Embers After Flames, Chapter 10.i (Patreon)

10.i

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The mission had been like any other. Arquebus wanted a PCA base destroyed and their resources reduced. All he had to do was release the Hound to do the job, and 621 would handle the rest. He himself only provided remote support at best, and it was wholly unnecessary in the face of 621’s absurd skill.

Walter recognized from the start that Arquebus was hoping 621 would die, but even so, it wasn’t an outright suicide mission, and the stated goal was still useful for their purposes, as well. The PCA’s forces were strong, far more numerous and well equipped than they had expected.

It doesn’t save them from 621. The Hound tears them to pieces, and then moves on to complete the objective. PCA Warships fall one after the other, destroyed with precision strikes to bridges that were never meant to be vulnerable in the first place, and rendered into so much scrap metal because of it.

By the time that PCA reinforcements arrive, there is nothing to save. It remains evident, however, that whatever target they have laid on 621’s head is large enough that they’re won’t let that stop them.

621 tears them to pieces, too. A perfectly normal, average mission.

The calculus changes suddenly and without warning. 621 is still in the process of destroying the opposing forces when the PCA authorises additional reinforcements. The announcement that comes over the channel takes him a moment to comprehend.

“Use of IA-02 authorised.” The announcer states clearly.

It takes Walter a moment to realise that the designation doesn’t match the typical PCA pattern. It takes another moment for him to recognise that he knows that number anyway.

It’s an Institute designation. Autonomous unit number two; the ICE WORM.

Walter had been young the first time he’d read the files. The last time had been years ago, before he’d once again returned to Rubicon, and he’d only brushed up on it out of the possibility that they would eventually run into one of the automated warmachines. Walter only knows what the ICE WORM is because of Overseer, however.

621 shouldn’t know any such thing.

Yet, before Walter can deliver any warning, 621 turns around and flies away, heading back to the spaceport and ascending up its structure.

Walter allows himself the time to assess whether or it was reasonable for 621 to somehow know enough about the ICE WORM to avoid it before it even arrives. The answer he arrives at is ‘no’, unless 621 had some truly strange history before the Fires of Ibis, but that’s not something he thinks is the case.

It is far from the first time that 621 has demonstrated behaviour like this. Ever since the Watchpoint, 621 has been subtly aware, in small ways that do not make sense. The Hound acts on knowledge that shouldn’t be present, gathers information at speeds that do not make sense, and exhibits a degree of independent action that is too direct and refined to be something that a Fourth Gen should have.

Before, in the absence of knowledge, Walter had had no explanation. Now, he makes another mark on his mental checklist. It’s not expected for a Hound, but Walter isn’t the only voice who offers support, now.

Walter watches as the ICE WORM breaches the ground. It’s the first time he’s seen it in person, as it were. The signature it makes on the radar is a blurred, absurd thing, the vague shape of something mechanical surrounded by a storming barrier of Activated Coral.

It’s not a foe that even 621 will be able to best. Too large, too sophisticated. The double-layered barrier that surrounds the unit renders it nearly impervious to harm, and size and armour handle what the shield cannot.

Walter cannot think of any options that 621 has other to simply retreat. As he watches the ICE WORM literally climb the structure of the spaceport by curling around it, he’s about to give the order.

A new voice on the channel interrupts that plan.

Thumb Dolmayan appears from seemingly nowhere. One moment, he had not been on the radar. The next, he simply showed up well within its envelope, deep into the range where Walter should have had some warning.

The ICE WORM halts in its tracks. Dolmayan’s AC crashes into the spaceport.

It is not his old AC, the BASHO that operated beyond the profile of a BASHO. It is something new, something that even he can immediately determine takes several design elements from the rest of the IBIS series. The torso shape was a mix between the SOL and the CEL, flat like the former by smooth and aerodynamic like the latter. The arms mixed the SOL with the HAL, visually simple pieces but it was obvious that at least some of the HAL’s extra heatsinks and vents had made it in. The legs were the same, keeping the visual consistency, aerodynamic shape, and vents. The head was the strange part. A set of visual sensors like the HAL, but shaped into a four eyed visor. The head was otherwise smooth, but from the sides extended a pair of small, thin blades that looked almost like plane wings.

“Hypocrisy.” Dolmayan declares, and, impossibly, the ICE WORM follows.

C-Weapons had been the pinnacle of the Institute’s research. As automated weapon systems, they had been protected very thoroughly on the cybersecurity front. Carla herself had sat at the head of that project, and she hadn’t stopped until she couldn’t get past it. There were no backdoors. There were no intentional vulnerabilities. Reprogramming required physical access, and C-Weapons would only accept networking protocols from verified and trusted sources.

It is impossible for a single AC to override a C-Weapon like what seems to have just occurred.

Yet, the evidence is there right in front of his eyes, and it promptly assists in ripping the PCA force to shreds.

Between two of the best pilots on the planet and a two kilometer long C-Weapon, the battle, if it could be called that, doesn’t last very long at all.

Walter watches, and stays quiet.

621 bothers to meet Dolmayan in the aftermath. That’s surprising enough on its own, since Fourth Gen Augments were normally not personable at all.

What follows is only a few words. Dolmayan expresses his opinion on 621, but then.

“You hear their voices, perceive the sparks.” Dolmayan tells 621.

And, all at once, what had previously been only an isolated case transforms into the beginnings of a phenomenon.

“But she seems to be happy with you, even with how little time you’ve known each other.” Dolmayan continues. A moment of silence passes, before he chuckles. “Quite excellent. If your Raven is your choice, then I hope you find your happiness, Ayre.”

Ayre.

A name he hasn’t heard before.

Dolmayan leaves.

Walter watches through the feed as the head of 621’s AC turns to the side. Shortly after, it tilts back and forth in a nod, he finds himself wonder what this conversation is that he’s not hearing.

621 returns to base shortly afterwards.

Walter leaves 621 to rest, but as for himself, there’s no time for that.

He calls Carla.

“Taking control of a C-Weapon like that...” Carla sighed. “It’s not meant to be possible.”

“It happened.” Is all Walter says.

“Bypassed our protections, and whatever the PCA had added to that thing. There’s no way that they would have kept the old codes the same. That behaviour… It’s not the standard for the ICE WORM.” She grunts. “There was a reason it was always deployed alone. There’s very little friendly fire prevention in that thing. The ICE WORM was acting according to parameters- and then it wasn’t.”

The ICE WORM had disrupted the PCA formation. It had scattered them, splitting the squads so that 621 and Dolmayan would be entirely free to tear them to shreds. It had not attacked when an ally would be in danger- and it had been clear that there was a wider definition of danger than the Institute’s scientists had programmed in.

By the end of it, it had curled around the field until its head had faced somewhere between Dolmayan and 621, before seemingly shutting down.

That was not the behaviour of a control unit. This sort of… showmanship had never been a part of the C-Weapon’s designs and protocols.

So, obviously, it wasn’t the standard CPU that was in control.

“Dolmayan mentioned two names.” He spoke, thinking over the matter. “Seria and Ayre.”

“I did catch that, but I haven’t heard of either.” Carla says. “What do you think?”

Walter has been mulling over it since the moment he’d heard of it. “There’s more than one of these voices.” He states. “And if one of those voices is speaking to Dolmayan, then Coral is the common link.”

“It raises some questions about Coral Mysticism, huh?” Carla asked, rhetorical as it was.

“What do you think?” Walter asks in turn.

Carla is silent, for a few moments. “I have a few ideas, and I don’t really like any of them.” She admits. “It’s clear that people are somehow communicating through Coral, but how...”

Carla sighs.

Walter allows her the time she needs to think.

“We can’t afford to keep running around in the dark.” She says, eventually. “There’s too much we don’t know, and things are too damned busy to be messing around. If things keep going the way they have been, then we’re going to have problems. It’s time to get some answers.”

Walter’s eyes close. If even Carla isn’t rushing headfirst into doing things on her own, then… “I understand.”

“I’ll make the call.”

The remnants of RRI gather. The call expands, until eventually they’re all in on it. Walter deliberates on the final addition, but eventually settles on adding 621 to the call as well. He isn’t sure how much the Hound knows, because Walter hasn’t asked and 621 isn’t inclined to share thoughts without asking.

The call connects.

The conversation that follows is as enlightening as it is draining.

Centuries spent expanding through space, and the totality of alien life that Humanity as a whole has ever met amounted to primordial worlds covered in genetic slurry, with occasional primal biosphere of rampant nature. Rubicon had barely been a break in that pattern, and it had been terraformed into something more compatible with Human life long before Walter had been born. The discovery of Coral had been a miraculous event for its properties, and for the realization that somehow, natural evolution had produced an organism that defied the very laws of physics.

None of that life had been intelligent. Full sophoncy remained the domain of Humanity alone. Even the Coral, for all its impossible qualities, was just an organism-

And yet, apparently not.

The idea that Humanity somehow managed to miss a true alien sophont is… Galling. And yet, in this one particular case, under these particular circumstances, nearly inevitable.

How can you know something exists without any ability to interact with it? When senses failed, what was there to resort to?

And the person in question… Untaught, without instinct, blind, deaf, mute, and paralyzed- yet possessed of processing power to rival and surpass even the most powerful of Artificial Intelligences.

Which they had then fed the full data throughput of a completely connected and developed world into. Bootstrapping from nothing into something that understood even the most advanced of sciences…

But if that is what Drich is, then what are Seria and Ayre? Where do these other, distinct entities fall into the equation?

A question that Walter is not afforded the chance to ask. The conversation moves on.

“You must also make a choice. To pursue your original goal, or to follow a different path.”

Walter is struck with a sudden understanding. Their goal hadn’t been a secret. Could never have been a secret, not from someone like this, who had been a silent observer to them for so many years.

And yet, even knowing this, they hadn’t been removed. Hadn’t been attacked. Walter has seen some of the resources that are available, and the knowledge settles into him that the only reason they still lived was because someone they never knew had made the conscious choice not to kill them.

It cannot be naivety. They came here to burn a world again. So, what was it that stayed the executioner’s axe?

“But I can no longer afford lenience, Carla.”

A simple “...Understood.” is Carla’s only response. The conversation ends, and the other end of the call disconnects.

Even so, they’re still not alone. 621 is listening in, and that means that Ayre, whatever she is, is as well.

Pointless, right now. The call remains silent.

“…Fucking hell.” Carla eventually murmurs. “Couldn’t be easy, could it?”