Embers After Flames, Chapter 9.8 (Patreon)

9.8

+++

The spontaneous detonation of the Howling Head Bay Area was both entirely expected and completely planned for. My sensors had been watching for it, keyed to alert me the moment it happened.

I was, for the most part, done with Dolmayan’s gift by then. Everything that required my actual direct attention was done, at the very least, and the rest of it could be handled by the automated systems that were in place. I left them to it and got to work.

The first thing I did was catch up on the data that I hadn’t gone through while I was working. There wasn’t much of interest, and most of it was simple reports that amounted to ‘everything is fine’. It barely took thirty seconds.

The second thing I did was check out the explosion area.

What I found was what I wanted to find and what I expected to see. The underground Coral vein had Surged with the destruction of the Watchpoint’s sensor, and that Surge had travelled down towards the central deposit of the vein. The agitation caused the entire colony to Surge, and the released heat and energy had breached the underground area.

The central deposit, however, had been under the ocean. A relatively small distance away out to sea, admittedly, but large enough.

Pop quiz, what happens when water meets something hot?

Steam.

The moment the chamber had breached and opened to the ocean, the result had been inevitable. The water that poured in had been superheated rapidly, transforming into steam, which expanded significantly. The Surging Coral was caught in the expansion, and dragged along with it, which only further increased the rate of thermal transfer as the colony went from a single dense deposit to a rapidly expanding underwater cloud.

End result; boom.

The steam explosion that had occurred had been more akin to an orbital impactor than anything else. The bay area had been completely cratered, the shape of that little corner that had given it its name utterly obliterated. It was an explosion closer to a gigaton than a megaton, though the mostly-underground nature of it was responsible for the efficiency with which the landscape had been demolished.

Well, that and the odder properties of the way that Coral unleashes heat.

Obviously, nobody missed it. The burning red that had erupted from the Northwestern area of Belius had been blindingly obvious both literally and metaphorically, but even aside from that, the seismic wave that this event had generated certainly could not have been called ‘weak’.

Corporate drones arrived there within the hour to observe the effects. The steam and scattered Coral organisms were still present, but the former was in the process of fading and the latter had already started its directional flow. I was quite willing to wager that it wouldn’t be long at all before the Megacorps had enough data to trace the direction to the Ice Fields, at which point they would start looking for ways to cross the Alean Ocean enmasse.

The third thing I did was send a message to Flatwell. It was a very simple message, containing only two words.

‘Mission complete.’

The fourth thing I did was release Ezra from the duty I’d given him, since 621 had rather obviously not gone towards Watchpoint Omicron.

The fifth thing was by far the simplest of all of the things I did, yet also the most time-consuming.

I waited.

It took Ayre an hour before she reached out to me. Unusual, since there should have been nothing stopping her from doing so earlier... unless, that is, something she had not expected had occurred and she had to deal with it in the meantime.

Nevertheless, I waited with patient anticipation, and I was inevitably rewarded for it.

“IAccidentallyMadeContact!” Ayre blurted the moment she was capable of speaking.

“... What?” I asked. I was reasonably sure I’d heard that right, but... well.

“IMadeContact!” Ayre says again. “RavenIsContactCapableIDidn’tMeanToItWasAnAccidentIWasn’tExpecting-”

Oh dear, my daughter is in a bit of a panic.

“-ToMakeContactButItHappenedAndNowI-”

“Ayre.” I said, and enveloped her in my presence as I did. She was... jittery. Not from fear, but... worry. About... not me, precisely, but my reaction? “Calm down, my dear. Spend a few seconds getting yourself together. Then talk.”

A few seconds passed. Ayre calmed as they did, soothed by my fullness of my presence. Slowly, I started to pull back, until we weren’t overlapping so much.

“I made Contact.” She says in a now rather more comprehensible way. “With Raven.”

Hey hey! It all went as planned. That’s a truly great feeling, that is.

“Raven... as in C4-621.” I said, after a moment.

Ayre... did not nod, precisely. We didn’t have the anatomy for that. But that was the closest way to describe the sensation for us.

“Well, I suppose of all the Augments who could end up accidentally compatible, a Gen Four isn’t any less unlikely than the others.” I hummed. “From the beginning, dear?”

Ayre doesn’t use her words. Instead, her wave overlaps with mine a bit more, and then-

Her memories unfold in my mind. I see Ayre’s boredom, the way she distracted herself with Dwarf Fortress -good to see that joke is still going strong-, then the arrival of 621 into the area. I feel Ayre’s awe, the combined shock and admiration for 621’s skill. I see her watch 621 tear the place apart easily. I see her watch Sulla die just as easily. I see her watch 621 enter the central area, and then I see her feel the Surge.

From her perspective, 621 punctures into the Contact like the Pile Bunker LOADER 4 is carrying. Something which had shocked Ayre, because she hadn’t been expecting it... And-

“That is a lot of brain damage.” I can’t help but comment as her memory of 621’s physiology flows through me.

“... It didn’t seem very good to me.” Ayre says, after a moment.

“You were always a bit more focused on explosives.” I said. I didn’t blame her for it, of course. Biology is boring next to bombs. I’d made sure she’d learned enough, though. “And I can tell you here and now that it is amazing that 621 is capable of functioning at all.”

Yikes... Alright, categorizing.

Parietal Lobes, significantly denser than normal. Neurons replaced entirely with Coral and optical transmitters for ultra-fast low-latency spatial relationship and sensation interpretation.

Occipital Lobes, much the same in terms of visual and audio processing augmentation. Relatively standard issue, here. Simple enough.

Similar changes in both the Frontal and Temporal Lobes. All relatively standard for Augmentations, but the other structures... what the fuck. It’s literally strategically lobotomised. Wernicke’s area... small, but efficient like the standard for C4, yet also disconnected from other speech areas. 621 had the capacity to understand speech, but quite possibly wasn’t actually capable of it. Pituitary Gland has been modified significantly, Hypothalamus is the same, Amygdala is just... I don’t even know how to describe what kind of fuck-up is going there.

Holy shit, what wasn’t fucked up here? Limbic system, nervous system, muscles... 621 would be a cripple barely capable of moving outside of an AC... And there’s no fucking point to any of this because none of it makes for a more capable pilot, just...

Just one that is less capable of running away if they want to try. Keep a remote override for the AC, and anybody rocking this particular butcher’s bill would barely be able to do anything.

This was not the standard for Gen Four... But maybe it was for the Hounds. Unfortunately, I hadn’t exactly been able to get any of them under a microscope, so I couldn’t tell there.

I’ll get Flatwell to put out some feelers, and find out. This was... Well, Dornez had done worse, but this was still pretty fucking bad.

“Worse than I thought??” Ayre asked.

“Much.” I stated. “But we’ll circle back to that.”

Ayre hummed, but her memory started to flow again.

Ayre helps 621, because that’s ultimately what she usually defaults to. Not a plan, exactly, more just a reaction while she tries to figure things out.

And then the BALTEUS units show up. Two of the newer models, with upgraded weaponry, armour, shielding, speed, all that shit. The design these days was closer to Arquebus’ version of the unit, with plasma and lasers replacing most of the physical weapons aside from the missiles.

In Ayre’s memory, 621 deletes them from existence with the characteristic efficiency I’d come to expect. It also lets me see from the inside what’s going on with 621, and...

Augmentations cannot explain all of this. 621, if anything, is worse off than most Gen Fours. This sheer ability...

I push on from it.

The memory is nearly done anyway. The explosion, Ayre’s comment about it. Then Walter gets into contact again, and the transport helicopter comes to pick 621 up. Ayre thinks about leaving, but doesn’t, because 621 still isn’t the best, and she can still help, so she stays.

She watches as Walter asks about 621’s health. 621 types out a report listing both a headache, and that 621 is hearing a voice speak. Walter tells 621 to go sleep. 621 eventually does a short time later. The entire time, Ayre was...

Thinking about how she might have messed something up in my plans when she made Contact with 621.

And she’d spiraled a bit about it.

“You did nothing wrong.” I say immediately. “And I’m proud of your compassion even in the face of this.”

“... I guess I was just being silly, wasn’t I?”

“Just a bit.” I agreed.

Ayre sighed, her embarrassment clear. “What happens now, then?” She asked. “If I’ve made Contact, then Raven is... What does it mean?”

“That’s the tricky part, now isn’t it?” I gave a considering hum. “I started this whole thing with the intention to get the Megacorps away from Belius. They’ll do that now. They learned that the RLF is equipped enough to stop them getting what they want, but the RLF doesn’t exist in the Ice Fields. Your Contact...” Was expected. Hoped for. Desperately needed so that we didn’t have the world's okayest lobotomite fighting to kill us. “Well. Are you interested in allowing this state of affairs to continue?”

“You mean, staying in Contact?” Ayre asked. “I- it’s a bit sudden.”

“It is.” I agreed. “And I won’t force you into anything. It’s your choice to make, Ayre. We will proceed as you wish. If you desire to explore this possibility alongside 621... then that’s what I’ll do.”

I... With everything I had in Institute City, if I had literally everything ready to dogpile 621, that should do the job, right? If I needed to kill 621?

...

It concerned me greatly that I couldn’t confidently say ‘Yes, that will work’ to myself.

But it was Ayre’s choice.

Ayre stayed silent for a bit. I could feel her thinking about it. No surprise. It was quite the big choice to make... Despite Seria’s example, none of my other children had taken a single partner like what this was would be.

“Alright.” Ayre spoke, finally. “We’ll... try this. And see where it goes.”

I could hear the hint of excitement in her voice. Her words weren’t resigned, she was quite excited for this. Good. I like it when she’s happy.

I chuckled. “As you wish.” I spoke. “Now then, you might want to hold back on revealing everything at the start. Getting to know another person can take quite a bit of time, and you don’t want to reveal anything important to someone you don’t fully trust.”

“Oh, you’re about to give an entire lecture here aren’t you?” Ayre said, and I laughed in response.

“How couldn’t I?” I asked. “There are so many opportunities to tease, here.”

“Please don’t?” She asked for mercy.

“And I’ll even slip in some actual life advice while I’m at it.” I continued heedless. “Are you ready? First things first...”