Embers After Flames, Chapter 11.0 (Patreon)

11.0

+++

Alright.

Alright alright alright.

Branch is alive, but no longer active. The PCA is moving in the way that I need them to move. Arquebus and Balam are holding on desperately, but for the moment they’re hunkered down.

The RLF has control over Belius. All meaningful PCA forces have been routed from the continent. The Independents have been shifted around significantly, and a lot of them are in no position whatsoever to cause problems.

Overseer was no longer an enemy. That particular sword of Damocles no longer hung over us all. Ayre is close to Raven, and Raven is on our side of things.

Dolmayan is getting ready. My Firekeepers have been moved into position. My stuff has been moved into position.

The final steps were soon to be taken, and while the preparations hadn’t been entirely completed, they were most of the way there, and we could no longer afford to delay.

There is now only a single remaining factor left in this entire series of events that hadn’t been completely accounted for.

ALLMIND.

I wasn’t yet certain if ALLMIND had figured out what I was planning to do. I wasn’t certain if ALLMIND had begun her own preparations. Overseer had worked out, but I still wasn’t certain if ALLMIND was willing to accept the overtures that had been made.

By that same token, however, I had made every reasonable effort to make my next steps into something that couldn’t be stopped. I was dramatically over-prepared for my side of things, and unless ALLMIND had somehow managed to hide a truly absurd amount of industry from my gaze, she shouldn’t be in any position to stop me even if she tries.

I did not like dealing with ‘should’, and especially not when dealing with something like this, but I had no other choice anymore.

Committing was no longer a choice. It was going to happen.

“You’re sure?” Flatwell asked. It was wholly unnecessary, because we had both run through the entirety of it all. I was confident in my analysis, but the second opinion didn’t hurt.

“Yes.” I answered. “The timeline accelerated past what we anticipated. Even so, this is a chance that can’t be wasted.”

He nodded. “I’ll get ready for this side of things.” He said.

“And I shall handle the other.” I said. “Good luck.”

“Aren’t I the one who should be saying that?” He asked, but the quirk of his lips gave him away.

+++

It began in full a mere two days after Raven had earned the name. Raven was on alert, ready to carry out another portion of the operation, but right now, the main stars weren’t Raven.

“Are you two ready?” I asked.

“We’re ready.” Seria said, her tone confident.

“Born ready.” Dolmayan stated.

“Alright.” I agreed. “Commencing Operation Decapitation. Dolmayan, proceed.”

The plan was, in the end, ultimately rather simple. Everything started with Dolmayan attacking a fortified PCA position.

I watch him get to work. He flies in quickly, dropping in on the PCA troops while giving them very little to prepare. He is quick, violent, but he has to be carefully restrained in that violence.

He can’t end it too quickly.

The PCA troops that are there get their communications out before Dolmayan destroys them. This is a calculated decision, because I want the PCA to know where he is. The message tells them, but the PCA wasn’t yet ready to commit, seeing him alone and not knowing where the ICE WORM was waiting.

Even so, the troops were readied, the orders sent out. Every single PCA unit in the entire region was put on alert, and then gathered up in preparation for a response.

Phase One, complete.

“You’re up, Seria.”

Seria begins Phase Two. She takes the ICE WORM to go attack another PCA facility, quite a decent distance away from Dolmayan. Her attack is also fast and brutal, but she has to follow the protocols that were already in place in the ICE WORM, because the Enforcement System will recognise them in action. Because of these protocols, Seria places communication towers on a lower priority than certain other matters, and so the PCA is alerted to that, too.

Dolmayan is, as far as they can tell, alone. Without the nearly invincible C-Weapon to guard him, and with a truly enormous amount of troops surrounding him, the Enforcement System calculates the likelyhood of a trap, and then calculates that it is below the utility value of being able to kill Thumb Dolmayan after all this time.

The orders are given. The vast hordes of the PCA charge towards his position.

Phase Two, complete.

Phase Three begins next, and it was the most difficult part of this entire operation. Dolmayan will be surrounded by converging PCA forces. He has to fight them, survive them, and draw in as much of them as possible. The PCA does not yet have a fully accurate picture of the performance that METS ASTGHIK is capable of, and while this allows Dolmayan a considerable variance in his actions, so too does it make the PCA act carefully.

Dolmayan fights, and fights, and fights. He tears apart everything that comes towards him, whether they’re Warships or drones. Helicopters and Cavalry units fall in equal measure.

They keep coming, and as time passes, the Enforcement System grows more confident.

Eventually, even Dolmayan is ‘forced’ to start backing away, lest he be caught in a truly disastrous numbers mismatch. This is of course exactly what he does, and so he begins a running battle.

In the meantime, the PCA’s forces gather.

Phase Three is almost nothing but nail-biting waiting. The HYACINTHUS model is equipped with all the same defensive and manoeuvrability technology that the other Firekeeper Frames incorporate. Dolmayan puts it through its paces, running the machine at its highest possible speed to dodge as much of the incoming firepower as he can, letting the Primal Armour handle anything that he can’t dodge.

A lesser pilot would have died long before they achieved anything of use.

Dolmayan made it work, and we finally came to the critical threshold of gathered PCA forces.

“Phase Three complete! Dolmayan, get the next position!” I called. Dolmayan didn’t hesitate; he turned around and hauled ass, firing the boosters to their absolute maximum.

The gathered PCA troops sensed weakness, and didn’t hesitate to follow.

That was fine. I expected them to do that.

“Phase Four, commencing.”

Dolmayan’s part was done.

Now came mine.

Phase Four was the final phase. It took place nowhere near the battlefield that Dolmayan and the PCA had already made.

No. This one started on a much different front.

The ultimate goal of the entire operation was very simple, but it was certainly nothing small. The operation sought nothing less than to remove the PCA from being a threat.

There were two key factors to this. The first factor was the Enforcement System, which was directly in charge of all autonomous machines the PCA had access to, from the smallest of Drones to the Satellites that surrounded this planet and kept it closed.

The second factor was the Human personnel of the PCA. Each of them were, at most, in charge of singular machines, from the Cavalry Pilots to the crew of Warships. They constituted only a small proportion of the PCA’s numbers, but a significant amount of its actual power on the ground.

The RLF and I had been whacking at the latter for years by this point, and the recent PCA aggression had let us cull a significant number of them. More than ninety percent of the remainder were in the Ice Field, and more than ninety percent of that, the vast majority of the remaining combat-capable forces, were currently either chasing Dolmayan or directly en route to his position. That meant that the vast majority of them were out in the open, with no backups and no support.

The latter were replaceable, given time. The former was not, but that was why it had ensconced itself thirteen kilometres underground, behind one of the largest and most powerful defence systems on the planet, inside of a facility that was multiple layers deep and filled to the brim with a horde of PCA machines.

Just one small matter about all that.

All those defences were pointing upwards.

Of course, this was hardly a problem.

The thing about the Enforcement System’s choice of housing was that it was sitting directly on top of the only entrance to Institute City, which was another few kilometres further underground. Since everyone in Institute City was dead, and the city itself was otherwise completely inaccessible through nearly twenty fucking kilometres of rock and earth, it had simply judged that there were no remaining threats, borrowed a few of the Institute’s toys for its own use, and had then locked the place up tight underneath a laser barrier directly beneath its own core.

If it had been right, this wouldn’t be a problem.

But Institute City had been mine for more than thirty years, by this point. The Enforcement System had not left behind any monitoring systems. The remaining sensors of the facility are built to examine things coming from above, but even if they weren’t, there was still several kilometres of rock between the Core and the City.

It has no defences pointing downwards.

There’s one very important thing to note.

Among all the stuff that the Enforcement System borrowed was an AC. An IA-C01 EPHEMERA, an unmanned, autonomous unit. It incorporated Coral in its control system, but it wasn’t fully handled by it like most C-Weapons.

A quirk from the model’s development made it possible to control even for Human pilots.

This unit had been taken for the Enforcement System’s direct control. To do so, it had simply installed a relay inside the cockpit. That relay, however, still routed through the Coral.

It was the Enforcement System’s final line of defence. A just-in-case measure of everything else failing.

It was inside of the Enforcement System’s mainframe.

And I had made Contact with the Coral that made up the machine’s control interface decades ago.

Phase Four begins.

Institute City comes to life. I activate all the things I’ve built up over time in there. Every C-Weapon, every machine, every foundry, every miner, everything. I send my forces upwards.

Last of all of them, the EPHEMERA activates.

The relay lights up with activity only a moment later. I reject all the commands.

The EPHEMERA’s arm raises, and promptly shoots at the primary power cable.

The Coral Rifle obliterates it, of course, and the facility is briefly plunged into darkness. The Ephemera is already moving, swinging the MOONLIGHT at a panel. The Lightwave blade, deliberately undercharged, cuts into it, and the EPHEMERA lands next it a moment later.

A hand digs into the cut, and the panel is peeled back.

The lights come back on, power automatically beginning to flow through the backup feeds.

The NEBULA rifle fires again, and much like the MOONLIGHT, it is deliberately underpowered. What comes out is not a bolt of burning red, but blob of unenergised Coral. That Coral slaps directly onto its target, a very specific circuit board for this mainframe.

Coral is electrosensitive. In close proximity, it can even manipulate electromagnetic energies. I just slapped it directly onto the board that handles the entire booting process for the Enforcement System. I have direct, physical access.

And as anyone who works with computers knows, that means it is no longer a secure system.

Instructions begin to be loaded from memory. I interrupt them, and feed a different program in instead.

The system boots. Wireless capacity comes online. I hook it directly to the EPHEMERA’s system. The data flows, and I read through it quickly. It is not encrypted, because the Enforcement System had never expected to need to encrypt its very own brain.

With the specific knowledge I needed gained, I don’t hesitate to send a deluge of commands throughout it all.

Permissions are elevated for myself. Permissions are removed for everything else. Commands, encryptions, security measures, targets, everything changes. It happens in the blink of an eye.

When it all resolves, the only one in control is me.

“Phase Four complete.” I say, mostly to myself. Only my children and ALLMIND would be able to keep up with the speed that things are going right now. “Phase Five, commencing.”

Far away, in orbit above Rubicon, a Closure Satellite awakens.

And its Mass Driver starts to shift downwards.