[X] They want you, not any of the others. You've already lured them into a kill zone once. If you continue to give ground slowly you can let Luyu extract Lanaiatte without the danger of a counter attack.
You could run, you could leave Lanaiatte there. She is, after all, one of the people who could have betrayed you. There is another strategy though. One you find curiously attractive. It's heroic, and perhaps a bit self destructive. You like the idea of being a hero, of filling in the blank spaces of yourself with such things.
Alex's needles claw into you, reminding you of things as important as your survival, but you will survive. You'll survive and get your people out.
You step back into the pipes, as if you're trying to clear the fire lane of the sub. Giving them a small chance to get to you. The drone snaps in a new ammo box from its cargo, smart enough to stay aimed through the gap as you move. Let them come to you.
Cynipoidea-18 take the bait and more.
The enemy are split into more or less two elements. One group fighting the Luyus up in the rafters, the others on the floor coming at you. The Luyu team peel back, apparently to reinforce the group coming for you as they make their advance.
The ones on the ground are what consume your attention though. They commandeer a cargo robot - likely pre-cracked - and shove a cargo container forward, sheltering behind it and firing waves of indirect fire munitions around the side. The drone gun, forgetting even about the much more powerful cannon on the sub, should be able to punch holes in the relatively thin metal and carbon, but there's something inside that soaks up the rounds. Maybe something exotic, or just enough bags and barrels of doped sand.
A miniature air war of drones and missiles rages around the sides of the container, as missiles and funnels rip into one another. The Luyus above have shifted their fire to try to cover you, but it might have been a bad move. The Cynipoidea-18 operatives on the upper level don't hesitate when given an opening.
The wasps manoeuvre with rapid surety. Four of those fighting Luyu above break off and charge the sub, moving in short dashes. The sub and Mirareki switch fire but they've already popped blackout smoke. One goes down, then another, but the last two make it in and volley their weapons full offensive into the sub's shield. There's a loud bang as the weapons pod is knocked out, a moment before Mirareki's fire takes them both down.
You have other things to worry about. The team sheltering behind the container are almost on top of you, moving fast even as you continue to give ground. They mask Miareki with more black out smoke and an array of overcharged defence aura generators.
Above you see the Luyu's, three, no, is that two? Jumping forward in a series of dashes, heading for Lanaiatte. Their countermeasures are twitching out a strange hide set, a flashing, migraine camo that makes it almost hurt to look at her. The two, you're almost sure it's only two, vanish amid the girders, flashes of plasma and and gunfire lighting the upper area as they exchange fire with the Wasps still trying to prevent them moving on the control centre.
Cynipoidea-18 don't care about them. They're coming for you. They must be dead switched. Their movements are fast and choppy, less mechanical than predator centipede. One has lost her mask somewhere and you see her eyes. Blank and unemotional, nothing behind them.
You dodge behind a pillar, moving as a two person team with your drone, pouring direct fire at them as they break free of their cover. The container rocks as Mirareki gets an anti-tank drone through but it's too late. They swarm at you, seeking your blood like the ghostly yellow jackets in a pre-exile legend.
In ones and twos, and teams and as a squad, they pour forward, and once again you wonder if you've run out of luck. If you pushed it too far this time. Rounds begin to break through your defence. A round slams into your arm and you brace your carbine one handed in its shoot on the move cradle, dumping the entire mag as fast as you can. The gun's barrel glows white hot.
It's not enough. You're hit again and again, your defences stretched to their limits. With the sub's gun down, there's nothing to stop them. Nanotech bubbles up at each hit, but there's blood too, increasing amount of it, bubbling through your armour to prevent bubbles and weaknesses in it.
A round hits your carbine, slapping it away and almost breaking your shoot on the move system, locking it into a mere brace. You're once again forced to switch full defensive on the drone, its ammo indicator spooling down as it plucks one munition after another out of the air, close enough that frags spike your spin through your collapsing aura.
One, a larger one, smashes into you. You stumble backwards and fall over, flashing red damage signals from your left arm joined by ones from your stomach, your head, everywhere. Ahead of you, your enemies go full offensive, needing no defence against an enemy supine before them.
"Yoooo!"
The third Luyu seems to come out of nowhere. Impossibly stealthy for someone so big and armoured. Actually, you realise, she was above, having crept along on her belly to the edge of the gantry. Now she drops, laughing out a greeting, and shoots. The Sakuran missile swarmer in her hand thumps out an alpha burst, the entire magazine fired at once, dropped into that instant of vulnerability as their weapons are fully aimed at you, rounds fired at maximum velocity smashing through their active defences before they can regenerate and finding their way true into armour and bodies.
The remaining Cyniopidea drop short. One tries to rise, aiming her pistol at you.. The damaged Luyu behind her blows her brains out with her own big pistol she's drawn from somewhere. "And stay down," she says, then coughs. "Oh fuck. I'm really messed up."
"You need a medical bag." The Luyu with the missile gun reloads.
"You're the one talking to yourself out loud." The injured one says. "I'm okay. Just my legs don't work. I'm still reconfiguring my nerves."
You slump down. There's a series of flashes and the harsh scent of burning chemical, as the Wasp gear starts to self-destruct. The charges burn so hot that there's little smell of burned flesh. Communications systems and the strange diplomat coloured tools burn away with their owners. The other two Luyus step out, with Lanaiatte behind them. The engineer looks a little pale, and is looking at Luyu like she's sex on legs.
"How'd you do that?" you ask. Your arm looks awful. You're also going to need medical pod time, or at least a week or so to regenerate the damage. It won't be much use until then.
"You can trick the conscious mind, but you can also trick the subconscious." Luyu taps a finger on the side of her head. "When I was with the Combined Response Committee, we fought a lot of Benedicts. They can trick your eyes, but you can trick them." She transparents her visor and grins, ostentatiously. "I figured those guys were dead switched. Unconscious. It makes you fast, but the conscious mind does things. So."
You hadn't known she'd fought Benedicts. Strange, hermetic aliens somehow terrifyingly intelligent despite a total lack of interiority. With the CRC? You remember, that was more than two hundred years ago. They're just a weapons production collective now, a much loved brand name rather than a military force.
"We should sweep the pod properly. There might be more hiding out."
"Let me do that. You're also messed up."
You look down at yourself. Your tac sleeve is breached in a dozen places and one arm hangs limply, only about twenty percent functional. "Yeah. That's a good idea."
Mirareki arrives from the sub, and the pair of you and Lanaiatte carry the injured Luyu back to the ship. By the time you arrive they're all but carrying you as well.
#
You hold the conference by remote, on the submarine's network. The medical bay is crammed with the critical Luyu and you. The other three Luyus are in the crew section, ready in case someone makes a break for it. You still have a traitor aboard.
<<The Sub will be fixed up in about an hour. At this point the automatics will take care of it and I can just watch it. We've distributed some sensors outside as warning in case something gets launched at us, and we can quick launch whenever. We should be able to get out before anyone blows the bay.>>
<<They probably don't want to take us out that way.>> You say. <<I have an AI in my head, that was what they were trying to kill. They want to make sure it's gone. The team in there were carrying targeted basilisk weapons.>> The cover story comes without really thinking, and without much concern. It's a plausible enough lie. Hell, it's basically true.
<<Still. Someone sabotaged us. We need to figure out who it was.>>
Reizay butts in. <<I've checked the physical evidence of the hack. It's slim. Whoever did it has a set of good tools. I also checked the team that was sent after us. They had self destruct systems on their queues with transmit outs, but I was able to retrieve partial engrams from them.>>
A bit worrying she's able to retrieve stuff off of a blown queue. You sometimes forget that while she's young and cute and weird, Reizay was a security operative for the Closed Dyson.
<<Unfortunately their memories are mostly wiped. They were running with an artificial telos stack above entirely wiped memories, with just enough inserted stuff to let them do the mission. Even the three initial operatives were mostly wiped, with only enough biographical data to let them talk normally.>>
<<That's ghoulish.>> Mirabelle says.
<<Still, we come back to the fact that someone aboard is a traitor.>>
The sick cloud of suspicion thickens. The communionists eye one another, and you, and the Chrysanthemum. Your team is above suspicion. You decide that as a means to constrain the solution space because it's almost certainly true and frankly, you have most of the guns. But the Communionists you can't be sure about. Doesn't their mortality mean they'd never accept such a suicidal mission? But you know that's not how it works. In ancient mortal times people would give their lives, even those who didn't place them in the hands of a higher power.
<<Few in our time thought they would live forever,>> says Alex, from deep inside. <<I almost admired those with the nerve to spend their lives intentionally.>>
Shenla and Academician Selko are safe as anyone. You can't be sure of the three sub crew. Was Lanaiatte trying to extract when she went ahead? But there's also Alawen, the local security for the first temple expedition when you arrived here, who has attached herself as Selko's personal bodyguard but is hardly from her personal circle.
Then there's the Chrysanthemum, Liya and Mirabelle, sitting next to one another with pressed lips. You know the local enclave has been compromised and very plausibly more. But that'll be a hard case to press. The two of them are trained agents and will certainly back one anoth-
<<Mirabelle is the one who sent us here!>> Liya blurts out. <<She's CLEARLY suspect. Maybe she has an implant in her head! A secondary personality!>>
<<Please don't make arbitrary speculations,>> says Minetta sharply.
<<Th-thankyou,>> says a startled Mirabelle. She seems more indignant at the strange scientist's rudeness than the fact she was just accused of being the saboteur.
But as you were thinking, they are actually a little suspicious. Neither Mirabelle nor Liya would have had easy access to ship systems, but Chrysanthemum software weapons are excellent.
At this point you don't really have enough evidence for a direct accusation. Rather, you think it would be better to pick an approach.
[ ] Have Reizay, a trained security operative take charge of the investigation, not withstanding the fact her training is from the Closed Dyson. It's unlikely to make her - or you - popular but she will find something.
[ ] Work with Reizay and Lanaiatte to try to determine when the software weapon was introduced to the submarine to try to narrow down the suspect list. It'll take time but minimise disruption to the mission or the crew until you can act more surgically.
[ ] Given both the Communion and the Chrysanthemum have had infiltration, there's no way to localise things easily. It's best to just interview everyone and use the combination of expertise in the group to figure out who's a problem. It'll be more intrusive than just checking the software but if it works it could nail a suspect.
