, and leaving trails of compressed cubic aggregate interspersed with blocks of recycled alloys.
The giant machines find steady footing on the same battered field of metal that the remains of the central column teeters on, and you recognise it as the secondary armour plate only after consulting the schematics again.
The secondary armour plate itself is heavily damaged, twice penetrated by some horrendously powerful direct fire weapon, and jammed partially open from a hole torn right through the plate. Something unimaginably strong (Class C Type Zero Herakles, your search returns) had wrenched part of the armoured plate open, exotic alloys layered through the plate and Impeller reinforcement be damned, tearing through the barrier like a rotten orange rind. Despite the huge scar, hundreds of meters of armour buckled and pulled upwards, the actual breach wasn't that large, only a few meters across at the widest. Herakles didn't need to tear a massive hole, just one large enough for itself, Sekhmet, Raksha and Dahaka to fly through, bypassing the Higgs boosted interdiction field deployed through the arcology.
The four Type Zeros had managed to sneak within kilometers of the Arcology boundary. Once sprung, they'd cleared the remaining distance, through the compromised upper armoured plate and then torn through the secondary armoured plate in minutes. Two Valkyrie squadrons attempted to follow the Types into the lower residential tower to reinforce the two reserve squadrons already below the plate.
However, none of the squadrons were Zero rated. A hundred or so Valkyries of mixed ranks, none of them Aces, to contest against four Type Zeros, two of them close range specialists, and their attendant high level Antagonists, within the confines of an Arcology?
Sixty survivors managed to retreat, half into the surrounding structures, half back through the plate.
In a bitter irony, the survivors who retreated back above the secondary plate and into the air above the Arcology were killed as they attempted to stem the flow of Antagonists pouring into the breached upper citadel. Both those surviving Valkyries and the invading hordes of high level Antagonists they warred against were reduced to collateral damage as Last Word were intercepted by Class A Nokomis and its Type Zero escorts just over Sydney.
With no one left to help her, the Lord Mayor Leanne Ellis Hughes stood no chance once Sekhmet found her.
The Impeller fields fell.
With that, the centralised UN CIC, STRATNET node South-West, enters downtime. The UN forces fell back to local networks and commanders, practically anarchy in such a fast and vast battlefield. Antagonists flooded the defenders and the city with high yield weaponry. Few reach the Arcology proper, intercepted by Last Word as the vengeful suppression squadron tears through the Antagonists, searching for Type Zeros to kill. However, Sydney is not spared, as in yet another frustrating innovation of tactics, the aliens begin teleport the bombs into strategic locations in Sydney, copying a favoured tactic of the UN in dealing with particularly stubborn redoubts.
Generalised interdiction from reinforcing Valkyries reduces the accuracy of the incoming ordinance and foresights in design against this very tactic mitigates some of the damage, but many of the weapons nonetheless reach. More mortal wounds against an already crippled Arcology.
Nokomis escapes in the subsequent chaos.
The mayor Valkyrie slain, the upper citadel torn open, the supplies stored there destroyed, and the vast majority of Sydney was lost; thereby, so was the battle. The UN retreated in a barely organised rout, and, unable to extract all the entrenched forces off the coast and around the Arcology, were forced to leave them behind to buy time. The majority of Antagonists forces chased, pushing west to smash themselves against Darwin and Adelaide, leaving only a relatively small force to move down into the citadel to exterminate the surviving citizenry.
Casualty rate within the lower citadel was one hundred percent.
A horrible, slow four month long, systematic and thorough siege as bunker after bunker was destroyed, shelter after shelter was breached by Antagonists. The Antagonists didn't use any high level forms or Types. There had been no need. The heavy defence units had all been destroyed during the initial foray into the Arcology by the Type Zeros and their attendants, and with the large scale fabricators and all primary power generation destroyed or depowered, they could not be replenished. The surviving soldiers and independent interior defence grids held for a time on reserve resources and power, fighting over every corridor and choke point on their dwindling supplies. The defence units still operational, static turrets, second line drones and the occasional crushing trap corridor could never do more than buy time. What small arms the civilians could make with their fabricators they had power for were hopelessly underpowered.
So, even here, even here, it is the same.
The Antagonists hadn't rushed. Even collapsing the bottom levels of the residential tower had not saved the survivors, the Antagonists going to the time to dig through the rubble until they confirmed that every single human had been killed. The last shelters above the defunct geothermal generators in the very deepest levels were finally found, breached, and torched, killing the very last survivors. They died one hour and five minutes before the United Nations retook the territory around Sydney in the lead up for the Alaskan Offensive.
Of course they would.
Of course they will.
With the efficient slaughter from the Antagonist clearing force, structural damage to habitation infrastructure of the lower citadel is… minimal.
… These aliens. These monsters. I am going to kill all of them-
Yes, we will, but focus.
TACNET reveals hundreds of Valkyries in the surrounding tactical space, working in groups on various projects. A beacon for Sandra's position within the lower citadel periodically squawks, and you angle down.
The silence over the comm channels is unnerving. The general channels are open as usual, but no one is talking over it, only the electronic announcements for standing orders in the area looping in the background. Your own channels remain just as empty.
This is odd. Sandra would usually greet you once you entered her TACNET range, and you did inform her you were on your way.
Exiting a conduit under the secondary armoured plate and flying into the lower residential tower proper, the lights are muffled by a yawning darkness under you. The navigation lights of drones shine, a swarm of red and green blinking in the gloom below. Two pillars of sunlight still weakly shine into the lower citadel, entering through the rents cut into the armoured plate above. The weak red light, filtered through the dust, is easily swallowed in the cavernous lower chamber of the Arcology.
Where the upper residential tower consisted of discrete residential plates connecting to the central shaft, with enough room around them to see the skybox from almost every level as the plates rotated, the plates in the lower tower are continuous, merging into a helical corkscrew, curving downwards into the earth. Walking 'outside' on the upper layer of the screw thread would have been much like standing on the side of a hill, the ground curving up and down out of sight to either side.
The Valkyries and drones down here are deconstructing the lower residential tower, slowly working their way down. Taking advantage of the still salvageable fabricators in the lower citadel, Sydney is to be repurposed to another industrial Arcology like Armstrong base rather than a residential mixed use design.
There, inside one of the towers that hung suspended from the 'ceiling', Sandra's beacon pulsed.
Stepping through an airlock, you take in the interior with surprise.
The lights are on.
Strangely pristine hallways greet you, undamaged illumination and decoration panels providing soft yellow light, dimming with the time of day. Programmed scenes still play out over the walls, holoscreens mirroring the time of day of the world outside the Arcology as it appeared from before the battle. The sounds of the foliage rustling under the wind, electronic and dead to your discerning ears, accompany you through the false valleys of red afternoon skies, orange clouds and green trees.
You enter a small biome and a burst of noise from startled birds wash over you. Colourful parrots swarm you, begging for food. They perch all over Durga, craning their necks into every nook and cranny of your armour A search shows the auto-feeder system idle, out of food for the birds. A ticket for a refill sits unallocated, completely neglected in the face of more important tasks.
Luckily for the birds, food ran out only within the last day. You give them some of your spare bread, selecting some of the more nutritious loaves. Distributing enough to make sure there is no fighting over the food, you carry on, leaving the biome behind.
The doors to elevators sit open, the shafts left open to allow for faster access up, down and through the residential tower. There is no need for ordinary safety precautions, there are no civilians in Sydney anymore. Red warning lights pulse as you float into the shaft, winds howling around you as atmospheric balancing systems fight against the naturally uneven pressures at the top and bottom of the elevator shaft.
Exiting the shaft on the five hundredth floor, strange ion readings from an otherwise unremarkable wall gives you pause, and you recognise a silhouette. This is… a faint ion flash shadow, from low power plasma weaponry-
Five.
Three adults. Two children. Adolescents? Does not matter. Did not matter.
Larger shadow from drone, personal convenience and transport type. Likely Holden model F2306 variant. People were running. Drone rushing towards source of attack. Shadow overlap. Two plasma attacks. Short timeframe-
Your fist buries itself into the wall, smashing the metal inwards-
What? What are you doing?
You jerk away from the wall and continue, fleeing the scene as the corridor collapsed behind you.
You hate these corridors, so small and straight and narrow and long and barren and thin and so easy to shoot down, tearing through all these thin, thin, thin walls.
It's the same, the same, the same, the same.
I don't want to be here.
You have to calm down. You need to calm down. You couldn't have done anything here, anything there, not back then, not back then. You couldn't do anything. You will. From now, you will.
Focus.
Firstly. Distance to destination; 800 meters.
The lights grow dimmer and intermittent as you close in on Sandra's location, hallways now taking on an eerie tone as red emergency lighting and wall panels showing stark warning announcements appear.
>>[Emergency situation. Your nearest shelter is not safe. Proceed this → way toward [invalid] shelters.]
The internal networks are still in chaos, unconnected to wider networks and their updates. Crawling processions of yellow guidance lights contradict each other, arrows pointing one way then the other. Some isolated networks still assure you that everything is under control, either having been reset by Valkyries or perhaps never verifying the emergency alerts in the first place.
Ignoring the warning panels beseeching you, you continue to follow Sandra's beacon and soon come to a shelter. This shelter was abandoned early on in the battle, built in a structurally weaker layer in the Arcology, one that would not give proper protection in the event of a large scale incursion.
No one had died in this one.
The door has been replaced, oily exotic alloy clearly different from the surrounding material, the Impeller shadow and interdiction field you feel saturating the chamber behind the walls are clearly both from Shuri.
The comms panel is dead, so you walk up to the door and knock twice.
Shuri's Impeller reaches out, brushes over you, and then the door disappears back into her storage.
Shuri stands in the doorway, Konark fully expressed, golden plates glimmering in the dim light. She gives a nod and steps aside, gesturing vaguely at one of the corners of the room.
The prefab interior structures had been cleared, and aside from some privacy dividers, the only furniture is a single bed, surrounded by a rack of computers.
Sandra sits up, blearily rubbing her eyes before a flash of announces her partially extending Albion.
After a moment to compose herself, Sandra removes her helmet and floats off the bed. A smile is directed your way, but it is thin, and a flinty look in her eyes persists before she blinks and shakes her head wearily.
"Anna, good evening. I didn't expect you to arrive early, I meant to meet you outside."
Expected time of arrival deviation; plus two seconds, within margin of error.
"Hello Sandra. I am not early."
But you are not very late either.
Sandra's eyes flicker to side, consulting one of the computers, then towards Shuri briefly.
"I… I overslept. My apologies."
"Sorry."
"The fault lies with me. How did your estimates for the reconstruction go?"
"It's done," you affirm and forward your work to Sandra.
With a flick of a finger, Sandra turns on a projector and throws your estimates onto one of the walls, other forms and charts rapidly appearing and intersecting as she manipulates the data. Sandra struggles to bite down a yawn, then gropes around blindly over her table with a hand before Shuri expresses a mug in front of her. Sandra absentmindedly grasps the mug and takes a sip, only to sputter and cough, the graphics projected on the wall flickering and seizing.
You step forwards in alarm, but Sandra appears fine, and a quick chemical analysis of the drink Shuri gave her was a mug of perfectly normal, if somewhat strong-
"Energy drink, Shuri?!" Sandra snaps, marching over and waving the mug under Shuri's nose.
"Instant espresso with a blend of different stimulant syrups and other stuff. Woke you up. Much faster than tea." Shuri unapologetically admits, taking the mug back from Sandra and slamming the drink down.
"You- you unapologetic deplorable!" Sandra exclaims after a moment of dumbfounded gaping.
"I also added vodka, just the way you like it," Shuri deadpans.
Sandra wordlessly expresses a cup of tea and attempts to force it onto Shuri. Shuri dodges Sandra's hand, then slides away when Sandra attempts to grab her with Impeller.
"Anna's here now. I'm back to babysit. Take care. Remember your current upper limit, two hours of sleep every twenty."
With that, Shuri flies out the door, chuckling.
Sandra stares after her, wide eyed for a second, before she sighs, and takes a long drink from her cup.
"Well, this is much better. Anna, do not ask Shuri for help in arising," Sandra says, "I need a few minutes to look over your report. My apologies for the delay."
"It's okay," you repeat, before changing subjects, "Why was Shuri using Interdiction? Why did she arrest everyone helping you? Are there still Antagonists nearby?"
Sandra takes a moment before replying, choosing her words carefully, "There were some complications with the effort so far. Oversights or sabotage that have significantly slowed down the reconstruction efforts. Investigations are ongoing, but if deliberate action, the perpetrator would have required teleportation to access some of the areas damaged. Shuri... had some suspicions, and she wished to act to cover all possible eventualities."
Perpetrator. Not Antagonist.
No.
Antagonist. She means Antagonists.
You pull up and review the incidents. Inconclusive investigations. Either extremely unlucky accidents and errors, or very subtle and near untraceable sabotage. Near mundane issues, concrete mixture quantities incorrect, steel provided not up to technical standards, mismatches between manifests, inventory missing important components, drones loaded with incorrect task lists and priorities. Small errors, but far above the normal rates in occurrence. Serious issues have cropped up too. Sydney's geothermal generators, the least damaged of the power systems, upon startup, failed due to undiscovered blockages within pressure relief channels, both the primary and all backups, despite a flow check mere hours before. One of the supporting struts for the new core of the arcology was riddled with faults, as if the steel and concrete developed cavities. A heavy builder given erroneous instructions and its networking turned off, almost caving in parts of the lower citadel. Spontaneous power outages and network downtime in the surveillance grids, leaving records spotty. Too many errors in too short a period of time to be dismissed as coincidence.
"Type eighteens? Or sevens?"
For the more common Types capable of shifting, you believe a Type 7 is more likely to conduct low key sabotage. Until you met Type 2s and then Sekhmet, the 7s were the smartest and trickiest enemies by far. Compared to Type 18s which acted like equipment, 7s are local commanders. For the longest time, destroying a Type 7 was the fastest way to reduce the aliens back into a disorganised mob. Some high level Antagonists are also capable of shifting, but you doubt anything aside from a Type would be so discreet.
"We have insufficient evidence for conclusions," Sandra sighs, dancing around the topic.
You let it lapse, uncomfortable with trying to dig any further, leaving Sandra to read over your amended reconstruction plan. A ball of stress twists your stomach. You can't do this again. Suspecting everyone. He said. She said. You are happy- no, not happy- relieved that Shuri arrested every suspect. You don't always have to keep watching over your back.
But did she really though? What if she missed someone? What if by detaining everyone, she made someone else angry enough to make a point? A stupid, meaningless point for pride?
-You don't listen, so this… this is a message for you to see!-
A tremble runs through your Impeller and weapon system extend unconsciously out from your storage, Durga reacting to your feelings.
No, here is different. You are different. No one will be sneaking anything past, you can make sure of it. You retract your weapons and wait.
After a minute of processing your plan, Sandra nods decisively.
"This is good news. We may be able to make up for the delays if we are able to maintain the pace you outline."
XxXxXxXxXxx
As with most Arcologies, Sydney had more than a single power generation source. Higgs, tidal, wind, solar, fusion and geothermal generation were all originally part of Sydney's power income, but as the war progressed, the energy density and relative security of fusion and Higgs generators relegated the other sources to back up power.
Higgs generators are finite, with the only source of new units from downed Type Zeros and Antagonist Breaches. Sydney would gain a new generator, but it would arrive with the new Arcology core, far too precious a component to be left onsite alone.
High power fusion reactors are unavoidably volatile and fail deadly at criticality and beyond, and thus generators at the scale that an Arcology demanded needed to be placed well beyond the perimeter of the Arcology. Rather than attempt to construct one on site, the UN loaded up a space force dreadnought that was in refit full of materials, and then deorbited it, settling it down a dozen kilometres to the south west of Sydney. The naval 2 terawatt reactor isn't nearly enough to fulfil the energy budget of the planned Arcology, but it's a vital start that frees Valkyries from being forced to stand around with power lines running into their storage to power parts of the reconstruction process themselves.
You spend half an hour meticulously checking over the entire generator and all the power connectors through the Arcology alongside several flights of other Valkyries before you settle in next to the generator to begin its start up sequence. Energy is injected, activating powerful electromagnets and exotic elements that locally weaken the Coulomb force, then hydrogen is heated and injected into the disk. More and more power is required, pushing the reactions along until it finally reaches criticality. Your presence speeds up the startup sequence substantially, firstly as your triad of modified generators at their emergency maximum output allowed you to push nearly twenty terawatts of power by yourself, more than two hundred times the specified power of the standard fusion generator included in most Valkyrie frames. Secondly, your Impeller is powerful enough that you can simply stand inside the fusion chamber and adjust the plasma disk directly with your Impeller and Heavy Particle Projectors.
Within minutes, the fusion chamber reaches a million kelvin and radiation pressure begins to press down on your Impeller as you watch over the reaction. A minute later of your encouragement and the temperature doubles, then increases by a couple of million kelvin again every minute after that. It is at 103 million degrees Kelvin when your outer Impeller partitions begin to strain, even the specially crafted layers of Impeller slowly begin to buckle from the extreme conditions. Radiation crashes into the sides of the containment chamber, and the exotic construction walls glow as they reflect nearly all of the energy back into the plasma disc. A few minutes after that, and your spatial techniques reducing your real space volume also start wavering from the mass and energy in the space around you continuing to rise. You exit the centre of the fusion disk and watch from the perimeter of the reactor chamber where you are exposed to only the radiation, and the effective temperature is a few dozen million degrees lower.
At 170 million kelvin, the reactor is at 81 percent maximum power, and the fusion process finally achieves criticality, with enough power generated that the generator will no longer be at a deficit. Helical streamers of plasma are drawn from the axis of the disk and herded into the powerplants above and below the reactor. You still watch carefully, your Impeller extended throughout the entire complex, but not invasively adjusting the process. The power plants begin to correctly output electricity, and you watch with a grin of satisfaction as Valkyries begin slowly disconnecting from the Arcology power grid, allowing the new generator to take up their slack as it steps up its output steadily.
With a careful teleport, you first emerge into the air forty kilometres above Sydney, absorbing the excess energy you brought with you into your batteries, and then down to Sandra, back on the surface above the generator.
"It worked," you practically gush, waving your arms about as you try to find words, "I…"
That was fun.
You hold back the words and quickly sober yourself up. Here is not a place to be having fun.
"It is running. There will be enough power for the local fabricators to run at full power again."
Sandra nods, simultaneously keeping an eye out on diagrams of the powergrid, telemetry from the reactor, and the status reports of the various fabricators as they immediately began drawing on the newly available power, "That you are able to start a tee three generator in under an hour, astonishing as always. How fares the new security systems you installed?"
"They all work," you nod, keying Sandra into the system after a quick check, "They will alert you and other high ranking personnel if they detect issues."
In light of the sabotage, you had stuffed the generator complex full of security measures. So far, none of the sabotage had been life threatening to the purely Valkyrie workforce on site, but you, and everyone else, agreed that there could be no mistakes with an installation of fusion generators.
A flight of Valkyries patrol through the hallways, chatting as they make their rounds through the facility, menial work for Elite rank combat Valkyries, but necessary until the reactor is taken in by the Impeller of the new Arcology. You peek into their public comms for a moment, wondering what they think of their work.
"-polished enough that can actually see my own face in the walls." "That's how you know that black Ace is the real deal Simone, first mirror that hasn't cracked trying to reflect-" "Piss off." "- your face." "I found another scratch in the floor, nearly two millimetres long, fifteen microns deep too! That's three in the last kilometre of corridor." "Ok." "Yeah, only human after all." "Don't you reckon the amount of sensors is a bit excessive? It's filtered, but I can see all your footsteps with the seismic sensors." "It's pretty over the top, yeah. Like, I can actually analyse all this filtered data and isolate the your heartbeats from the seismic data." "Hey, y'know- even with all this around us- what if, whoever that fucker is, does what the black Ace did?" "Just teleport into the fusion chamber?" "No way right? That black Ace wasn't normal, I don't think anyone outside of the doubles digits could do that." "Yeah, that's nuts." "Yeah, totally nuts. Want to try it?" "I'm pretty fucking bored, but not that bored." "Sim it once we rotate, but no. Seriously, no. That's an actual order if you are wondering. Do not fucking try to open any spatial routes into a terawatt class fusion reactor." "You can't anyway, it's interdicted now." "Not technically true, the exotic elements screwing with space around here are on a pretty complicated pattern, but if you're an Ace and you know how it works, you can get through it." "Aren't these space encryption system supposed to still be prototypes?" "That's what I thought too, they started making them cause of, well… what happened here, right?" "Yeah, they're still too dangerous to use I thought?" "Ladies, welcome to the world premier. Look pretty, you're all on the catwalk… cept for you, Simone, we wouldn't want to subject any crowds to that." "Piss off."
"They seem rather bored," you remark to Sandra.
"With the standard of entertainment we have and could yet be subjected to, bored is good," Sandra sighs in return.
She turns away, taking a step back towards the Arcology, trusting in your designs.
"Anna, shall we leave them to it?"
"Ok."
You will do your best to help Sandra make the rest of the week as boring as possible.
XxXxXxXxXx
As if waiting for your resolution, less than a minute later, you receive an alert from TACNET.
>>[Power/material draw anomaly: sector 2-210rM: structure 11]
You're holding one end of a massive support strut in place, the other end being manipulated by a flight of Valkyries, as the alert comes in.
Continuing to hold the thousands of tons of metal in place, you fly closer to Sandra and watch the updates.
Two Valkyries flights closer to the problem are automatically tasked to investigate. A search of the location reveals that it's a food and other organic synthesis superstructure in the lower citadel. Five sets of twenty gigalitre scale organic vats, each individual unit capable of producing over eighty tons of organically complex proteins per day and the entire structure capable of outputting three million tons per annum.
The power draw for the structure at maximum operational capacity is meant to be in the range of two hundred megawatts. It is currently drawing in nearly eight times as much power. The structure was not even scheduled to power up at this moment.
>>[Network anomaly: sector 2-210]
>>[Amending alert: Network anomaly: sector 2. Enemy action likely. Recommend increasing alert level.]
TACNET's attempts to access surveillance assets around the area fail. The cameras and other sensors disabled, their reboot upon connecting back into the main power grid failing. Network relays report errors, dropping out and back in. A power surge trips a breaker somewhere, causing a brief but widespread cascading blackout across the lower citadel.
You're completely speechless, first with shock, then rage.
You had just checked every single piece of electrical equipment attached the main lines in the Arcology. Less than an hour ago.
Sabotage.
The officer in charge of the lower citadel is fast to respond.
"Ward Flight, cut the power to that building, now! Flight Bornstein, Flight Feng, hurry it up," orders Wing Commander Zaya, simultaneously declaring Alert Two over TACNET.
You shift your Impeller, preparing a teleport- but cut it off as you glance over at Sandra. She shakes her head and points at her ear, then behind and above her. The fusion reactor. You reach for an update- and find everything in order. The Valkyries guarding the reactor are now tense and silent, but report no anomalies. You understand Sandra's general point though, and nod silently in reply, Durga shifting uneasily around you as you expand your Impeller to reach throughout your local area of the arcology, but do nothing else at the moment.
A ripple of space announces the two flights of Valkyries entering the dark area with teleports and you clench your jaw. Waiting, straining to watch everything. Your Impeller continues to expand, encroaching towards the region of the disturbance. Valkyries you accidently bump with your Impeller jump, weapons swivelling as they search for a hostile before you reassure them it's you.
Ten seconds pass. TACNET is a riot of status updates, but the comms are silent as Valkyries swarm around power connections, making repairs and again sweeping for anomalies. Your Impeller is now at the arcology superstructure's doorstep, progressing slowly as you strain to keep coherency. You need more components expressed for this volume.
Twenty seconds, most of the checks throughout the Arcology by the other Valkyries are done, but the air remains tensely silent, everyone holding their breaths. You double check their checks just to be sure. Perimeter patrols accelerate their routes, searching for signs of exfiltration.
Thirty seconds. You're going to hold the all of Sydney in your Impeller soon.
They won't get past again. Not this time.
Never again.
Forty seconds, TACNET updates.
>[Situation under control. Unknown micromachine weaponry co-opted food production machines to gestate bionic weaponry. Active platforms destroyed. Area partially sanitized with radiation to terminate micromachine cluster formations.]
>[Onsite requests assistance with investigation and clean up.]
Ah? It's… over?
Your Impeller finally reaches the structure.
"Undersecretary ma'am, situation under control," reports Commander Zaya, "Is the- that Special Constable you mentioned, is she around? The first responders are trying to secure the scene but it's still chaos."
You have a quick search and find no one with that role- wait. It's you. You have been temporarily vested as some sort of civilian officer by the UNHCR with a lot of legal power.
>'My Impeller has reached the site of the incident, I am investigating now.'
You burst comm to the Commander.
"Very good, ma'am. Do you have our log data?"
>'Standby.'
You prioritise your salvage through what records remained in the local systems within the building. Data corruption is rife, the micromachines riding through the energy and material rich metal and optical lines of the power and network cables as usual and attacking computing equipment through them.
It is within these cables that you first find intact samples of the hostile micromachines. You poke at it for a moment, unable to understand its design before you take it into your storage and realise that the singular machine you found is an inception unit with an exhausted exotic power supply. A micromachine that produced larger actuating units that formed the bulk of the swarm and did the actual mechanical work. Part of it is twisted, failed self termination.
Not a UN archived design. Technologically and practically feasible, but unlikely to be manufactured. Limited use cases as weapon. Only suitable against large volumes of complex organic materials or complex cellular life in a high energy environment.
As your Impeller envelopes the rest of the building, you grimace. This massive food production has both in spades. With an inception unit of the attacking nanomachine in hand, your Impeller wrapped around the building to feel it out, and the records from the first responder Flights, you quickly construct a likely scenario of what happened.
Inside the protein production facilities where massive vats cultivated meat kelp to grow beef, pork, mutton and chicken, something had planted the virus micromachine into the culture fluid and disabled the safeties. Given the presumed rate of growth, the inception units would have been planted over two weeks ago, slowly growing the actuator units with power from passive heat and their tiny exotic power cells, the creeping growth missed by sweeps through the area. A check of the sweep procedures reveals that they almost certainly would have missed this particular infection. When the power was reconnected, rather than grow neat and orderly tubers of muscle and fat, a shambling mindless leviathan bloomed and thrashed out of the nutrient soup. The micromachines would have simultaneously infiltrated the surrounding networking infrastructure and injected viral code. That fact perversely makes you feel better about yourself, it wasn't your oversight that allowed someone to attack the network. The monstrosity that finally awakened was nearly as physically strong as a high level Antagonist. It's mindless spasms badly damaged the building and nearly collapsed the entire substructure as it continuously grew.
It is as this stage that the responding Valkyries arrive. The abomination is still largely mutated muscle and bones, with none of the durability of a combat form Antagonist. Five VML rounds from a Valkyrie blew it apart. Its attempt to reform is thwarted as the Valkyries blast ionising radiation to terminate the micromachines.
You forward your findings to Sandra and begin to search for evidence.
…
An hour later, and despite practically combing through the structure, but find neither a culprit, nor evidence leading to one.
Even though you investigated every possibility and the paths of everyone within Sydney, you couldn't find anything conclusive. An Antagonist… or something else snuck in approximately two weeks ago, unregistered on any sensor functioning in the lower Arcology. Anger burns through your entire body as you worked to salvage what useable materials remained from the hulk of the dead leviathan and repair the food fabricating building.
XxXxXxXxXx
Morale was low and tempers high, but no more serious incidents occurred, and work continued.
Now, a week later, still on planned schedule, the citadel for the new Arcology hovers a few hundred meters above sea level, aligning itself with its foundation braces built over the old residential tower.
A towering spire nearly a kilometre tall and two thirds that in diameter, the air rumbles as it begins to descend, casting a deep shadow out to sea in the waning afternoon sun. Formerly Valkyrie battleship Tehran, the rather dated frame is used as the heart of the rebuilt Arcology. With the former Iranian capital back in human hands and rebuilt as Sydney is, Tehran would be retired from the Space Force roster of names for Valkyrie battleships. Same with Valkyrie battleship Sydney. With Sydney Arcology on track to be rebuilt, the state of the art ship is scheduled to renamed to Algiers once Sydney is officially reopened in the next few hours.
Sandra makes a short speech as the docking procedure proceeds, and you again beg off from making an appearance.
There are already too many people here in Sydney who recognise you now. They stare at you with… expectations. Or is it wariness? There is a faint tremor in your Impeller and you quickly clamp it down. Constantly being on the lookout, watching everyone, just guessing about who you could trust, wondering why they might be asking you to do something…
The stress you have been feeling over the last week slowly abates as your finally feel the heavy weight of the Arcology's Impeller presses down on you. It's like a heavy gust of warm wind, brushing over you for just a moment, before the Impeller layer moves on, reaching outwards to find and connect the peripheral components of Sydney.
>>[All systems secured. I have control.]
The announcement finally arrives over STRATNET and you release a long sigh. Descending to the ground and sitting down, you finally relax a little, only to jerk back upright as Durga murmurs about a Higgs particle reaction.
Sandra concludes her speech and the lands around Sydney twist and churn, a massive spatial technique. From within the bubbles of elsewhere, plants erupted from beneath the baked and ruined soil of the surroundings. Dust explodes everywhere as the topsoil is explosively displaced upwards by the vegetation and fertile soil rising from their closed space pockets. A bass boom shakes the air and a bright blue flash of Higgs expenditure shines from Sydney, and the dust in the air is cleared all at once.
In a flash, the surrounding hundred kilometres is vegetated again, a disc of green on the barren red shore.
A fresh breeze washes over you, carrying the faint smell of spring rain, of wild flowers and free of the faint buzz of radiation.
Wow.
You knew it was coming, but even so, it's a miraculous sight.
A relieved laugh burst out of you as the worries of the last week seem to fly away and you clap and cheer with everyone else.
XxXxXxXxXx
After the preliminary reopening of Sydney, Sandra and you return to Perth. You offered Sandra a ride on your Impeller, but Sandra countered with an offer to make the trip back in her jet. Apparently it was flying back from New Zealand, and it could make a detour to stop in Sydney, but you don't really care about the details, after all-
Sandra owns a jet.
A jet. Her own jet.
You are utterly star struck at the thought. The stories of the rich men with unimaginable wealth and power from the old and tattered magazines always mentioned a private jet. Comfortable couches, beds and freshly made food, all the while in the air above the clouds, far from the troubles of the earth and the masses below them.
You had eagerly accepted her invitation, and minutes later an airliner appears in the hanger.
A massive delta wing painted in UN blue with eight engines, Sandra's jet is even larger than strategic bombers, and far larger than the slim and sleek courier jets or angular military transport jets. The only larger purely mechanical flying vehicles you know of are the UN Air Carriers.
"Does it have a name? Like Trade Winds, or Jet Stream, or Polar Express or Air Force One?"
"Well yes, but nothing so prestigious as the last I am sorry to say," Sandra chuckles, "This is the Blue Moon. A joke in poor taste originally, but we decided to adopt the moniker."
You practically bounce up and down as you scan the aircraft, but it is well shielded and you can't see through most of the plane. Too eager to wait for the jet to dock and release its boarding ramp, you turn on Sandra and impatiently ask.
"Does it have food?"
"Yes, though nowhere near as plentiful or varied as Perth Academy."
"What about beds?"
"There is comfortable medium term accommodation for passenger and crew of two hundred."
"What about a pool? Does it have a pool?"
"Yes actually, but it is rather small," Sandra laughs, "No need to wait for me, have some fun exploring it. I will need to catch some rest."
Given permission to board by Sandra, you gleefully bypass the wait, grab Sandra, and teleport the both of you onboard. Finding her room (She has her own room!) you put her down and fly away to explore.
There is a pool! Pools! A 12 meter long cold lap pool ringed by a few hot, bubbling spa pools. A small biome along the top of the jet with a transparent plasti-steel ceiling. A large dining room, with a pair of surprised waiters. A plate is dropped, but you don't even have to help as the man catches it again, fast as greased lightning. Skilled waiters! A kitchen, complete with a chef fumbling at his data pad as he startles to his feet. Fish swim a tank. Fresh ingredients! Many bedrooms, with comfortable beds, bathrooms with showers, holoscreens and small fridges filled with colourful drinks in tiny crystal bottles. You can't help but retract Durga and jump into the bed of the first room you enter, mussing up the neatly pressed blankets. A shift in gravity announces the jet taking off and you rush out of the bed to the belly observation deck, standing on the deceptively fragile looking plasti-steel as the ground rushes away beneath you. There's even chair and lounges here, anyone sitting here would feel like they are sitting on the clouds!
Haaaa…
This is great!
You zoom back to Sandra's side, ready to gush about how amazing her plane is, but you find that she is already asleep. You have a quick look through the records and it seems that she practically keeled over asleep nearly as soon as you put her down.
Oh… well, it is her plane, so you guess she wouldn't find it that exciting.
You also suppress your own yawn as you sit down. It has been a trying week.
With one last check of the surrounding airspace, you go to your own room, thoroughly wrap yourself up, and go to sleep.
XxXxXxXxXx
Heavy. Dark, all around. Are you buried? Which way is up? Dig, must dig yourself out.
You pull and claw. Forcing yourself forwards.
Arm over arm, twisting and squirming.
Nothing changes.
How long have you been here?
The pressure gets heavier, but you can't feel anything under your hands, your legs kick at nothing.
Then, the pressure disappears and light surrounds you.
Something holds your hand, giving assurance.
You snap awake.
Another incomprehensible dream. You take a moment to attempt to recreate the mental patterns that lead you to see whatever that was, but as usual, the output is garbage. Strange. You can cast memories to holofilm with ease, but these dreams…
You shake your head and climb out of bed, the jet had just arrived back to Perth and finished its docking procedure according to the network notices. You're a little disappointed that you slept through the flight instead of… drinking expensive wine while lounging in the pool or whatever the rich and powerful did, but odd dreams aside, you do feel rather refreshed.
You make your way over to Sandra's room and find that she's still asleep. The flight had only taken a little over two hours, so it made sense. You gently pick her up and teleport to her room inside the Arcology. The door slides open without query as you walk up to it. You're not sure the door is meant to do that. Quickly reviewing the locking protocols on the door, you realise Sandra has it set to recognise anyone from your Flight as having permissions to come and go. That's very trusting of her.
You walk in, and take a quick glance around. Its arrangement is much like yours, a hallway into a kitchen and living room area, then bedrooms and bathroom along the far side. You take a peek into both bedrooms and you're fairly confident that you know which one is Sandra's room.
One bedroom is filled with books and electronic displays, idle screens drawn across all 4 walls, heavyset dark coloured furniture frames are arranged in a loose welcoming circle around the room. The other is spartan, a bed and shelf crammed against the wall, and the rest of the space sits unused. The shelf itself sits nearly empty, only 3 empty physical picture frames alone in occupying all the space.
>'Back?'
Message from Shuri.
>'Yes.'
>'Sandra asleep?'
>'Yes.'
>'Good, thank you.'
>'You're welcome.'
>'Anything happen?'
You hesitate.
>'She hurt?'
>'No.'
>'Good. Catch anyone?'
>'No.'
>'Ok.'
When Shuri doesn't send anything else after a full second, you assume she's done with the laconic conversation. Very to the point, as usual.
You pull a blanket over to tuck Sandra in, then pause.
Sandra had not changed out of her fancy dress that she wore during the opening ceremony. She slept in it on the plane, and the synthetic material looked comfortable, but the dress is bulky. Are you meant to… help her into her sleepwear? You cast an eye around the room and stare at Sandra's wardrobe for a long second.
What on earth? You quickly retreat a step. Why would Sandra need so many different articles of clothing of so many functions of so many different styles? You wouldn't even know where to begin.
Maybe Sandra just sleeps in her underthings?
Should you ask Shuri?
No, no, no. You don't really need to know, you don't feel like doing that, Shuri might not even know, you don't want Shuri to know that you want to know. Will she laugh at you? Will she be silently judging? She totally will be. Totally.
You dither around the room for a minute, then leave the blanket over and Sandra as she is and retreat from the room.
Now, what is there to do? Classes have ended.
You spend some time silently observing your flight mates.
Koujirou and Setsuna are practically bouncing to the cafeteria, enthusiastic in their dash down the corridors as they stage an impromptu foot race. Both have changed significantly since the start of term months ago, no more staggering out from the sims with overuse aches for Koujirou, and Setsuna looks completely fresh. They're improving very quickly compared to the cohort at large.
Shuri slowly walks after them, demonstrating an Impeller technique to her trailing group of fans. Shuri's fans seem to have recovered slightly in number from the rapid fall at the start of the year. Her limp is getting more pronounced. You're sure that some of those around her have now begun to notice the slight hitch in her movements and subtly uneven pitch in her steps now, the Instructors at least, if no one else. You analyse and confirm your suspicion. Shuri appears to have good and bad days, and today is a particularly bad day, but her physical capability is dropping. A worsening injury, or degrading prosthetics? On a Valkyrie? Her abilities as a Valkyrie Core partner have not degraded as far as you can tell, so you are at a loss as to why this is happening. Sandra should know, but she's never spoken a word about it. Shuri doesn't follow the other first years, breaking from the steam of cadets to head back to her room, waving away her followers.
You switch over to a camera feed from an air patrol showing Yukari and her third year squadron. Several cadets chat with her as they fly back from their lessons, most enthusiastically the cadet Ace O'Connor that you met on the first day here, gesticulating wildly with her arms and Impeller as she talks about the practical lesson. Yukari is mostly listening, but the atmosphere appears amiable enough. She breaks off from the main group of the third year cadets with a few farewells during a lull and slides into a route towards the usual cafeteria that Koujirou and Setsuna use. You notice a few of the cadets around O'Connor pat her and shake their heads.
>"Hey! Welcome back, Sandra, Anna. We saw you two on the show. Amazing work!"
>"Yeah, what you all managed to do was amazing!"
Koujirou and Setsuna call you on the flight group chat.
The show? Oh, Sydney's opening ceremony was broadcasted. The UN actually showed the destroyed Arcology? Wouldn't that be bad for morale?
>"Sandra is asleep. Thank you. I was in the show?"
>"Yeah they had this time lapse of the progress done. We could recognise you from all the stuff you were doing at the same time."
>"It looked like you picked up the entire secondary armoured plate. Was that by yourself?"
>"Not the entire plate. Just the damaged sections. What are you planning to do after dinner today?"
You change subjects, not willing to spend too long talking about Sydney.
>"Oh, elective classes, since we weren't sure when you two would be getting back. Setsu said that something must have come up cause you should have been back midday latest or something."
>"Well, we both know how fast you can fly, and the regs wouldn't have slowed you two down that much, so … did anything happen?"
>"Sandra owns a jet!"
>"Huh? Oh yeah, Blue Moon, cause the UN only come around to help once a-"
>"Oi, c'mon now, Setsu. Sandra isn't like that, and we're UN now, too. Uh yeah, we've seen that plane around, Anna, you got to ride in it?"
>"That's right! It's amazing. It's got a swimming pool in it."
>"… Does it really now."
>"A pool? They spent money on a pool on a jet? Well that's… nice, yeah."
You pause, not sure what to say. Neither Koujirou nor Setsuna seem all that excited, or happy about Sandra's jet. You search around, and make yet another subject switch.
>"How was your week?"
Thankfully, the discussion is normal from then on, and you reach the cafeteria along with Yukari for a brief catch up dinner with your two other flight mates.
It's a quick affair, as both Koujirou and Setsuna have to rush to reach their Martial Arts elective class.
"Martial arts? You beat each other up? Or where you… grab onto each other?" you ask apprehensively, shrinking back and crossing your arms defensively on instinct.
"No! Anna, that wasn't getting grabby to-! Argh. Look it was an attempt at a joint lock." Koujirou protests, waving his arms around.
Setsuna's stare is looking dangerous, but she hasn't grabbed anything dangerous yet, so you leave her alone.
"Then, what about injuries, what if you hurt each other?"
"Yeah, don't worry, we're watched by armoured up Instructors so all the injuries are pretty light ones," Koujirou jumps at the opportunity to get back on track, "Anyways, we'll all practicing hard to impress when you come over to visit."
"Practicing what?" you ask.
"A certain, ah, activity that Shuri introduced, that you'll probably be very good at." Koujirou smirks.
"Is this the thumb war thing?" you ask, patient in your exasperation.
"Wait, how'd you know?" Setsuna gasps, "We were going to surprise you with that one."
"Shuri and the Instructors demonstrated it to me a few weeks ago."
"You- Shuri and the Instructors? Wait, a few weeks ago? Damn, this I have got to see," Setsuna buries her nose into her datapad and taps at it frantically.
Koujirou leans over Setsuna's shoulder to peek.
"You two, don't just bury your noses into your pads and- ah jeez."
Yukari gives you an apologetic smile and turns back to her own meal.
A glance into their network traffic shows that the two are eagerly browsing videos of your practice with the Instructors, focusing especially on the thumb war rehearsal with Instructor Meyer. Not helping matters is the fact that the mudra looks much more dramatic from the perspective of the camera person than it actually was, it looks like an actual contest rather than a rehearsal of motions. There was (yet another) heated discussion about your exact capabilities and specifically your close quarters capability. Your deflection against Koujirou's sword attack had also been posted into the same thread, someone having dove into the simulators and pulling the records up to replay it. People found it impressive, and almost immediately in the minutes after an edit is made of you flicking Type Zero Ananke and destroying it in an exaggerated fashion. Bread is mentioned in the thread soon after, and you stop browsing.
As usual, the discussion about you has become incomprehensible.
You faintly shake your head. Really, you don't have a habit of flicking things with your thumb, you're sure that the time you used it to deflect Koujirou's attack is the only time in your life you had done such a thing. It was just an efficient move to deflect the attack.
Koujirou and Setsuna seem to find it all quite fascinating however.
"Damn! Well, we're going to have to practice harder," laughed Koujirou, somehow stuffing half a plate down seemingly in a single mouthful and jumping up.
"Yeah, we'll be looking forward to your visit, Anna. This time, we won't need any tickling to give you a workout," Setsuna nods in agreement.
You notice several nearby cadets look over curiously at that.
… If any videos of you getting tickled into submission are posted, you are going to take drastic action and classify them right into the Black DECEMBER secrecy schema.
XxXxXxXxXx
Yukari quickly wraps up her own dinner and follows after the two other first years, waving a goodbye as you head to your own elective class, the Gambling elective class.
You take a quick look at their course outline and their open hours while walking- and find you plans ruined as your search throws up a notice.
>>"We've gone to Macau to have some fun ruining other people's fun. Back when we're sober. -Jabami Tsukihime - Class President."
'When sober'? What, when was that supposed to be? Further searches yield no results, but there is an area alert for 'Australian ruffians who are disturbing the peace' through the Guangzhou Arcology administrative area.
Rather put out, you search a bit further.
Interestingly, most of their materials are still accessible. Their typical classroom setup is mirrored online as a virtual room.
Curious, you enter and 'look' around. Gambling machines and their plans line one side of the room, and dissertations on game theory models for the war filled up the walls on the other.
You take a moment to browse their modelling theories on the Antagonists and find them satisfactory, then move on to their gambling machines. It seemed like the class had set up something of a museum, showing gambling games and mechanism through the ages. The physical models are kept in an actual casino in the residential tower, but these electronic models, patent plans and design blueprints are fascinating enough. Prominently placed well ahead of the game machines though, there is an interface with only a single button, labelled as a luck tester.
>>Press to generate any 9 random numbers from 1-9, try to guess what you will get! 100% certified unpredictably random in baseline reality!
Ok?
You tap the button. Nine digits flash up. All ones. Rare. You tap it again. Nine digits of two. Surely not. You tap it again. Nine digits of threes. Again. Nine digits of fours. Nine fives. Again with sixes. Same with sevens. Nine eights. Nine by nine.
You verify the output is not a network issue. The output log from the so called luck tester verifies itself. Probability of such a sequence is less than one in three by ten to the power of six hundred and twenty six thousand.
Curious, you press the button once more.
>>1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
This is ridiculous. Certified random? Improbable.
You move on, looking towards the file folders with playing cards on prominent display. The displays go to great lengths to show the statistical odds, and how the majority of gambling establishments relied on schemes that appeared equal but only allows the house to win over a long period of time. There are then listed examples of currently running gambling schemes in commercial service today and a breakdown of expected outcomes. It's all rather dreary reading.
Despite being called the gambling elective class, the entire class appears to be built around discouraging students to gamble.
After a moment of thinking about it, you decide that this class seems rather sensible. If they're discouraging taking excessive risk, this is probably a staid and collected class.
Surely.
XxXxXxXxXx
There is only a few weeks of relatively normal classes before another call for volunteers arrives from the UNHCR.
Norilsk, northern Krasnoyarsk krai, central Siberia. A sprawling industrial city with a civilian population of 41,000, and the first of the UNHCR projects for the week.
The Impact triggered nuclear first strike from the US automatic Dead Hand missiles had been limited to western Russia, the SAC bombers and submarines choosing to ignore the automatic orders, men restraining themselves even as PERIMETR fired back in the days after. With the limited nature of the exchange, much of the vast, but sparse territories to the east had been spared the direct effects of Impact and the following nuclear exchange. Being Russians who were used to living in Russia, the following Impact winter and catastrophic climate change were met with resigned shrugs from the locals, and they carried on as best as they could.
Not even the Russians could stay apathetic as the Antagonists emerged, and as attacks from the American Breaches from over the poles intensified along with the UN response, Siberia rapidly became a massive and disjointed front in the war. With China to the south barring any of the displaced Russians from entering to seek refuge and the demands of the mineral resources abundant in Siberia from the UN war machine, the Russians civilians were forced to bunker down and fortify, rubbing elbows with the UN Armed Forces of UN North East as they built up in the region.
Previously deemed too risky of a theatre to enter, the elimination of three minor breaches on the North American continent allowed for the UNHCR to begin relief work throughout Siberia.
Compared to the reconstruction in north east Asia, the atmosphere in the Siberia settlements is tense. All the towns through this region have attached military bases or depots, and seemingly as a rule, the two populations did not mix well, the military and the locals largely keeping to themselves. Norilsk is relatively calm, with no overt conflict yet, but the atmosphere is bad. The soldiers are stiff and brusque, polite to the letter of decorum and not an inch further, and the civilians simply appear exhausted and resentful going about their daily lives. Your Impeller overhears many muttered complaints from both sides about the other.
Dangerous. Very dangerous.
This situation is… bad. At least the UNHCR workforce is welcomed by both sides and some of the silent tension between the two sides eased where the UNHCR agents worked. Still, you keep a wary eye above as you expand the underground shelter network. Previously, the shelters had only consisted of lazily reinforced mining tunnels. Narrow, damp and stifling and with few access routes, the tunnels were still deemed sufficient while the UN construction assets were tied up with other projects.
>[Alert Condition Two. Make ready for combat deployment.]
STRATNET alert.
Antagonists movement near Saint Petersburg detected by UN air force elements in the Barents sea. Land based sensors confirm.
You reinforce your work and teleport to the surface. A low siren rings across the military base to the north of the town. More information appears.
Emissions suggest brigade sized detachment, approximately 45,000 units. Air units shadowing ground units. Likely normal distribution of high level Antagonists within formation. Normal outside northwest North America that is.
The various other cadets also drop what they are doing and muster as well. Strangely, the point of muster is different from the other quick response units in the neighbouring base. A quick search reveals that currently as a UNHCR volunteer group, the cadets from Perth are not an active combat unit, and are still under civilian control at the moment. A roar announces two local Valkyrie flights moving east, leading a massive UN air carrier, the colossal aircraft shaking the group as it lifted off with a pulse of anti-gravity and turned ponderously west. Manned and drone aircraft swarm up, tiny in the shadow of the kilometre wide shadow of the air carrier, waiting for their mothership to achieve stable flight before landing on it.
More information arrives. High orbit observation suggests no accompanying movement from major Antagonist forces. High possibility of uncoordinated movement.
You are ordered to deploy.
"Sandra, can I?"
Your flight leader is speaking with someone else on comms, and she holds up her finger, asking you to wait.
You oblige, but impatiently, browsing the rapidly updating information, as one second passes, then another.
"I understand. You all are hereby activated as a combat unit, designation Samhain Squadron. Deploy as ordered," Sandra says tightly, "I'll be very disappointed if any of you have to retire before graduating."
She stares at you for a moment, hesitating, but settles for a silent salute.
You nod to Sandra and take off, quickly followed the third year cadets.
You almost pull to a stop, hands raised, a word of warning stuck in your throat.
Of course. The third year cadet Valkyries here are all combat eligible. Twenty one Valkyries of various ranks. They're going with you. Together, towards the Antagonists.
With you. Towards the Antagonists.
-don't come! Stay back! Stay back, you can't-
They should- they shouldn't- you could- by yourself, you must-
We can't.
No. It won't work. You'll need everyone else. The United Nations, they have been fighting for longer than you.
They have been winning.
You resume flight and catch up with the rest as terse chatter is traded back and forth while the small squadron assembles into rough formation.
"Combat supply will be en route." "We got enough to make three flights. Any ideas?" "We have any near full Flights?" "No." "Nope." "Positions?" "Leave it to TACNET?" "Who's local?" "Just go with standard formations?" "Op area will have higher local." "Not in our area." "If we're in direct range, an Instructor will be dropped in." "Takes too long, need a secondary before that." "We're mule duty." "Always be prepared." "Who has highest hours?" "Hey Cassie, you got anything to say about your first year?" "She's not with us, and no, nothing." "Oi, not the time to be coy. Spit it out."
You browse through everyone else's service records. Third year Elite cadets Cheung and Maya are the only ones in the ad hoc squadron whom have combat hours against actual Antagonists, gained during the battles over New Zealand and Alaska. Neither have over a hundred hours of actual combat, though everyone with you has over three thousand hours of sim time. None of the other senior cadets have been deployed and participated in active combat yet. It is still early in the year.
Today may be the first for all these cadets.
Should you take command? Will you have to take command?
TACNET takes the decision out of your hands.
>>[Second Lieutenant Anna Sanchez is designated as Samhain Squadron leader.]
>>[Proceed to Nyda for combat resupply and standby as active reserve.]
>>[Further orders to arrive.]
You are in charge now.
Eight thousand five hundred and three. No more.
"El-tee? You're commissioned? Uh, ma'am," asks cadet Maya.
"Yes," you reply curtly, "Formation Wing Seven, I will be Vanguard. I designate Cadet Yang Yue as my second."
"Yes ma'am," the other cadets chorus.
The other cadets drop back into a firing line seven hundred meters behind. Anti-type formation, engage with Vanguards, and the rest of the Squadron blasts the Types apart while the Vanguards run interference.
They're not far enough back, when they come, they -your responsibility- will still in range- no. You can't think like this. Your field of view seems to narrow, a faint buzz in your mind. They shouldn't come.
As you grapple with your conflicted emotions, the third years reorganise themselves, shifting enlisted rank cadets Keeler and Mosley towards the center of the line, where it is the safest, as Ace Yue takes left flank and Elite Maya takes the right flank, the most exposed positions.
"Ma'am, I can take second guard position-" "Maintain formation. Your priority is to maintain rearline integrity." "…Yes ma'am."
You instantly deny Cadet Yue's offer.
The small squadron does not follow the two Flights of Valkyries and the air carrier from Norilsk, taking a more southerly heading, TACNET directing the flight towards the depot at Nyda for a combat supply and a ferry mission. With you leading the way, and combat speeds permitted, the seven hundred kilometre flight is complete in just over two minutes.
The port base is nothing more than a massive concrete field, cranes and massive towers of containers standing tall, and practically gridded by rail tracks. As you approach, another squadron of Valkyries take off, the white glow of containers disappearing into storage casting brief shadows across the gantries as they ascend. None of your squadron actually need a resupply, so immediately you head for the logistics bay where the goods the squadron is to transport are located. Racks upon racks of aerial hunter killer drones, fresh off fabricators, some still inside their wrapping, lie in wait. You quickly assign your squad loads appropriate for their Impeller abilities and they disperse and begin.
As the Valkyrie with the greatest storage capacity and the fastest expression and retracting time, you take the lion's share of the drones, taking nearly eleven hundred drones into your storage. You feel... not very different. You expected to feel slightly fuller after taking in so many drones, but it appears you still have storage space to spare. The destruction of your heavy particle projectors, and the subsequent refactoring you did to recreate them from the parts has left a massive amount of space to spare, even with your massive fusion reactors taking some of that room.
With nearly two thousand multirole hunter killer drones in storage, the Squadron sets out.
"See, mule duty." "Comm discipline." "We're two thousand out and at low alert level." "If we're under jamming, comms won't have automatic quash." "We're not under jamming, are we?" "Hey, learn good habits now, this is serious." "Serious? What, we not allowed to be funny?" "You were never funny, why start now?"
A chorus of uneasy laughter runs through the Squadron channel.
You don't join in, eyeing the tactical feed.
The bulk of the rogue brigade of Antagonists are moving steadily east at around one hundred kilometers per hour, constrained by their slowest units. That they have not scattered into discrete groups means Types are present. Approximate time to contact with intercepting UN frontline detachments; two hours. UN Interception force of drone units outmatched 4:1. Expected losses; 100%. Reconnaissance in force.
Your own squadron is to ferry your drones to a point some one thousand kilometers behind the expected point of contact, then hold as reserve forces, retreating to maintain distance the Antagonists advanced.
With another two minutes of flight covering another 600 kilometres to the vicinity of the town of Saranpaul, the Squadron releases their drones.
In successive waves, the automated multirole combat aircraft appear in bright flashes of light and fly for the front. A near surreal sight, each of the drones are larger than the Valkyries from which they emerge, yet every Valkyrie carries dozens of, or in your case a thousand, drones. A river of metal flying on a road burning gas, appearing from a white glow in the air. The Wings of drones form up into massive waves and accelerate towards the front. The rumbling of two thousand pairs of turbojet engines echoes across the tundra, shaking the snow from trees, sendiong nearby wildlife fleeing.
Done with the deployment, your Squadron… waits.
One minute passes.
…
This is wrong. You can't just… wait around here!
You check your tactical feed again.
Approximate distance between you and the Antagonist forces, 1280 kilometres. Your heavy particle projectors reconfigure, a pair of two by one configurations. Approximate firing angle, minus 5.749 degrees. Approximate duration of obstruction along path of fire, 1277 kilometers.
You change your cannons into a four by one configuration. Length of obstruction is high, no post actualisation exotic effects possible, beam properties will degrade into radiation. Not problematic. Degradation will be instantaneous, slow release not possible at this range. Not problematic. Projector beam velocity slower than normal, projector beam energy loss greater than normal, projector power consumption higher than normal. Problematic, can be mitigated.
Target drift, rotation of earth, movement of solar system relative to higgs background; accounted for. You have fusion reactors, these attacks won't cripple your energy budget. You have networked sensors, you can actually see the enemies at this range.
You are in range.
You can begin firing at this Antagonist force right now. Well before they join combat against UN forces.
Well before they start killing.
All you need is targeting data.
You quickly put through a request to STRATNET for detailed targeting data. Surprisingly, the supercomputer does not immediately reply to you.
You wait, your heavy particle projectors ready, and you are kept waiting for seventeen long seconds.
>>[Abort. Reveal of such capacity not appropriate for this situation.]
>>[Addendum; Withdraw from active reserve to previous activity. Conceal location from Antagonists.]
You stare at the communique.
What?
STRATNET wants you to avoid combat? You're to leave the rest of your Squadron behind and return?
You demand a justification, and STRATNET delivers it with its usual alacrity.
This Antagonist detachment is not assessed to be particularly dangerous to UN forces, projected UN expenditure to be purely in drones and high yield weaponry expenditure. The Breaches are partitioned existences, there is a high probability that the Berlin Major Breach does not have the full intelligence of your existence and abilities. If the Antagonists subservient to the Berlin breach are aware of you, it is likely they are unsure of your usual operational area and range. Use of your heavy particle projectors would drain your capacitors and power budget against an enemy group without priority targets, degrading your response readiness, in case something that does demand your attention appear. An unlikely scenario that may appear is that the Antagonists may back trace your attacks on their forward element and teleport in Types for their own suicidal recon in force against the weapon platform that can launch such attacks. If a sufficiently large force arrives, it will place significant risks on certain members of both your Squadron and of the nearby town of Saranpaul.
You glance the tactical map again.
Leading UN elements approaching the Antagonist sally are all automated units. Valkyries squadrons cautiously hover a few hundred kilometers out, the conventional UN forces further back. You work it out yourself. Presuming the force estimation is correct, and there have been several such small scale sallies from the Helsinki breach before, the UN forces will wear down and destroy the Antagonist units without much issue, the Valkyries drawing away and then crushing the Types with superior numbers and then returning to suppress the anti air forces of the Antagonists. High Yield Weaponry will be used to scatter the Antagonists formations, after which the UN first contact elements will engage and destroy the scattered Antagonists. The UN manned conventional forces would not even have to engage.
Presuming force estimates are correct.
There is still nearly two hours before the first elements of the UN engages the Antagonists.
You look back at your Squadron. The various third year cadets all tensely waiting with you. You scan their faces. A plethora of emotion stare back at you. Swathes of tension and fear, some blank apathy and dropping boredom, a smirk and chuckling amusement. Eh? You concentrate on Cadet Maya for a moment, and after analysing the reflection in her iris you see the laughing cadet is watching videos that compiled UN missile saturation attacks against Antagonist units.
There are… there are all sorts.
Looking back at your Squadron of Senior cadets, you suddenly think of Yukari, and Sibel's request.
XxXxXxXxXx
Do you engage, or wait? No write-in. Due to previous drama, I will note in advance that this is a vote of some significance.
[] Wait. STRATNET's assessment appears correct. You will hold, unless something goes seriously awry. You should do your best to not place your squadron in danger, the drones are quickly replaceable and expendable. Keeping your ability, or that of your Heavy Particle Projectors to make such long range attacks through terrain secret will be strategically significant in the medium term future.
[] Engage. STRATNET's assessment appears correct, however the possibility of a the Antagonists counterattacking your position with long range teleports is remote, and easily intercepted by your Interdiction unless the Antagonists use an exorbitant volume of Higgs. The risk you and your squadron will bear is minimal compared to the potential lives saved by your attacks at the Antagonist formations. Revealing your ability to attack at extreme ranges through obstructions to the Antagonists is not consequential in the short term.
Is there anything you can do to help Yukari? Do you even know what's wrong?
-[]You cannot meaningfully help Yukari at this moment in time.
-[]You can help.
--[]Somehow...
XxXxXxXxXx
The votes below will be continued in the next update post.
Still to come;
[X] Holiday Activity
-[X] Spend time with:
--[X] Yukari and Setsuna: Say Anna, what do you do in your time off? What do you say about dressing up a little, how about your room? Do you have enough furniture?
--[X] Sandra: Greetings Anna, while we have become closer as a Flight in the past month, but I don't feel as if we've gotten to truly know each other as people, or maybe even this country. What do you say to a short trip around Australia?
--[X] Ask Sandra for help in spending some time with Shuri. Out of everyone in the flight, she and you are most distant. And if you're going to be relying on her in battle, well, you'll need to know her better. (2 days)
--[X] Contact one or more of the other top ranked valkyries, ask to meet and talk shop. See if they have advice on training, on how to prepare yourself with top-level UN-supported combat, which you have not experienced before. See if any of your abilities are unique enough to contribute something no one else brings (wave excepted of course). See if they have advice on development of the wave force. (2 days)
--[X] Try one of the historical simulator scenarios solo. What difference would a lone valkyrie of your caliber have made? Ask Sandra for a recommendation, she knows the context to the history involved better than you do. (1 day)
--[X] Beach Episode: Yukari is gathering the flight together to spend a day in the beach biome in Perth. Somehow this feels inevitable to you. (1 Day)
--[X] Movie Marathon: When Sandra was looking for things for the flight to bond over, Koujirou suggested something called a 'Movie Marathon'. Now your flight is going to spend two days watching several cinematic creations together. Errm, what are you supposed to pick? (2 Days)[/I][/I]
This thread was crowned as one of the "Elements of Sufficient Velocity" during the forum's 2023 "Sufficiently Skeletons" Spring Event! Take a look below!
4. The archetypal exemplar of every Versus Debate we've suffered
- Location
- [REDACTED]- United States of America
Op Delivered, Praise be.
Holy shit that forum formatting looks nice. Gonna buckle down for a deep read now.
Edit:
Having read the entirety of the post twice now I can firmly say. Yes. Restart the vigil, we eagerly await a new post this time next year.
Jokes aside Anna treading through the ruins of the Arcology almost made me tear up. I loved it.
Holy shit that forum formatting looks nice. Gonna buckle down for a deep read now.
Edit:
Having read the entirety of the post twice now I can firmly say. Yes. Restart the vigil, we eagerly await a new post this time next year.
Jokes aside Anna treading through the ruins of the Arcology almost made me tear up. I loved it.
Last edited:
- Location
- USA
Not even the first like
Edit: Not even the first comment
I'm gonna keep this here until I get through this absolue monstrocity and make a real post. And then when I'm not tired, I'll read the who story again.
Edit 2: Too tired, still have work to do.
[X] Wait. STRATNET's assessment appears correct. You will hold, unless something goes seriously awry. You should do your best to not place your squadron in danger, the drones are quickly replaceable and expendable. Keeping your ability, or that of your Heavy Particle Projectors to make such long range attacks through terrain secret will be strategically significant in the medium term future.
Anna is one the the greatest assets humanity has. Her actions must be considered at the strategic scale in the medium to long term.
Edit: Not even the first comment
I'm gonna keep this here until I get through this absolue monstrocity and make a real post. And then when I'm not tired, I'll read the who story again.
Edit 2: Too tired, still have work to do.
[X] Wait. STRATNET's assessment appears correct. You will hold, unless something goes seriously awry. You should do your best to not place your squadron in danger, the drones are quickly replaceable and expendable. Keeping your ability, or that of your Heavy Particle Projectors to make such long range attacks through terrain secret will be strategically significant in the medium term future.
Anna is one the the greatest assets humanity has. Her actions must be considered at the strategic scale in the medium to long term.
Last edited:
EternalObserver
eYe Gaze baCk
- Location
- The Void
IT HAS RETURNED!!!!!!
Tayta Malikai
200% Space Whale
- Location
- Australia
Before anyone posts anything substantial, I would just like to share my brilliant insight gleaned from this update:
UNARD = you nerd.
That is all.
UNARD = you nerd.
That is all.
Avalanche
Atypical Netizen
- Location
- Australia
A/N I guess or something. Due to scene bloat and pivotal point that requires player input, this doesn't include the full vote. That's still being worked on. Hopefully update for that one will arrive New Years or something.
New years 2025 babyyyyyyyyyy
New years 2025 babyyyyyyyyyy
Last edited:
- Location
- Austria
well yeah nobody would expect this New Years
- Location
- Meycauayan, Bulacan, Philippines