Date Point: 15y5m1d AV Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Jack Tisdale
“So run this by me again. She puked on me?”
They were going home. Well, not home home—Jack still had a room at his parents’ place while he saved up to put down a deposit on a place of his own, so that was home technically—but the base was home enough. Apparently the dorm rooms there were pretty much the height of luxury by barracks standards.
Their progress was definitely impaired by Jack having to stop every now and then as his stomach tried to turn itself upside-down, or when a stab of pain shot through his head, but at least he wasn’t passed out in an oversized ambulance any longer.
“Yyup. Right down your front. And that set you off, but you tried to cover your mouth with your hand like this so it kinda sprayed all over you both…” Jack grimaced, but Miller was relishing the recounting far too much to stop. “….So you both decided you wanted to wash off in the river and then you decided you were really tired so you fell asleep on a park bench and she kinda passed out… and that’s when Moho carried both of you to the drunk tank. She woke up about an hour before you did and went home without her shoes or her purse.”
“Our boy’s a smooooth player,” Moho said with a roll of his eyes.
“Knock if off, I never drunk that much before…” Jack grumbled.
“I’m thinkin’ neither had she.”
…Probably his parents didn’t need to know about this. Mum in particular was a romantic at heart and would probably be quite disappointed that his first kiss had been a drunken half-remembered thing. Dad would probably think it was hilarious but back Mum up while she was in earshot, and then give him some fatherly advice and sympathy in private. He could do without either.
He just wished he could recall more of what had happened.
Actually…
“…What was her name?” he asked, pausing to lean against a lamppost.
Moho shrugged. “I’unno. Never learned it.”
Miller shrugged too when Jack looked at her. “Don’t ask me, I’m terrible with names. It was kinda old-fashioned though. And it started with a B. Like, uh… Betty or something. I’unno. Might’a been Betty.”
Jack resisted the urge to scratch his hand where the drip had been. He’d definitely enjoyed kissing…Her…But not knowing Her name just felt wrong. He felt dirty, and not just from the dried vomit on his shirt.
Moho, in a rare gentle moment, laid a hand the size of a ham on his shoulder. “Bruh. You don’t need her name. We were right, you got game like you were born with swag.”
“…I do?”
“God, what is it with Brits?” Miller lamented. “They’re either massive arrogant twatwaffles or completely fucking oblivious. No middle ground!” She sighed and gave Jack a complicated look he couldn’t really read. “Yes you got game. Don’t let it go to your head, use your powers for good, and just… I’unno. Relax and enjoy.”
“How is it exactly I have this game you speak of?”
“…F’real?”
“Seriously!”
For some reason, Miller just shook her head and wandered off homewards with a muttered “Un-fuckin’-believable…”
Jack looked to Papa Moho for help, and finally got it.
“Bruh. Look. You’re clever, you’re funny, you ain’t conceited. You’re fuckin’ strong and fit without being a fuckin’ tank. You’re prob’ly cute too, I guess. And you’re… How to put this?”
Jack waited as patiently as he could while Moho picked his words with terrible care.
“…Miller kinda confided this in me, right? I ain’t gonna break confidence exactly but… she likes guys who’re kinda intense. Not, like, scary but… you know what I mean. An’ I don’t think she’s alone there, lotsa chicks like that.”
Jack really didn’t know what he meant at all but he was definitely feeling the first bite of what promised to be everything he’d ever heard about hangovers and he truly wasn’t in the mood to think about it any longer. He nodded vaguely and tried to follow where Miller had vanished toward the base.
Moho must have had a sixth sense about pain. “Right, you’re gonna be fucked in a bit. Go see Carebear and get a saline IV, and while you’re doing that eat a Snickers.”
“Why Carebear?”
“‘Cuz he likes jamming needles into humans, and he needs the practice.”
“….Fucking lovely,” Jack cursed.
“Hey, take it from me. He’s still gentler’n Irish or ‘Horse, an’ Baseball’s off-duty tonight.”
“…Right.”
Moho chuckled and almost knocked him over with a brotherly clout to the back. “F’real though, bruh…” he lowered his voice. “You gonna go for it with Miller?”
“…No,” Jack decided.
“The fuck not?”
“I just… I dunno. I like her too much.”
Moho grimaced. “Oof. Friendzoned.”
“It’s just the truth!” Jack objected. “I mean… it’s nice that she’s into me? No, it’s amazing! And I know I’m probably crazy for not…” he cleared his throat. “…But… I don’t know. It’d feel weird, to me.”
“Oh, hell. She turned into a big sis for you, didn’t she?”
“Please don’t get me started on the subject of big sisters…” Jack muttered. Moho was on the money, though, and that was the truth. She’d stepped into a hole in his life he’d managed to forget was empty.
Moho made a low grunt, patted Jack’s shoulder again rather more gently, and said no more.
They went back to the barracks and parted ways at the staircase. Jack was about to follow when he remembered Moho’s advice, sighed, and headed towards CQ.
Maybe the IV would help him clear his head.
Date Point: 15y5m1d AV POW Holding facility, Planet Gao
Cytosis
“I’ve answered that question before. Why ask it again?”
Cytosis had expected torture. He could even have handled torture. It was easy for an Igraen to disconnect from his host and let the body suffer while the mind wandered.
Maybe the Humans could do something similar, because they didn’t seem to consider it worthy of their time to damage his body. In fact, they were making sure that he kept it in perfect trim. He was well-fed, well-exercised, his ablutions schedule was well-managed. The physical shell of Judge-Father Taarken had never been in better shape, truthfully.
No, their tortures (if such they were) were aimed squarely at Cytosis himself.
His interrogator—Bill, the senior and sterner of two—gave him an unimpressed look. “It doesn’t matter why I’m asking,” he said. “It only matters that I’m asking.”
The implicit warning was entirely clear. ‘Resist, and all those hard-earned luxuries and comforts in your cell go away.’ The Humans weren’t cruel. But they were utterly and remorselessly consistent in the application of their rules. Obey, and get rewards. Resist, and lose them.
Cytosis had tried rebelling a few times. He knew better nowadays. “Why did the Hierarchy attack the Guvnurag first?” he repeated, summarizing the question. Bill nodded. “That’s an easy one. Substrate preservation. They’re only slightly less heavily implanted than the Corti, but importantly they’re contained and self-containing. They live in densely-populated cities on densely-populated planets and their economic infrastructure is extremely vertical. Their instinct is to maximize their use of a given area and make it self-sustaining before they move on to the next phase of expansion.”
“Elaborate,” Bill instructed him. Cytosis shrugged.
“It’s a highly controllable environment. Their society, their culture, their natural instincts all make them easy to contain and manipulate. They also have large and intelligent brains, which means lots of spare…I suppose you could call it ‘capacity.’ Each individual Guvnurag can serve as substrate for a proportionately large degree of the dataspace hegemony.”
“So by attacking them you accomplished… what, exactly?”
“We drove them to close their borders, thereby preserving them. When last I was able to check, their civilization was traumatized but thriving inside their two isolated systems. And with so many system defense fields deployed and all external communications locked down the risk of anything happening to further deplete their population or drive them off our planned development sequence is almost nil. Thus the substrate supporting the Hegemony is protected, or at least part of it is. Call it… consolidation and fortification of critical resources.”
Bill nodded and finally didn’t ask him to further review a subject they’d already discussed. Presumably he was satisfied that Cytosis was being compliant. Now, he asked a new one. “Why not just biodrone all of them?”
“That’s detrimental to the Hegemony. Biodrones aren’t sapient, they’re machines built from organic hardware that used to be sapient. An Igraen like myself can occupy a host body indefinitely without degradation, but most of my species aren’t, ah, mentally equipped to interact with meatspace. After millions of years of exclusively data-based life, we need special training to properly understand concepts like matter, energy, objects and so on.”
“It’s that different?”
“There is, for example, no such thing as momentum in the Hegemony. There isn’t really such a thing as movement: A datum’s address is updated and it ‘goes’ from one ‘place’ to another. There’s no intervening distance and thus no movement, thus no momentum. There’s no mass, only file sizes, and large files don’t attract one another thus there’s nothing remotely like gravity. That sounds alien to you, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Matterspace is just as alien to an Igraen. The training necessary to understand it is exhausting. Many fail, and those who don’t have their understanding of the universe irrevocably altered.”
Bill nodded and made a note on his tablet. Cytosis suspected the gesture was possibly a delaying tactic as he thought, maybe just acting for his benefit. Possibly he was in communication with somebody.
“Could a properly trained Igraen survive in a synthetic body, rather than an organic host with implants?” he asked.
Cytosis nodded. “Temporarily.”
“Why only temporarily?”
“You’ll find the concept alien. I doubt I can properly convey it.”
Bill settled back in his seat and laced his thick fingers together on his stomach. “Try anyway.”
Cytosis thought. “…Warmth,” he ventured. “A Human who gets too cold dies, yes?”
“Sure.”
“Imagine instead if the cold was not a threat to your life, but your sanity. As if every second spent feeling the chill frays at the edges of your sense of self-worth, makes the mere fact of existence seem increasingly pointless. Where it is cold, or dark, or wet, you grow nihilistic and despondent. The longer you stay, the more you see only the Chaos and lose sight of the Order.”
“People are… warm?”
“Substrate is, for lack of a better word, warm,” Cytosis corrected him. “And dry. And bright. It is… orderly. Or rather, it takes the great crushing unknowns of the universe and imposes Order. To be severed from the substrate doesn’t feel exactly like drowning, or freezing, or starving, or being lost in the dark, but those are perhaps the closest physical sensations.”
“And there would be no Substrate in a completely synthetic body,” Bill surmised.
“No. Nor in a computer system, nor in a data network grounded solely in electronic hardware. If we could live without Substrate the Hierarchy would never have been needed. We could have built massive supercomputers out there in the infinite dark and explored the possibilities of the Hegemony in perfect safety.”
Bill regarded him for a long moment. “Well. That’s a problem, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Cytosis ventured a small Gaoian smile. “Did you think we exterminated all those species and ruled the course of galactic civilization for fun? We did it because it was that or…starve, I suppose. Drown, freeze, die of thirst, die of hunger, go insane and self-terminate, slowly and painfully, all at once.
“I envy you, you know,” he added. “You’ll never know what it’s like to go without Substrate. You can’t.”
Bill did the thing with his tablet again. “So…back to my earlier question: Why not just biodrone all the Guvnurag? Do biodrones…generate…Substrate?” he asked.
“The question is: Are biodrones substrate?” Cytosis corrected him. “To which the answer is yes, sort of. Like breathing thin air, or being cold but not dangerously so, or… Imagine how well a civilization would function if all its citizens were nearly getting enough food, nearly dry and nearly getting enough sleep.”
“Is there no other source of Substrate? No other way to acquire it?”
“Mu!” Cytosis replied. “The question is nonsense. Substrate is not a resource or a commodity. There’s no source of it, it isn’t generated. It is a function of being alive.”
“But you can be deprived of it?” Bill’s face was a picture of incomprehension.
“As I said, to you it is an alien concept. Too alien to properly understand, I think.”
“You’re being inconsistent in your language. You called it a resource earlier.”
“Yes. I apologize.” Cytosis shrugged. “Neither English nor Gaori are equipped to properly discuss Substrate.”
“…What, if any, more peaceful alternative solutions to this problem have the Igraens pursued?” Bill asked, after a second of considering his tablet with a pensive expression.
“I… don’t know. I was always told that the Hierarchy’s solution was the only viable one.” Cytosis shrugged again, more apologetically this time. “I was, after all, indoctrinated. When I became aware of the Cabal, the mere idea that there might be an alternative was a relief.”
“The Cabal’s solution being…?” Bill asked. They were back on previously explored territory but Cytosis had no objections to answering.
“We don’t have one. The Cabal’s only defining doctrine is that the Hierarchy’s doctrine is no longer viable. If Cynosure—Six—ever devised a comprehensive strategy, he never shared it with me. So far, his policy has been to experiment, observe and adapt.”
“To what end?”
“The indefinite survival of Igraen civilization of course.”
“So you’re saying you have no real plan, nor even a strong idea on how to form one,” Bill summarized.
“…No. I think…Cynosure was hoping your species might help.”
Bill gave him a long and unreadable look. “Let’s be certain I understood you correctly,” he said. “You think that your leader’s plan is to get your enemy, whom you have made a concerted and credible attempt to exterminate… to help you?”
“We were hoping you would have alternatives,” Cytosis clarified. “If there is a way for our two species to coexist, the Cabal wishes to know.”
“After all you’ve done?”
“All we did, we did because we saw no other option. Now… You have us on the back foot. Our estimated likelihood of victory keeps declining, especially in light of your victory here on Gao… I presume we are still on Gao, yes?”
Bill said nothing. Cytosis hadn’t expected him to.
He nodded and continued. “Uncertainty equals defeat. If we must continue to be at war with Humanity then we’ll fight… but we would be foolish not to at least attempt to find an alternative, don’t you think? Our mandate has always been to take the most parsimonious course in pursuit of indefinitely preserving the Hegemony.”
“And what about justice for the dead?” Bill asked.
“What justice? They’re dead, they don’t exist! Whatever punishment you inflict on us will only satisfy your own instincts: The dead can’t appreciate it, by definition.”
Cytosis sat forward as far as his usual restraints would allow. Humans weren’t stupid enough to grow complacent over their physical advantages, not even burly specimens like Bill. They knew perfectly well that they could lose an eye to a well-aimed claw, or worse, and so they didn’t give him the opportunity. “But if that’s what your people demand, then I am willing to die for my people, Bill,” he said.
“You’d pay for their crimes?”
“Any member of the Hierarchy would. We’re already martyrs to our species’ cause. As I said—merely becoming Hierarchy requires us to irrevocably alter the way we think. We can’t ever really go back.”
“And you believe that your personal sacrifice is sufficient to atone for what your entire species has done over millions of years.”
Cytosis shrugged. “Sometimes, an act of chaos is necessary in pursuit of a more significant order. That does not exempt us from the consequences, which are a price I have already volunteered to pay if necessary.”
“And what about the things you aren’t personally responsible for?” Bill asked. “How can you be punished for what somebody else did? Is that justice?”
Cytosis sat back. “Justice is an invention of society. It is whatever we define it to be. From your questions, we seem to have reached an impasse—your people cannot be satisfied without justice, and my people cannot survive your definition of the word. A pity. I wonder who’ll blink first?”
Bill didn’t answer. Instead, he made a note on his tablet again then quite abruptly he stood up.
“That concludes today’s session, Cytosis. Thank you.” He left the room, and the utterly dependable, utterly trustworthy guards entered to escort Cytosis back to his cell.
He followed their directions without objection and wondered if, perhaps, he had finally scored a victory.
Date Point: 15y5m1d AV HMS Sharman (HMNB Folctha), Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Jack Tisdale
Thurrsto was… interesting. Jack had grown up around Gaoians of course, but Thurrsto was about the biggest he’d ever got to know up close.
He wasn’t necessarily tall—in fact, Jack was slightly taller than him—but he was broad-shouldered and stocky enough that he out-hulked most anyone, Gaoian or human. As with most ETs however he simply wasn’t built the way an ape was. For all Thurrsto’s impressive strength, and it was impressive even in human terms, Jack got the distinct impression that a good, solid tackle to his ribs might give him a surprising amount of hurt.
But then again…claws. And he could do things a human couldn’t, like smell his patient and make a diagnosis before they’d even staggered down the hall and into his care.
“You smell like you had fun!” The enormous Gaoian chittered in a deep, rumbling tone, then sniffed again and flicked an ear. “…Up to a point.”
Jack, sitting on a medical bed with his feet dangling, nodded agreement. “Until the last—ow!”
“It’s a big needle, what do you want?” Thurrsto flashed his fangs charmingly. He was in a great mood.
“Why are you so chipper?”
“Myun gave birth tonight! Twin females!”
“Holy shit!” Jack exclaimed, hangover temporarily forgotten. Twin female births among Gaoians were like unicorns, and any male lucky enough to father such a pair was probably going to have Females knocking his door down like he’d won the lottery. “Congratulations, man! What happens now?”
“Well…I’d like to keep in touch, y’know? That’s not traditional, she’ll move on to other males… but I never really liked that side of tradition anyhow. We won’t ever have more cubs together, but I kinda wanna stay in their lives.”
“Well, why not?” Jack asked. Thurrsto shrugged as he taped down the drip.
“It’s…the idea is that a cub should start out in life without any expectations on ‘em. We’re loyal sometimes to a fault and that doesn’t work out well most of the time, so…anyway. This way, they can choose who they want for, well, I guess ‘father figures’ is the right word?”
“I guess I can see the logic…” Jack conceded.
“Logic, yeah. Very logical.” Thurrsto’s ears swivelled and he sniffed. “Ain’t exactly warm, though.”
“No. But, uh…I think maybe societies do that. Like, I read somewhere that we humans would be basically content in groups of a hundred or so. A lot of our bullshit comes from being so many all close together.
“Besides,” he added. “Take it from me, I know all about being crowded by your parents.” Mark and Hayley had become endlessly more protective after Sara died. Really, if it hadn’t been for Adam’s influence he doubted if they’d have given their blessing for Jack to join the Royal Navy… not that he’d needed it, but getting it had definitely made him feel better.
Thurrsto duck-nodded. “Fair enough. Also, if I were being honest to myself, part of it might be who she has her eye on now. She’s been sending notes to Grandfather Garl of Stoneback. And Champion Fiin has her eye too…you’ve never met them. They’re impressive.”
Now what would Moho or Miller say to something like that? Oh, yeah. “Yeah, but they’re follow-on acts to you, man!”
“Or the main course.”
“Yeah, well. You have twin female cubs. I seriously doubt they’ll manage that.”
That perked Thurrsto right up. “Heh, yeah. I got more daughters than the Great Father now. Not bad for a brute like me.”
“Weren’t you all friends with him?”
Thurrsto turned to the medicine cupboard and fetched some ibuprofen. Jack wasn’t too familiar with Gaoian body language, but he looked… stung. Aggrieved, somehow.
“We were, until Yulna murdered Daar. Now there’s just the Great Father.”
Ah.
“…Sorry.”
“No, no. It’s fine. Yes, we were friends and Brothers. I’d never been friends with anyone like him…I kind of miss it, actually. I think, maybe Champion Gyotin would say he had a pure soul. I’m glad I knew him before everything blew up.”
Jack didn’t quite know what to say, but the shadow passed quickly enough. Thurrsto shook out his shaggy white crest—which on him was threatening to be more like a mane—and handed Jack the painkillers. “What about you? What’s her name?”
“…Uh…” Jack could feel his ears going pink. “I never learned it. Or if I did, I forgot.”
Thurrsto chittered again, for rather longer this time. “Fyu’s furry sack, Cousin! You work fast! Wish I had game like that!”
“You know, you’re like the third person tonight to tell me I have game, and it’s weirding me out…” Jack confessed.
“It’s the smell. You smell healthy and smart. Confident, too. Well,” Thurrsto chittered, “Underneath the vomit, anyway.”
“—Bullshit!” Jack exploded. “You can’t smell smarts on a person!”
“Can too! Maybe you can’t, with your stupid little Human nose…” He waggled his ears in what Jack had learned meant teasing humor, “But Regaari reckons y’all do smell that stuff, you just don’t get it all consciously. But take it from me, you smell like a male near the top of the heap.”
“…You can really smell that?” Jack asked, trying not to dwell on what it meant. He didn’t really buy into the whole ‘dominance hierarchy’ stuff that all the SOR’s operators seemed so fond of. It ran against the grain of what he wanted to be right in the world.
Thurrsto duck-nodded. “Yeah-hup. And my sense of smell is only above average, too. Daar could smell what you had for dinner a week ago, or if someone you passed by yesterday was thinking about lying!”
Jack’s nose wasn’t so bad that he couldn’t smell bullshit when he heard it. “You’re exaggerating,” he accused.
“Eh. A good Whitecrest never lets the truth get in the way of a good story.” Thurrsto chittered again, then continued. “Anyway—and I swear this one’s completely unembellished—I’ve seen him detect corndogs still in their packages from the other end of town. We were out loping around, just getting some fresh air, and he stops dead in the middle of his run, right? He points his nose, takes one quick sniff, and says ‘the stand opened early!’ Then he charges off so Fyu-damned fast none of us could keep up…and sure enough, he ambushed that nice old lady before she’d actually opened for business. He bought her out right then and there.”
Jack consulted his mental map of Folctha. “…Myrtle’s? In the car park on Peach Street by the hardware store?”
“Yup! And he smelled that from out at the obstacle course, too.”
“…Bloody hell…” Jack mused. “…What’s it like to have a sense of smell like that?”
“Dunno! What’s it like to be able to feel a metal’s grain with your fingertips? Or see this ‘red’ color? Ah!” Thurrsto looked at the IV and noted it was done. “There we go. You’ll want to hang out near the latrine for a while but that should keep the worst of the symptoms at bay.”
Jack eyed the bag with a sense of mild surprise. He had to hand it to Thurrsto, the big furbag had kept him well entertained with his unconventional bedside manner. He hopped down from the bed and steadied himself. “Moho said grab a Snickers…”
“Protein and sugars. Can’t hurt. Fruit juice is good too. Preferably orange juice so you get some Vitamin C, ‘cuz allegedly your immune system’s a little weakened right now.” Thurrsto chittered again. “By human standards, anyway. You’re not gonna want to exercise when you wake up, but do it anyway.”
Jack nodded. “…Thanks.”
“I’d say take better care of ‘yerself, but…” Thurrsto chittered again. “That’d be wasted effort, Yijao?”
That Gaoianism was beginning to slip into Folctha’s English vernacular. It meant something halfway between “right?” and “do we understand each other?” and people—especially those of a cosmopolitan mindset—were happily embracing it. Jack smiled, nodded, and let himself out.
He swung by the vending machines to grab the suggested snack and drink, snarfed them down as his belly suddenly remembered that it was empty, then (at last!) headed for the showers and clean clothes.
He was in bed ten minutes later, but sleep didn’t join him there at first. Instead he lay back and stared up at the ceiling. He’d yet to customize his bunk at all, so the room was at its most spartan basic—bunk, desk, sink, chair, wardrobe. Enough room to stretch, not enough room to exercise. It was a place for storing himself and his stuff when he wasn’t doing anything else.
His mind kept coming back to the kiss. It hadn’t quite been what he expected. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected but he hadn’t factored taste into his imaginings.
Too bad that was all that happened. He’d have liked to learn where else his imagination had fallen short of reality.
Oh well. He yawned, turned over, and fell asleep on the confident knowledge that he’d do better next time.
Date Point: 15y5m1d AV CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia, USA, Earth
Darcy
Darcy had to admit, life had improved for her. She was sleeping better, she was fitter, she was way less stressed, she had more free time. All things considered, her demotion had been a heavily disguised blessing.
If the old adage was true that everybody got promoted to their point of incompetence and then stuck there, then Darcy had been one of the lucky few who got to drop back down to her peak of competence…and she felt good for it! Maybe she was just being optimistic… but she’d rather be really, really good at a slightly lower-tier job than balanced on a knife at a higher level.
She was incredibly good at her job. Best in the department. That much was a point of pride.
Unfortunately, this morning she wasn’t getting to do her job. This morning, she was sat in a meeting with people so high up they’d been barely in sight even at her old position. Briefing her.
“It calls itself… well, as far as we can tell it doesn’t call itself anything. It’s just an entity, sapient but entirely unlike any kind of physical life form. But its origins are in Operation EMPTY BELL.”
Darcy nodded, reading over the report yet again as though it would explain anything. She remembered the device they’d found in Six’s Egyptian desk perfectly well. It was probably vaulted away in a research facility somewhere now.
The Cabal agent captured on Gao at the height of the invasion had been extremely forthcoming on many subjects. Its detailed account of a shadow war raging in dataspace between the Igraens and this entity made for stomach-knotting reading.
She hoped Ríos didn’t know what had happened to her digital copy. That poor young woman had suffered more than enough. But at the same time, Darcy was exceptionally glad that she’d made the call to let Ríos meet with Six. If he’d managed to somehow scan *Darcy*’s brain…
The strategic implications were terrifying. They’d dodged a hell of a bullet there.
“But it’s not actually a human mind?” she asked.
“No. Bits of one, violently torn apart and sewn back together wrong. The Igraen’s explanation was heavy on technical terminology that describes concepts that simply don’t exist in relation to a physical life form’s personality.”
“How so?”
“Because a digitized mind is… very different. They’re independent of the hardware they operate on. A human mind on the other hand is indistinguishable from its brain. Damage the brain, damage the mind. We can watch mental illnesses as chemical activity in the brain, serotonin levels, dopamine levels, and use chemistry to help correct them. But a digital sapient doesn’t have chemistry, or neurological activity. They achieve a similar result through completely different means.”
“But one can be translated into the other?” Darcy asked.
“Exactly. We think most of a digital sapient’s runtime is spent approximating the function of a physical brain.”
“Approximating,” Darcy said flatly.
“Yeah. And that’s the crux of the issue. This Entity isn’t human, but it’s approximately part-human and it presumably remembers being human.”
“That sounds like a recipe for going completely insane…” Darcy felt nauseated.
“AIs do. The Dominion have been trying to make them for generations, but even their best ones completely fall apart and try to self-destruct in short order. Which is unfortunate for us, because this one has been beyond invaluable. It feeds us vital intelligence, it neutralizes key Hierarchy operatives, it has badly weakened the Hierarchy as a whole and we’ve seen its hand at work in a dozen little coincidences that went our way.”
Darcy nodded. “And because it remembers me…”
“…It contacted you when things began to go wrong.”
Darcy considered the folder again. She knew that she really wasn’t responsible, but somehow she felt that she must be. This thing existed in part because of a call she’d made. Did she owe it anything? She really didn’t know.
But if it was as valuable as it seemed, and if she was the person it had reached out to for help, then…
“…What do I need to do?” she asked.
Date Point: 15y5m1d AV Hell, Hunter Space
Rachel “Ray” Wheeler
All of the ideas in the escape plan were desperate, and all of them had problems. Some of the problems were ethical, others were logistical, or mechanical, or relied on luck…
Some were just impossible.
“I’m telling you, I can’t do it!”
Jamie Choi was patrolling around the campfire, talking animatedly as he always did when he was explaining why a thing was impossible.
“It’s not as simple as just taking the field emitters off the hull and soldering on a battery pack! We’d have to program the field topography, the edge folding… EARS fields handle high-pressure plasma, not bullets or pulse fire, so I’d totally need to reprogram the dynamic physical properties which, even if I had the toolset, I don’t have the training to do…”
“D-don’t we have imp— imp—” Berry sighed, but everyone waited patiently for him to finish. “Impact deflection screens?”
“Sure. Five layers of them, each shaped to surround the whole ship. Again, I’d need to reprogram the topography to avoid intersection…Besides, it’s a speedbump design, they work in tandem to refract and deflect an incoming object rather than stop it outright. Each one individually has a low cutoff threshold.”
“Alright,” Spears decided. “So the portable shield barricade idea’s a no-go.”
“If I had the time and the tools it’d be a great idea,” Choi said loyally. “But even if I did it’d still be quicker and easier to recycle some hull plating and cargo straps into shields.”
“What, like those shields SWAT teams use?” Cook grinned. He was sitting on a rock slightly outside the circle and was using a pocket knife to scratch away at something cupped in his hand. “Badass.”
“We only have three rifles,” Ray mused.
“So the four with the shields protect the three with the rifles. Could work… If we can whip up some melee weapons?” Spears asked.
Choi nodded. “Easy. Clubs, spears…”
Cook’s grin broadened. “Swords?”
“Are you kid—?” Choi turned to face him. “No! I could maybe grind down some scrap steel to make you a sharp bit of metal with a handle, but an actual sword is days of work with a proper forge for a master smith. I have a blowtorch and an angle grinder, and I’ve never made a blade in my life.”
Cook grunted and returned to whatever it was he was carving. “Killjoy.”
“Spears,” Ray said. He looked her way.
“Yeah?”
“Not you.” She mimed stabbing something. “Spears. Like, a boar spear or something. Keep the Hunters at arm’s length where their fusion claws can’t cut through the shield.”
“They’ll cut through the spear instead,” Conley retorted.
“It’s a second or two of extra time. Enough to shoot the fuckers, or for somebody else to stab them.”
“Why bother with the shield then, if their claws would just slice through it?” Conley pressed.
“They’ll have guns, too.”
“We’re meant to be immune to pulse weaponry, aren’t we?”
“Resistant,” Cook corrected him. “A good pulse rifle hits as hard as George Foreman. Won’t splatter you, but it ain’t exactly a love tap.”
“And that’s assuming they only have pulse weapons,” Ray added.
She glanced sideways. There’d been a small, quiet pressure on her arm for some time—Holly Chase, holding on for reassurance. She’d been gripping tighter and tighter as the conversation progressed, and Ray was pretty sure there were permanent fingernail marks in her skin now.
Of all of them, Chase was by far the least suited for combat. Too small, too timid, too pacifist. Right now, she’d gone so pale that her freckles stood out like ink spots and she was staring right through the ground.
“Hey.” Ray got her attention by touching her hand. It took Chase a second to notice her circulation-stopping death grip and let go as if stung. Ray rubbed her back reassuringly to let her know they were okay.
“…Maybe three shields,” Spears said. His tone wasn’t unkind.
“We can’t afford dead weight in this fight,” Cook cautioned. “If somebody ain’t fighting, they’d better be doing something else just as important.”
“You let us worry about that,” Ray told him with a glare. He took one look at her, saw an angry mama bear, paused, then nodded and returned to the project in his hands. Ray really didn’t want to know what it was.
“So who gets the rifles?” Ray asked. “I mean, Spears obviously. And I’m an okay shot… Who gets number three?”
Berry raised his hand. “M-me.”
Conley gave him a surprised look. “Yeah? Didn’t figure you for a firearms enthusiast, Berry.”
A nervous smile flashed across Berry’s face. “I’ll intro— troduce to my uncle somet— ugh, sometime. He t-taught me to shoot.”
“Uh…” Chase cleared her throat and raised her hand. “Uh…when was the last time any of you actually fired a rifle?”
“At least ten years,” Cook muttered darkly.
Ray shared an awkward look with Spears. “It’s… been a while,” she confessed.
Spears nodded grimly. “I guess we’d better practice.”
“Can we afford the noise? Or the ammo?” Conley asked.
“Everything about this plan is a calculated risk,” Spears said. “But they can’t hear gunshots from all the way up in space. We’ll do some target shooting on a windy day when there’s no hunts around and… I dunno. How much ammo do we have again?”
Ray knew that one off the top of her head. “Three cans. Nine hundred rounds each.”
“…I think we can probably spare some,” Choi snarked, and chuckles swept around the campfire. They’d been doing that more, recently. Little laughs, and smiles, and jokes. Like they were waking up, remembering who they’d been before Hell. Ray had been right: giving them hope, or at least something to work toward, had begun to revive some of their old dynamic. They were all changed, Cook perhaps worst of all, but they were still there.
Spears nodded. “Alright. Three hundred rounds apiece sounds like good practice to me.”
“That’s a lotta ammo left over anyway,” Cook said. “If we’re takin’ it with us then somebody’s gotta hump it.”
“I guess that’s my job, then,” Chase told him, showing rather more fire than Ray was used to seeing in her. Clearly he’d nettled her.
Cook aimed a raised eyebrow her way. “…That’s a lotta weight, Chase.”
“And we have a sack truck. I’ll manage.”
“Over rough grou—?”
“I’ll. Manage.”
He stared at her a moment longer then beamed and returned to his project. “Attagirl.”
Spears cleared his throat. “Alright. We’ve taken enough of a gamble holding this meeting without a lookout, and it’s gone on long enough. Berry, Conley, you’re on first watch tonight. Unless anybody has something important to raise, you’d better get back out there.”
The two nodded and stood.
“I’ll get started on the shields and spears, I guess,” Choi said.
“Yeah. Good talk, everyone.”
Cook grunted, slithered off his rock, dropped whatever he’d been scratching at on the ground and went to go check on the Hot. That just left Ray, Spears and Chase.
“Cook’s not wrong,” Ray said quietly. “Even with the truck, over rough ground…”
“I won’t stay here, Ray.” Holly shook her head fiercely. “I won’t. Maybe I can’t fight but I will haul those cans.”
Ray gave a long, hard look at the scrawny, malnourished, petite geologist beside her. Two ammo cans had to be half of Chase’s bodyweight or more, but looking at the determined expression squeezed between her bangs and her freckles, for a moment Ray could honestly believe that willpower might just trump physics.
“…Have a word with Choi about the truck,” Spears suggested. “We can fight smart as well as hard.”
Chase sagged, coming back down from whatever fighting-bantam high she’d been on. “…I’ll do that,” she agreed.
“Ok ay.” Spears stood up. “I’m turning in. See you in the morning.”
Ray nodded and stood as well. “I should rest too. I have second watch.”
Holly nodded. “Yeah. G’night, Ray.”
Something crunched under Ray’s boot as she passed the rock where Cook had been sitting. She stopped and glanced down, and found a chunk of sun-bleached alien bone. She didn’t quite know why she stooped to pick it up, but when she turned it over in her fingers she found that angular letters had been scratched messily into its surface. Two words, so tightly packed on that they blended into one.
IMSORRY
She blinked at it, not quite knowing what to make of it, then dropped it back in the dirt where it had fallen, dusted her hands off and went to bed.
She dreamed of boiling alive.