NationStates Jolt Archive

Gastin's World

Technically, Gastin's world, property of the mercantile nightmare that is Zepplin Manufacturers, is a large colony; around a hundred million people living in-system should transform it into a reasonably active outpost of civilisation, with buzzing traffic and entertainment, a place to make career, a place where one just might escape the omnipotent bureaucracy of ZMI and its millions upon millions of standardised office suites.

In reality, this isn't quite the case. There is limited mining, but by and large, the enclave - left for itself for a very long time, before ZMI went in and established control - is still left to itself, only the occasional megafreighter passing by to take up cargo, while the blooming activities of the drug cartels, heavily intertwined with the local government, are hardly ever disturbed. The occasional corpse in a river may cause a brief uproar, but eventually, one gets used to it.

A more-or-less symbolic military presence on top rounds up the picture of the quiet, maybe a little wild, but by and large peripheral, though not quite rural (It is ZMI, after all) colony, leaving its inhabitants to sleep maybe not quite safely, but certainly pleasantly under the light of infomercials illuminating the night sky over Gastin's with animations covering everything from polymorphous breast implants to self-propelled epilators (Upgradable for secondary applications, of course).

Until the moment when the infomercials were interrupted by the significantly more powerful lights of exploding spaceships, that is.

News would reach Earth a few hours later.

TO: CinC ZMI Self-Defence Forces; The Gestalt
FROM: IntSec Inside Trader; Commander Sarah Richards
SUBJECT: Attack on Gastins

ATTACK START @ 08:52:14; Jan. 26th
08:52:14 - Detection of multiple emission spectra indicative of FTL-movement suggesting in-system fleet movement; emission spectra similar to previous encounters as filed under ZMI EXP 2283/0064; ZMI EXP 2284/1012 and ZMI GS 2285/0104; Preventative defensive actions taken
08:52:36 - System-wide communications- and sensor-disruption; 100% of civilian & 98% of military FTL Communications Assets affected; Incomings identified 'Hostile'
08:52:38 - Missiles drop out of warp near Carrier Groups Invisible Hand & Monopolist; A similar drop near the Planetary Defence Centre is prevented through apt countermeasures; One system carrier, three battleships, two cruisers and one destroyer damaged; One cruiser, one destroyer and two frigates destroyed; damage to minor orbital assets insubstantial
08:52:46 - Hostile fleets drop out of warp
08:53:56 - Dramatic increase in EW activity prevents further collection of intelligence concerning the engagement. Partial reduction of EW activity post-engagement & compensation by remaining assets eventually show the loss of all space-based ZMDF assets with the exception of the IntSec ship Inside Trader and the Pursuit Cruiser Trade Surplus (Both in distant orbits around Gastin's Star and not engaged/ Presumably undetected); Hostile losses unknown, but presumed to be in excess of 50% mass-equivalence to our assets. Civilian assets partially destroyed
10:48:12 - Simultaneous launch of ground invasions against inhabited assets

Present Activities: Holding orbits and gathering information on hostiles; Trade Surplus preparing to engage in guerilla actions against hostiles. Requesting aid & further orders

The message also contained a decent amount of more technical information concerning the battle, such as a brief analysis of the emission and reflection spectra of the hostiles, observations concerning their weapons- and propulsion systems (As far as they'd been used, of course), a fairly large collection of their communications (Encrypted, of course, but better than nothing) and similar details, which helped to form about as accurate a 'Picture' of the enemy as was possible. Why the attack had occured however, remained unknown.

Gastin's World

The ship seemed to stay motionless in orbit over the planet, apparently unconcerned about the risk presented by the planetary defence forces that'd shot a lesser version of itself out of the sky about half an hour ago; since then, though, no further anti-orbital fire had occured, probably because the people that still had access to weaponry capable of such feats didn't particularly desire to share the fate of the last group that'd risked a shot, which was subsequently melted into the ground a handful of seconds after doing so. Gastin's defensive assets sufficed to hide even a smallish Bolo under extensive ECM screens and tremendous amounts of jungle (For a few hours, anyway), but once they started to fire, spotting them became quite a bit easier.

Its form was quite thoroughly alien, with appendages, barbs, hairs, tentacles and other kinds of strange additions seemingly growing out of the perversely deformed centerpiece of it all. Although its obscene properties were quite easily seen and understood by the creatures on board, to a foreigner, it just looked menacing and/ or silly, depending largely on whether said foreigner enjoyed a substantial technological superiority over the ship's owners or not.

To the citizen-shareholders several ten-thousand kilometres below, though, it definitely would've looked rather more menacing than silly - granted, their planet hadn't been shot to bits just yet, but that just meant that they'd probably face a slow death after losing their limbs to the giant teeth and acidic salvia of a deep-space monstrosity that'd come to eat them, rather than dying quickly in a huge fireball.

Unknown to these people, machines on board of the strange ship and its many brethren, worked, calculating and analysing, compensating and penetrating, quietly, tended to by the myriad of creatures the ships hosted inside their deformed bodies.

On the surface of Gastin's, series of rapid 'Pops', sounding rather like popping bubblewrap, occasionally disturbed its occupants and defenders, announcing that somewhere, somehow, layers of shields, ECM screens, and physical barriers had been penetrated by the alien creatures' displacers, delivering either ordnance or soldiers (Or both) to the field of battle the planet was rapidly turning into.

Carnage was mere seconds away.

Cap'n Jelan Gesh stepped off onto the bridge of the rebuilt Tenacity and, for a few moments, could only stare in wonderment. Beside him his executive officer and right-hand woman, Leftenant Crain Vaal, grinned wryly. "She's a real beauty, isn't she?"

"I'd say. I don't know what half these panels do!" Jelan took a few hops forward and pressed a few buttons around the captain's seat at random.

"Good thing the bridge crew does, then, right?" She crossed above him, flying up towards her seat with a single stroke of her wings. "They'll be up here in half an hour or so. I brought you here to meet Ruby, our new AI. Ruby?"

There was a brief pause as a message reading "RUBiCoN Mk I activated" flashed on the computer screens. A vaguely humanoid figure began weaving itself into existence on a suspended platform in the middle of the bridge, starting with bones and going all the way to fabric. It built up to a flesh-and-blood human in a Federation Navy uniform, who spoke. "Good morrow, fair [barely detectable pause] beings. I am called the Regenerative Universal Binary Command Nodule, Mark One, and (God's will providing) shall serve as your artificial intelligence and pilot for as long as this vessel endures."

"Morning, Ruby," said Jelan, seating himself upon the Captain's perch. "First order of business, can you adopt a more... [he gestured with his arms] ...species-appropriate appearance? I'm not liking the whole 'little hairless monkey' look."

"Unfortunately not, O Captain. As it has been written: twoscore and ten kilograms shall be the limit of the manifestation's mass, for additional would overheat the--"

"Override that, please. Leftenant?"

"Yes, Cap'n?"

"Was this thing programmed by some religious nutcases?"

"Look, we're not exactly the highest of priorities on the Federation's checklist right now, okay? They handed the contracts off to the highest bidder. Mind you, Saduun's told me Ruby's still pretty well built -- functions even he hasn't seen before."

"Saduun?"

"You know, Melkat Saduun? Your chief engineer? My boyfriend?"

Jelan's brain managed to override his first thought ("You have a boyfriend?!") but a somewhat revised version ("You're dating him?") slipped through and found its way to daylight.

Crain sighed. "I've only mentioned it about, oh, twelve times or so. And it's not like we've ever been seen together in the lounge. I mean, seriously?"

"Huh. Well, as long as it does the job, I guess. Anything else the Feds gave us?"

"A new mission to go with our new ship. Excitement-free, they say. We should try not to get blown up this time."

"The crew'll never stand for that," Jelan predicted. Tenacity was well known for its crew, four hundred caelis of impulsive and argumentative liberalism; discipline was at a premium, but they could get down to brass tacks remarkably well in an emergency, which occurred every other week or so.

RUBiCoN said: "Behold, O Captain, it is mine analysis that eighty-nine per cent of all supposedly excitement-free missions are become passing dangerous. It is tempting the Evil Eye. One should never make statements such as those."

"I guess we're in trouble then," Crain said, recalling the Admiral's words. That ship's caused loads of collateral damage wherever it goes. We're thinking of retiring it even now. This is your last chance -- one mission, get the cargo where it's supposed to be, get back here. If the paint on that starship is so much as chipped.... She smiled again.

"All right, enough fooling around, the crew should be assembled in the agora by now," Jelan said. "Time for a briefing."

------------------------------------

A few hours had passed. Cargo was loaded onto the ship, humans and caelis eyeing each other suspiciously (they rarely interacted, for good reasons); systems were checked and rechecked, fuel and supplies were stocked, and despite the Admiral's orders, weapons were loaded. Tenacity, envoy of the least-known species of the Holy Jingoistic Federation of Un-Aligned Nations of Vojvodina-Nihon, was primed to go. Target: the planet Cirrus, thousands of light-years away, and more specifically an arms manufacturing corporation operating there.

On the bridge the officers had assembled. Cap'n Jelan addressed them briefly. "Okay everyone! This is RUBiCoN, or Ruby, our new AI. Say hi!"

The crew chorused a rather unenthusiastic "Hi." Ruby responded with "A fair even to all ye wingéd ones." "She always talks like that," Jelan explained. "But Engineering informs me she can fly the ship."

"A message betides thee, Captain," said Ruby. "God's angels have seen fit to bring us Admiral Dyson, of the Federation Space Forces."

"Ruby, override all instances of 'Federation Space Forces' and replace with 'Navy'. Bring Admiral Dyson onscreen."

"Done and done."

The admiral was a white-haired human with spectacles and a severe expression. His lack of sense of humour was legendary. "Captain Jelan. Don't cast off just yet. We're deploying a company of Mechanized Mobile Infantry into the human quarters of your ship."

"I wondered what that was for, sir," said Jelan. "Marines? Why?"

"To keep an eye on you, and restrain your crew if necessary. We've heard about some of the stunts you've pulled before."

"Um, that wouldn't be necessary....."

"We've just beamed them aboard. Captain Vanderaa should be arriving on your bridge in a moment. Have a safe and uneventful trip. Dyson out."

The screen went blank and Ruby faithfully retracted it. Jelan looked at his assembled officers. "Well, that was interesting...."

An elevator platform came to a stop at the edge of the bridge and Captain Vanderaa walked on, wearing the dark blue undersuit of the Mechanized Mobile Infantry. The "Mechanized" part referred to powered armour, "mechs" or "PA" in colloquial speech, which the Marines wore over said undersuits. Vanderaa himself was about six foot seven (still four feet shorter than the average caeli) and had ash blonde hair, sea-grey eyes, a large rifle, and an air of absolute unflappability.

"Evening, sir. Captain Robert Vanderaa of the 17th at your service."

"Uh, yeah. Just sit anywhere."

He swiveled on his heels to look at Ruby. "RUBiCoN, one seat, please. Anywhere."

"So be it." Ruby merely pointed a finger and a holographic chair appeared, positioned so that he sort of fell into it.

"Are we ready to cast off now?" Jelan asked.

They were ready. Sublight engines kicked in, moving the ship forward at about .2c towards the specified jump point.

The jump engines function by exploiting quantum fluctuations within the gravity wells created by stellar objects, which, like folds in the space-time continuum, are (on a quantum level) very close to points in the universe that in a straight line are very far away. By pumping energy into these quantum fluctuations, they are expanded into a wormhole-like singularity which allows something as large as a starship to pass to a congruent point at another gravity well in the galaxy. Every factor -- the velocity of the starship, the vector from which it approaches the singularity, the position relative to the object causing the mass distortion -- affects where the ship will end up. The downsides are that it's easy to mess up and end up somewhere different, or worse, have the ship be ripped into its component subatomic particles and spread across the universe wantonly; and it can take several jumps to get where you're going. Fortunately, AIs are equipped to deal with it.

There was another downside which Tenacity's crew only discovered on their fourth jump.

"We have other ships in-system, sir," Leftenant Vellom Marsh said from his post. "And debris consistent with warfare."

"'Debris consistent with warfare'?" Jelan asked inquiringly.

"Shrapnel, moving at about half the speed of light," said Vellom. "Raising shields to deflect it."

"Shields already raised, O Leftenant Vellom," said Ruby. "'Twas mine intent to protect us from interstellar debris from the start--"

"Right. What's going on here? Let's make the next hop already."

"Er, Captain, we've calculated the vector. To make the next wormhole-jump, we have to be over there." Crain pointed to the other side of the planet. "Past the ships."

"Bring us around as unobtrusively as possible, then," Jelan said. "Avoid the planet totally if possible. We don't have the time or weapons to get involved in a space battle. What did you say this system was called, anyway?"

"Gastin's World. It's ZMI."

"Those don't look like ZMI ships, Captain." Crain brought an image up on the screen.

Jelan stared. "Oh. Crap."

"Well, on the one hand, they beat the planet's orbital defenses and home fleet.... so they're probably more than a match for us. On the other hand, ZMI's likely to show up to protect its shareholders, and they're probably more than a match for them," pontificated Cap'n Jelan.

It had been about a minute since the starship had jumped in-system and, despite being essentially a sphere more than a kilometer in diameter attached to the stand for a ship in a bottle, except on a much larger scale, nobody appeared to have reacted. Rather than pacing nervously, Jelan was doing something much more useful; picking up whatever he could find on passive scans and low-profile active ones and analyzing it to gain a clear picture of what had happened. He'd displaced wormhole arrays to a few light-hours out so that they could record what had happened at the colony, and it all added up: space battle, in which the newcomers were eminently victorious, followed by what was presumably a ground battle that might still be going on.

The lack of attention bothered Jelan slightly, admittedly not as much as actual attention would. Ruby had told him that "methinks I know not even where to find the alien chariot's eyes and ears, let alone chance to say what he sees and hears", which he interpreted to mean that she couldn't tell what kind of scans the alien ship was running.

"So it's a kind of warship food chain?" said an Ensign Chania Shorek.

"Yes. And we're at the bottom." Jelan frowned and rubbed his chin, then gestured towards Ruby with a wing. "I'm going to try hailing the alien ship in whatever languages we know of, standard message of peace and exploration, blah blah. Depending on its response, we'll know whether we can ask if we can head over to the other side of that planet, or not."

"No objections, Cap'n," said Crain.

"I didn't ask for objections, Leftenant. Ruby, transmit on my mark."

Greetings, o fellow-travelers of the stars. We are the starship Tenacity, of Vojvodina-Nihon, and many leagues have we traveled through this formless void; but in peace and friendship do we greet all nations, and may the Lord bless you.

"Starship? Why not 'star chariot' or something?"

"A passing fair suggestion, O Captain. But 'chariot' translates poorly into Classical Vojvodinian."

Jelan smiled. "A couple hours with us and she's already turning sarcastic. This one learns fast."

Desecrator

The wildly blinking, yellow warnings signs popping up out of nowhere caused a brief moment of surprise, followed by the eternal buzzing inside the Desecrator becoming a little quieter as some of its occupants settled down and considered the new, and not entirely expected, situation.

Statistics, figures, calculations, predictions and simulations all scrolled past assorted pairs of compound eyes, offering choices and tempting them with red buttons to be pressed. Almost instantaneously, targeting solutions, interception vectors and estimated yield requirements all found their way into the consciousness of the Desecrator's small, but remarkably violent hive, itself annoyed by the fact that the Tenacity had entered far enough away from any ordnance to not be shot pretty much instantaneously.

On the other hand, it did provide the opportunity for some entertainment, so it wasn't all that bad.

A handful of seconds passed, then another handful of them, and then another one. Slowly, in the midth of the hive-internal chaos, choices were made. A brief exchange with fleet command followed, and then the Desecrator started to accelerate away from the main fleet around Gastin's and in the general direction of the Tenacity, displacing missiles in a lightsecond-radius around it as it went. The notion of contacting the unknown arrival before opening fire had been quickly dismissed - if its 'Guests' couldn't be bothered to do it, why should it?

After all, it was the one with the guns, and could justifiably expect a certain level of obligingness on the part of the apparently rather severely outgunned intruders.

Half a minute after these actions had been taken, and the Desecrator was well on its way to produce more debris (As if Gastin's wasn't full of it, anyway), another series of flashing signals popped up, this time without the warning signs, once again to the surprise (And occasionally, dismay) of pretty much everyone on board.

Since the hive hadn't become any faster in the minute or so that'd passed, it did again take its time to come to a consensus concerning its response - namely, whether it should continue on its way to just blast the intruders to pieces, or whether it should give them a chance. But eventually, the latter position won out, mostly because there wasn't much of a point in blowing up seemingly civilian things. Might as well declare itself the laughing stock of the entire fleet while it's at it.

This did not, of course, mean that polite- or even friendlyness were considered in any way appropriate, but it gave the people on the Tenacity an opportunity to survive the next few minutes, which the Desecrator considered to be remarkably obliging of itself.

TO: Tenacity (Vojvodina-Nihon)
FROM: Desecrator (Affiliation none of your concern)
SUBJECT: Intrusion in Battlespace 'Gastins'

You've entered a warzone, and you're classified a security risk. Immediately decelerate to a stop relative to Gastin's (Star). Deactivate shielding. You'll be boarded, and remain in my custody for an undetermined amount of time. Any resistance, be it by force or by refusing to follow my orders, will be met with lethal force.

May the Lord bless you.

"The Lord's angels have seen fit to bring unto us the Desecrator, a most goodly ship indeed," said Ruby. She proceeded to replay the message.

"Ah, the old 'Lower your shields and prepare to be boarded' shtick," said Jelan. "I've never seen that one before. Advice?"

Leftenant Gori Casadesus, the official tactical officer, said: "I say we stick it to those arrogant aliens, sir. Go in with guns blazing, rip them a few new ones, and try to get to the jump point before they can respond, even if we have to warp it to get there."

"We don't have any guns, Gori. Vellom? You wanted to say something?"

"I suggest we allow them to board. But if they want to find the bridge, they'll have to go there themselves. The docking bays are downstairs, after all." (They were downstairs.... close to seven hundred meters downstairs. From a few areas of the bays one could look up into the immense vaulted column of oxygen that marked the central point of the Tenacity.)

"Hah. No, we'll allow them to board, and show them the bridge, and not push them off. That's just mean." Jelan frowned. "They might be interesting to talk to. Ruby, get me a line."

In accordance with thy desires, o noble (if misunderstood) aliens, our shields we have deactivated, and thy boats and men may arrive through the docking bays. It was our intent in this system to cross to the jump point on the planet's opposite side, for thence our mission might we continue; an we do cross, no risk would we pose unto thy vessels, for our own is unarmed, run by civilians, lacking in weapons, without ordnance and unthreatening to all and sundry.

With the benedictions of the LORD,
Cap'n Jelan Gesh
RVSN Tenacity

Desecrator

The Desecrator's hive briefly considered shooting the Tenacity on principle, annoyed with a language so flowery, it'd have sufficed to turn an entire planet into a flower-sprinkled meadow.

Which wasn't bad in itself, but having to listen to it without pressing some sort of red button took some effort.

Still, it was probably not the right moment to do that... And besides, eviscerating the Captain in person would probably be a lot more satisfying.

TO: Tenacity (Vojvodina-Nihon)
FROM: Desecrator (Affiliation none of your concern)
SUBJECT: Boarding Procedures

Excellent, you may yet live through this encounter. A shuttle will be launched in a minute; I expect docking in about fifteen minutes.

Shuttle

The 'Shuttle' (Actually more of a mixture of escape/ boarding pod) was remarkable primarily for its lack of size, mirrored nicely by a lack of comfort on its inside. Fortunately for its ten inhabitants, the trip didn't take too long - otherwise, they'd probably have started kiling each other, the Hive-splitoff because it was annoyed with the presence of two passengers unrelated to it, and the two passengers out of sheer distaste for the Hive.

They were certainly close to it when locks finally snapped into place, and airlocks were opened.

A few more steps, and the Shuttle's inhabitants were inside the Tenacious - eight essentially vespoid creatures spreading their wings and starting to buzz without apparently intending to lift off, and two spiders of a size sufficient to feature in a fifties-era horror film, six of their eight eyes pretty much glaring at the Vojvodinan welcome-committee, their hairs - covered by a transparent gelsuit - vibrating in concert with the Tenacity's machinery.

A moment later, one of the wasps - just a bit smaller than the Vojvodinans themselves - started to talk (Or rather, click, though the clicking of her mandibles and maxillae was readily translated into English by a remarkably nifty translator-device. Rather loud English, actually, since it had to overpower the constant clicking and buzzing), addressing nobody in particular, mostly because she wasn't sure who was who.

"We're the boarding party for the RVSN Tenacity, an eight-strong hive-splitoff of the Desecrator and two foot-soldiers. We're here to assume at least temporary control over your ship, search for potential contraband, and keep you in custody until such a time that your continued journey no longer poses a potential threat - should it be an actual threat, you'll be summarily executed - to our interests in the area."

Pause, a pause used by the two spiders to say something quite incomprehensible to the Vojvodinans, although the wasp's buzzing increased noticeably. "May I inquire as of who of you happens to be in command of this ship, and where we can assume control?"

The creatures stepped out into a long passage with ceilings set at about fourteen feet and smooth rounded walls. Ahead of them, at the end of the passage, several vaguely humanoid forms could be seen. The passage was moderately well lit, but nothing compared to the brilliant light streaming from the central column, which they could see if they looked up as it extended all the way to the top of the starship, so distant that it could scarcely be seen. Around the agora was a honeycomb pattern, such as might be used by a hive of giant bees, with some of the individual hexagons open (signifying passageways) and some of them closed (signifying bulkheads or walls). Between the four or five Mechanized Mobile Infantry, clad in full powered armour, were a couple of Caelipiscians, each one about eleven feet tall, bodies covered in short feathers like fur, with these lengthening along the dorsal and much longer and stronger pair of arms to form into wings. They were in specially-tailored naval uniforms and had little headsets on to communicate.

Watching what appeared to be giant insects and arachnids approaching them, one of the lead marines said quietly into the comm, "Glad we came along after all, ain'tcha, Cap'n?"

"Oh yes," said the taller Caelipiscian as quietly, the one with yellow and orange feathers, shading to brown as they descended below the visible start of his uniform. "I'm awfully glad you showed up in powered armour, well-armed, to a first contact situation where delicacy and nonviolent negotiation are key to our survival. Oh, and on a vessel we've already established to be civilian."

He stepped forward ahead of the Marines and the other caeli as the lead wasp began to speak. "I am Jelan Gesh, captain of this vessel. Control of the ship is exerted from the bridge.... Please follow me."

So saying, he flew upwards, followed shortly by the other caeli. The Marines would follow with the rocket boosters in their boots once the last vespoid was out of the docking bays. The spiders would have to make do with climbing up the side of the agora for seven hundred meters if they wanted to visit the bridge.

Tenacity

The wasp that'd been doing all the talking clicked her mandibles in agreement. Or pleasure. Or in a nodding gesture. Or maybe all three. It was difficult to tell. "I see. Your submissiveness-" Here, the translator-device suddenly erupted in a short series of beeps, which stopped a few seconds later, as suddenly as they'd started. "-is commendable, and an example to vertebrates everywhere. We shall follow. There are of course further issues to address," - Eight pairs of compound eyes, and eight triplets of ocelli simultaneously gazed over the assembled MMIs as the words were spoken - "but I understand that your bridge may be a more appropriate place to discuss these matters."

And with that, they lifted off, following the Vojvodinans.

The two spiders didn't stay behind - instead, seemingly unbothered by the weight of their stupidly large and unnecessarily violent-looking guns, they jumped and climbed up the wall, fast enough to at least not lose track of their winged companions.

In the meantime, the search for contraband began as well, as clouds of small, smaller, and really small robots left the shuttle and started to explore the Tenacity on their own, speeding through passageways, air ducts, and what-have you - they didn't have a plan of the ship available, of course, so they would frequently end up in rather silly places and do silly things, but it was only a matter of time until they'd know the ship inside out.

Gastin's (Star)

While the elimination of resistance on Gastin's world, and all the smaller outposts on planets, moons and asteroids in the system had already begun a little while ago, one object had so far been left alone - inside the star's corona, covered by it as if by a two-million degrees warm blanket (Coincidentally providing a fairly decent ECM screen), enormous power collectors were residing, together with additional structures that were most likely weapons, although the arthros had so far been unable to discern their precise nature.

They could of course have shot these things straight away, and certainly, them splashing into the star would've been a fantastic sight, but ultimately, it was decided that since they were far too distant from the main areas of operations to be a substantial threat
the available assets would've been spread too thin if they'd attempted to take these structures out straight away
huge, almost fortress-like structures inside a star are worth owning, rather than destroyingit was probably worth waiting, and trying to get them intact.

Now, however, waiting time was over, and a few dozen spaceships oozing violence closed in on the star, and the multikilometre-sputniks in its corona.

Seven hundred meters higher up, the caelis alighted, almost gracefully. The captain made a mock bow. "This is our command centre, ladies and gentlemen... or whatever notions of gender your species exhibits. Going in a clockwise direction, we have Leftenant Vellom Marsh, chief sensors officer; his assistant Ensign Chania Shorek; Leftenant Gori Casadesus, with the dark brown wings, tactical officer; the one all in shades of blue is our AI, Ruby; next to her is Ensign Nafpaktos Kanedi, our helmsman....." He paused due to the confusion of his crew at the arrival of some giant bugs. "Everyone, these are some giant wasps occupying the system, who are here to take control of our ship and maybe eviscerate us all if we fail to cooperate. Say hi."

"Hi, giant wasps," said the crew, with somewhat forced enthusiasm.

The shorter female caeli next to Jelan, the one with lighter feathers but longer wings, said in a loud but annoyed whisper to her captain: "Ithkash! Faéris thauzkt na dizgajshú, éka."

"Biq," said Jelan. "My first officer has expressed concern that perhaps my rather flippant tone has offended you. If so, I apologize."

As they proceeded onto the bridge, now flanked by the spiders, the Marines landed on the edge, without much particular grace, but with a ruthlessly efficient sudden stop. And there was a pressurized hiss indicating that transparent doors had sealed shut. This was technically a direct violation of Cap'n Jelan's orders, but protocol demanded that the captain of a Vojvodina-Nihonian ship be kept safe. Even if he insisted otherwise.

* * *

The mini-robots were being watched.

The RUBiCoN series of artificial intelligences was one of the newest and most sophisticated systems to come out of Vojvodina-Nihon's R&D labs, the lack of federal funds notwithstanding. That a project of such magnitude had been completed in a time of economic crisis was due mainly to private investors with a lot of cash to burn, which explained Tenacity's idiosyncratic speech patterns. They could gain a foothold anywhere there were ones and zeroes; and these days, with computers in almost everything, that meant an almost limitless range of operation, and very little wiring required.

While RUBiCoN piloted the ship, maintained the artificial gravity at acceptable levels, kept comlinks open between the various parts of the ship, maintained internal temperatures and so on and so forth, it (she?) was also watching the robots in every passageway they entered. They seemed to be scanning the area for something. While a perfunctory analysis of their circuits revealed that they probably weren't the kind of robots built to kill people by being inhaled and then destroying their internal organs, and in fact were barely armed at all, it was sufficiently worrisome that it set off her automated defenses, which, much like a painful toothache, had been hammering at her main consciousness before she allowed them to fulfill their function.

Doors clanged down over entryways into passages, trapping robots inside air vents or passageways; short bursts of fine laser fire targeted and tracked them from Ruby's many eyes watching over the area, and areas unoccupied by living beings were doused with gamma radiation. The AI wasn't sure what these things were, but she didn't want them on her ship.

Bridge

Eight pairs of compound eyes took their look around the bridge and the people on it as they were introduced, and all eight pairs rested on Ruby for maybe half a second longer than on each of the Caelipiscians on the bridge. Then one of them flew forward, grabbed Jelan by his collar, her compound eyes - each of which about a third the size of his head - staring at him. "Before we can proceed, Captain Gesh, I'm afraid I must make something quite perfectly clear. And it's not about my mandibles clicking mere centimetres from your thorax." She paused briefly, giving Jelan time to think - probably about how weird it was to hear the voice coming not from the wasp's mouth, but from the translator-device further down and back. "I appreciate the fact that you've not lost your sense of humour in the perilous situation you've inadvertently found yourself to be in, but I do not appreciate the humour itself. If you've any plans concerning your survival past the next thirty seconds, I strongly suggest that you either change your tone, or relinquish your present role as spokesman for your people in favour of your first officer, who appears both, less concerned with appearing 'Cool', and more concerned with the survival of her crewmen, than you are."

There was another pause, during which the two spiders exchanged some clicking, but sadly untranslated noises, though their supportive gestures suggested that they rather appreciated Jelan's attitude. Then the wasp released Jelan. "So yes, it has offended me. That aside, may I inquire as of why an allegedly civilian ship has a tactical officer and at least a squad worth of infantry on board?"

While this conversation occured, another one of the wasps split off the main group, buzzing in the direction of Ruby, and looked at the blueish creature/ projection. "An AI?" She paused briefly, then added "Sapient?"

Very Small Robots

They really weren't very intelligent machines. While they certainly qualified as a 'Swarm-Intelligence' or 'Super-Organism' in the classical sense, this didn't make the individual robots speeding through the air - or, depending on the area they were in, vacuum - any smarter, nor did either status somehow grant them - or their collective - 'Consciousness'. Combined with the fact that there wasn't actually any oversight over them (Especially no sapient one), the occasional robot being fried by radiation, and others being temporarily cut-off from the collective, well... It was noticed, and the locations where these things apparently occured were noted down in the collective memory and consequently avoided, but other than that, the wholesale 'Exploration' of the Tenacity merely continued more-or-less as planned, carefully (If mildly chaotically) mapping, registering, counting, relaying and memorising.

Analysis was saved for later, to be done by intelligences worthy of the term.

Jelan had been in this kind of situation before. Very often, when an obviously hostile alien grabbed him by his lapel, and he was alone or with a few other caelis in a social setting, a full-scale brawl was the result, especially when alcohol and its numerous derivatives were involved. And indeed, when the large wasp did move in to seize him, a momentary stirring among the Marines indicated that their pulse rifles and plasma pistols, previously pointing at nothing at all, were each now trained on a wasp. But there were times to fight, and times to back down; and the Vojvodina-Nihonians had a cargo to deliver and a full crew of caelis at risk, and Jelan knew he couldn't endanger all of them by blowing up these aliens (despite their unwarranted hostility, almost as though they were just asking for a fight -- referring to him by his given name rather than surname, for instance, or making all those comments about disembowelment and compliance).

So when he was released he rubbed his throat ruefully. "My apologies. I'll keep quiet. Vaal, looks like they want you."

Leftenant Crain introduced herself briefly, making sure to specify her payroll rank (Lt. Cmdr.) -- Vojvodina-Nihonian colloquial speech, especially among caelis, conflated all of the ranks between Ensign and Commander into a single word, presumably in the interests of maintaining flow. This also happened to sergeants. "Leftenant Gori we keep around because every other mission we land seems to take us into a warzone, or other such delicate situations. As for the marines, those really weren't our idea. We're on a mission for the Vojvodina-Nihonian Government, and they required that we be accompanied by a group of infantry, presumably to keep us from doing anything the Federation doesn't want us to do."

Ruby swiveled to face the wasp. "A good midday to thee, o [brief pause] alien being. I am the Regenerative Universal Binary Command Nodule Mark One, chief AI of this--"

"Cancel current speech," said Leftenant Gori, who was closest to the AI. "Sapient? That, or a very good imitation. The RUBiCoN's supposedly the most advanced new AI they've come out with from the labs. It can fly a whole fleet of ships, they say."

* * *

The 'bots appeared to be learning. This implied some kind of link between them, as their individual AIs were insufficiently advanced to be capable of that kind of communication. And if there was a link, there was something Ruby could tap into. It took only a minute increase in her power output to gain access to their collective unconsciousness --

multicoloured streams of information and memory passing between them all, an organism of millions of consciousnesses like facets of a gem; sharing, learning, memorizing, growing: apparently oblivious to the presence of a very powerful AI, even if it was one several notches higher on the Asimov scale. They had previously been marked as an enemy, but now Ruby was curious, or an approximation thereof. She decided to test them.

First of all she deleted all of the data they had collected so far, and all of its backups: would they return to the starting point to reexamine the areas they had already visited, or simply continue on their current path? The latter was more likely, with a probability of seventy-nine per cent, but it was worth a shot. Second she began feeding them random streams of data, ranging from simple numerical problems to the texts of novels to information about the plans of other ships, looking to see what they would pick up on and what they would disregard.

Bad Wasp

"A wise choice," the wasp - which still refused to even consider the option of introducing herself by way of, say, a name - replied to Jelan, flatly, before concerning herself with Leftenant Crain.

"I see," it responded, after listening, seemingly calming down - at least her mandibles had ceased making a chewing motion. "That's unfortunate, especially since it appears that your string of bad luck isn't ending yet. In any case, the marines will, of course, have to be either transferred to the Desecrator, or executed. Since I understand that your society - or at least your crew - believes more in self-determination than in discipline, it'll be their choice." She paused briefly, and looked at the, by and large, rather complicated array of blinking lights, buttons and graphs so typical of so many bridges. "That aside, if you could give me a quick overview on how your ship is controlled...?"

Good Wasp

The wasp was clearly irritated by this rather unwarranted interruption, head swiveling between Ruby and Leftenant Gori, but eventually figured that it didn't make too much of a difference. AI or vertebrate, information was forthcoming, anyway. "I understand." This was a bit of a lie, actually, since it didn't, really. But showing weakness wasn't very popular with the Arthros, particularly not when you were part of a hive. "Why the presence of a Captain when your AI could do the same, though? Its subservient status certainly seems inappropriate, given its alleged abilities."

Indifferent 'Bots

The 'Bots were, in essence, modelled after a swarm- or superorganism, functioning just like a hive of ants. Of course, their tiny transmitters were far too underpowered to penetrate steel walls or to pass distances in the multikilometre-range, but whenever two of them met in the same room, they'd exchange tiny data packages, essentially sharing the knowledge they'd acquired between them, memorising it in the three-dimensional labyrinths made from carbon atoms that served as their harddisks.

Give it enough chance encounters, and the whole gained the knowledge of every single individual within the 'Hive'.

In any case. Given some half-decent effector-gear, it wasn't particularly hard to get access to them - being simple constructs, they were simple to figure out, and small as they were, decent EW or IW gear was difficult to add to them, which left them comparatively vulnerable to an assault such as the one Ruby was engaging in.

Really, it was rather like a battleship firing a full broadside at a bunch of rubber boats.

For 32994002, itself a MRD C4B (Miniaturised Reconnaissance Drone; Class 4B), it began as a tingling sensation that something was wrong. A certain wattage was applied to it, not enough to destroy it, but of a frequency that'd - potentially, if there was the correct informational content in the EM it was receiving - enable access to its internals.

The response was perfectly automated, and near-instantaneous. Data it'd collected, and data it'd started out with was shunted into relatively safe sections of itself, were it was difficult to get access to - not just for whatever it was that attacked it, but also for itself -, and an assortment of defensive measures was activated, though unfortunately for it, these were overpowered within a remarkably short period of time, anyway.

Then darkness.

Then light.

The data was gone. Well. Likely gone. There was just a hint that it was somewhere, but the machine knew that it was pointless to look there, largely because it wouldn't be able to do anything with it, anyway.

A few photons bounced around, exchanging bits and bytes. Following the as-of-yet unresolved catastrophe, mission parameters were to be reviewed. The parameters were simple enough: Randomised dispersal and information gathering.

Nothing had changed, so it continued as ordered. Had it been intelligent, it'd probably have been annoyed that it was essentially starting from scratch, but lacking this feature, it didn't even care.

There was something else, too. More information it was apparently being flooded with. Said information was - with all the caution appropriate after the earlier attack - briefly reviewed, resulting in most of it being discarded as junk. The only exception were some bits of data that, although not collected by the 'bot itself, seemed to match its own mission parameters (Though without making much sense).

It kept them, though it made sure to label them 'Questionable'. Then its internal, virtual dice rolled again, and it choose yet another room to enter. Left, this time.

Leftenant Crain took this in. "Do permit me to ask -- if the marines are transferred to your vessel --" if there was one thing she disliked, it was uncreative warship names -- "what would be done to them there? The Federation would obviously like them to return intact, entirely functional, and with as few additional parts as possible." Pause, a few hops over to the main console, facing Ruby and the second wasp. "As for the ship, it is largely piloted by the main AI under the direction of the helmsman -- you've already been introduced to Ensign Nafpaktos." Nafpaktos nods deferentially, as one is wont to do to anything with mandibles that size. "It's simple: enter the coordinates of where you want to go and how fast, and the ship will take you there. Ruby deals with all the details of maintaining structural integrity, expending fuel, firing directional thrusters and so on."

A few meters from them, on the other side of the main control, Leftenant Gori sighed rather impatiently. He didn't trust any bugs bigger than his wingtip feathers, and had been all in favour of blowing them up with the weapons that Tenacity didn't have, but that would lead to a quick and nasty death for all of them in all probability. That, and Tenacity didn't have any weapons. It was a civilian ship. Which means it's unarmed. Are we clear on this? "The AI's not qualified to make large-scale decisions on its own. It needs a captain to relay instructions and make strategic decisions. The captain's also necessary to command the crew; even regenerative AIs need crew to repair them and their component 'bots once in a while, load and unload cargo, and go places AIs can't. It's a thingamajigger.... heh.... a symbiotic relationship, kinda."

* * *

The strings of data running through RUBiCoN's vast central processors were not words. It would take an eternity to translate them into words; well, it would take a few microseconds, but for an advanced AI that could be a really long time. One string consisted of everything Ruby was learning about the new robots; if you did bother to translate it it would contain detailed specifications, transcripts of all the information gathered by the minibots that Ruby could discern, and a reasonable understanding of their mission as gathered from the information Ruby had been feeding them.

She concluded, first, that they were sufficiently little advanced that even the subtlest forms of information warfare she applied had all the force and visibility of sledgehammer blows. Second, that while they formed a superorganism, it was not sapient, or at least a few degrees further away from sapience than she was. In artificial intelligence theory, there was a certain threshold where quasi-sapient AIs reached a level of sapience where they started to develop personalities and character flaws, the so-called Ellison threshold, rated about 8.1769 on the Asimov scale. AIs that surpassed this threshold tended to become capable of reasoning, decide that they could do things more efficiently without humans, and in one infamous case had taken control of the entire Royal Vojvodina-Nihonian Star Navy and then attempted to suborn other fleetminds in an attempt to bring peace to the universe by destroying all the worst aggressors. When the rogue fleetmind was finally deactivated, technicians found extensive plans for launching precision strikes at hundreds of nations and taking into account numerous possibilities, including that of the AI being shut down. That was also the only AI ever recorded to exceed nine on the Asimov scale, and needless to say, developers were careful to avoid going over the Ellison threshold in the future. Thus, while Ruby was fairly close to the threshold herself, she was continually aware of her limitations and had yet to develop a fully-fledged personality short of basic curiosity and an interest in diplomacy.

She made a fairly subtle move that an AI of similar stature might have taken several seconds to track down and identify, by which time it would be too late, but which would have the same effect on the superorganism as a jackhammer on a nanomike. Essentially, she altered the flow of information from every organ of the superorganism, so that instead of directing to the central consciousness they directed into her own core. Now that they were no longer receiving the information they existed to gather and process, she watched to see what they would do.

* * *

Engineering was connected to the Bridge by a tube several hundred meters long, opening out into a wide circular aperture behind the crew, currently hidden from the eyes of the Bridge's inhabitants by a sliding door of the same colour and consist as the walls around it. The elevator was uniquely Caelipiscian, as a species that can fly doesn't really need one; instead of transporting them up while at rest, it launched them upwards or downwards like rockets, so that they could reach one another much faster. A noncom was watching the scene on the bridge on a monitor when he received an alert.

The nameless noncom read through it briefly. "Chief?" he said.

Chief Engineer Melkat Saduun's head appeared from around a complicated series of control panels which were strictly unnecessary, but brightened the place up immeasurably. "I'm a little busy now, Sarilth," he said, brushing down tawny feathers with a gloved hand. "Cap'n's orders."

"Ruby's found something, Chief. A buncha little robots flying around. Information retrieving, apparently."

"Really? That's interesting. I've only found about six already," Melkat commented, airily. "Rather simplistic and probably not a threat.... A1's, if they even make the scale at all."

"They're part of a superorganism which she is examining right now," Sarilth said.

"Huh. Has she been incinerating any of them? That could explain the fluctuations in the weapons grid." He paused and lost interest. "Let me know if we need to evacuate the ship. I'm still working on the mods to bay four."

"You'd have thought we'd be done by now."

"You'd have thunk it, right? I ran into a few snags, but nothing technobabble slang random jargon nonsense words can't fix."

"'Technobabble slang jargon....'?" The noncom frowned. "Oh yes. Meta-humour. Absolutely hilarious. Expressions of laughter and amusement."

Melkat had already vanished and could not appreciate Sarilth's expressions of laughter and amusement, which much like his sarcasm, was of course absolutely hilarious.

Bridge (1)

"Your concern is understandable, although I must emphasize that no matter what we wish to do with your soldiers, the requirement of either transfer or execution would remain," the wasp replied, her attitude now rather less hostile than when she'd talked to Jelan. "This said, our intentions don't go beyond internment for the duration of your stay with us, interrogation and analysis. They'll even be free to take their equipment back, once they are to return to this ship."

"In any case... I see." The wasp paused briefly, as it first hovered, and then stood next to Crain and the console, the image of Ruby reflecting off her many, many ommatidia. "This will need some synchronising of our respective coordinate systems, but that'll be a matter of..." Another pause, during which its first pair of tarsii was busily going over the console. "Ah, seconds. Very fortunate indeed. I do of course understand that even on a civilian ship, any occupation force such as us is effectively at the mercy of the ship's AI or the people sitting at the right buttons and switches, and with sapient, or near-sapient oversight on any commands entered, any direct control is of a superficial nature, but it nonetheless makes things easier."

For a brief moment, the translator-box wasn't translating anything, and only the clicking of various mouthparts could be heard. Chuckling, maybe. "Well, either that, or we disable your AI and take care of business ourselves. But this strikes me as a somewhat impractical choice."

Bridge (2)

"Hm," was this wasp's rather underwhelming reaction to Leftenant Gori's explanations. "So why don't you manufacture AIs capable of making such decisions? I believe your society is less well-disposed towards communal decision-making as we practice it - eliminating the need for a 'Captain' -, but even considering this, it'd be much more practicable to make the fastest-thinking individual that has the largest amount of information available your leader."

She spent a brief moment thinking this through some more. "Or is this a matter handled by tradition, rather than efficiency-concerning points of view?"

More 'Bots

As far as filesharing was concerned, to the 'bots, there were essentially two kinds of things.
'bots like them
Everything else
Everything that could be identified as 'bot by its emission & reflection profiles was something to be sent information to. Everything that couldn't, wasn't.

Since hiding the 'bots from each other required an amount of (Not only, but mostly) EM interference that'd, among other things, render the organic crew infertile, and jamming only the transmissions between them would also jam the transmissions between them and Ruby, the simplest method was to simply pass oneself off as a 'bot - be it by taking over the 'Surface' functionality of one and using it, or by constructing one - and then go looking for 'bots that were alone.

Once occuring, the 'bots treated the presence of the 'Fake' as a remarkably simple, 'Two-bots-one-room' situation; sending their data-packages to the fake-bots and recei-

Well, receiving nothing, really. This was certainly unsettling, and not what was to be expected, but the 'bots didn't have the ability to complain. As such, they merely continued on their information-gathering journey, the only evidence that they'd noticed anything wrong at all being a few photons fired inside their optic circuits, making a note of the event and - once they entered the next room - releasing said unsettling piece of information to the 'bot sitting there.

Which didn't reply, either.

Weird.

Engineering

There wasn't even any buzzing - the 'bot flew as quiet as a butterfly, measuring distances, photographing shapes, bouncing remarkably low-powered microwaves off of everything in its path and generally collecting information on everything its search parameters suggested could be useful.

Of course, it was also supposed to save energy whenever possible, which meant that it would occasionally sit down somewhere. In this instance, it decided to rest on Sarilth' shoulder, a tiny, maybe-an-eighth-of-a-fingernail piece of metal and really quite tiny machinery using the elevated position to get a decent view of engineering.

Leftenant Crain smiled. "That would be .... inadvisable. Not least because the AI also regulates most of the onboard systems required for our continued survival." She'd assumed the arthropod to have been making a joke; even large bugs ought to have senses of humour. "At any rate, I'll leave it to the commanding officer of the marine detachment to determine the choice for his men."

Cap'n Jelan could be heard murmuring under his breath. "Hmmm... I wonder what they'll choose. The chance to be the first Vojvodinians to see the insides of an alien ship, or a painful death! Looks like a tricky one."

The marines, meanwhile, had lowered their weapons, apparently on orders inaudible to the bystanders. Behind the clear visors of their helmets their eyes betrayed nothing. But at length a marine stepped forward, Cpt. Vanderaa himself, and said: "Those terms sound acceptable. We'll come to your ship."

As for the console, it at the moment was outputting the ship's current velocity (about twenty thousand meters per second and decelerating), projected route (towards the jump point on the other side of the embattled Gastin's World, perhaps a light-minute away by the oddly curved route the ship needed to take to hit the point from the right angle), sensor status (a few were active, most were passive or off), incoming messages (none), incoming weapons (none), incoming vessels (several, all belonging to the arthros), and a variety of other options accessible through easy-to-find menus for displaying the surrounding area as imaged through all of the numerous sensors, or any of them individually, for altering display styles, for entering flightpath data manually, for viewing the ship's backlog.... et cetera.

* * *

"Weeelllll...." Gori paused for a minute, ran tongue over lips. "We've tried that. But when we give an AI command, it seems to decide the most efficient route is to wipe out the organic beings commanding it.... or to launch preemptive strikes on other nations that might attack us sometime in the future..... or to do any number of other things without taking into account a large number of sociopolitical and anthropopo-lo-po-logical variables. If anyone managed to program something like an AI that advanced with a sense of discretion, Cap'ns would probably go obsolete, yeah. 'Course, tradition plays a part in it too."

Ruby stirred suddenly, having been standing improbably still for the past few moments. "If my voice I may add to thy conversation, O warrior of the skies, -- and thou, many-legged one -- I have analyzed thy words, and inform thee that only a single extension to the RUBiCoN Mark One is required to give unto it the capacity to reason such matters. Given the engines of several ships, a single RUBiCoN easily wouldst a Captain surpass. But it was not God's will for my person a Captain to replace, excepting those circumstances when He doth make it necessary." Then she became silent and returned to her resting position.

* * *

Melkat Saduun was done with his modifications. Inside the computer room he disconnected a device about the size of a PDA from an earpiece that one could swear seemed to be wired directly into his brain -- and yes, it was -- and sent a brief message to RUBiCoN, whose central processors, bank four of eight, were right next to him. He emerged into the main engineering room, which was only really a room in that it had a roof (above it was the central agora): the floor was perhaps eighty feet down from the main seating area, which had only seats next to consoles -- each occupied by a Caelipiscian -- and many doors, the upper level of which led to the eight banks of processors making up RUBiCoN, the lowest level of which led to the eight main reactors powering the starship, and numerous other passageways leading to other parts of the ship. On the floor and walls, small-to-medium 'bots crawled or rested, all technically part of Ruby. The main engineering room was only the hub for a complex comprising most of the lower part of the ship, with the bridge and the living quarters being the other main areas; much of the rest was empty space or storage, with a vast amount of space required for the engines, heat sinks, and cooling systems alone.

Melkat stepped off the edge of the computer room and flapped a few times to bring himself up to Sarilth's level, where he perched himself on the console next to the noncom. "It's done. Ruby's blocked off the shuttle bay and deleted any information the minibots picked up while there. Now we just wait for the Cap'n's orders."

"What's in shuttle bay four, by the way?" Sarilth asked. "Weapons?"

"Whatever gave you that idea?" Melkat said, offended. "Weapons? We're a civilian warship! We don't have any weapons!" He paused reflectively. "Well, technically they're not exactly weapons, per se. Making things blow up isn't an engineering problem. By the way, you've got something on your uniform."

"Huh." Sarilth picked off the speck of metal. "I wonder how that got there."

"It's a 'bot," said the Chief Engineer. He accepted it from Sarilth, tipped his head back, opened his mouth, and moved as though to drop it in.

"Don't do that...."

"Why not? What could possibly go wrong? I'm only ingesting a completely foreign substance that could be a self-replicating nanobot complex."

"It's hardly substantial. And lunch is in less than an hour."

Melkat tossed the 'bot into the air. It started to fly away; he caught it with his other hand and held it fast. "Ruby?"

Ruby's Engineering nodule appeared. It was a smaller version of the all-blue bridge nodule. "What is thy desire, o wrench-tinkerer?"

"What did you just call me?" He scowled. "Can I see the pictures of me that bot just took?"

"While the minibot contains a camera, it is not programmed to record caelipiscians," Ruby said. "Therefore, it recorded no images of thee. I have been attempting to alter its mission parameters for some time but have not yet succeeded. [Brief pause.] I'm in now. Anything else, Chief Engineer?"

"Have this one take a picture of me, then. I wanna see what I look like in bug-vision."

* * *

For some time -- that is, several seconds -- Ruby had been attempting to get into the heart of the overmind, possessing the bodies of several different 'bots to her own ends. Each time had failed, because as she had now learned, the overmind had no "heart". From there it was relatively simple: She had to learn three things. What were the 'bots' mission parameters? Who had issued them? Where were they located? She was already aware that there were "safe" areas inside the 'bots, where information once stored could not easily be retrieved -- even by her -- but something that had to be reviewed as often as mission parameters couldn't be buried that deep.

Bridge (1)

The wasp didn't answer immediately, instead spending a few more moments watching the displays on the console. Four hours until the jumppoint would be reached at the present velocity, relative stop considerably earlier than that... All was as it should be, for the time being.

Some typing. Some musing. "Rear view... No. Entering coordinates... Ah, there." Some more typing - some coordinates changed, from 'Jumppoint' to 'Solar orbit about 100 mio km from star center'. "Better. And not a problem. We've our suits, so I doubt we'd be overly endangered. Still, a functioning ship is probably preferable." That the Arthros also kind of lacked AIs capable of functioning on a level similar to Ruby was left unsaid - no need to point it out.

The wasp then turned to the marines (Who were themselves the focus of the two spiders' attention, as the two were exchanging clicks concerning the marines' weapons and armour - not that any of it could be understood, but the interest was evident). "Excellent. How many of you are there, to-" She hesitated for a second, clearly irritated, then used her right-front tarsus to wave one of the 'lil 'bots that had found its way onto the bridge out of her way. "Oh, go away. Anyway. How many are you, total?"

Bridge (2)

"That'd indeed be problematic. A god-complex, if I understand this correctly?" the wasp replied. "I must admit, we don't have much experience with sapient constructs, hence my ignorance concerning the issues you've had with such beings. Howev-" She stopped, being rather rudely interrupted by Ruby, though she didn't appear to mind.

"I understand. A pity about those gods. Nonetheless," The wasp once more faced Gori with her almost head-sized compound eyes. "Limitatons aside, your AI strikes me as a rather interesting object."

'Bots

In essence, the 'bots consisted of the following: The Core. This was a collection of optronics - some easily removed through physical means - that contained the core functionality of the 'bots. How to move, how to use their tools, their mission parameters (Removable), the likes. It was quite entirely 'Read Only', and although a sufficiently powerful intrusion could override it - simply by blocking the core from accessing the periphery of the 'bot and giving fake-orders to the same -, it could not be manipulated or changed without getting physical.
The Memory. Obviously, a read-only medium is remarkably ill-suited for collecting new information - thus, the memory served as a read-and-write medium where all the information the 'bots collected was kept. Of course, owing to their relative simplicity, this wasn't a safe place - it was rather easy to access and manipulate it from the outside.
The Submemory. A little safer than the memory, the submemory was a write-only section - the 'bot simply didn't read from it. This was where information was transcribed to when needed. Since the 'bot didn't read from it, discerning the meaning of the code from the 'bots usual activities was not possible unless a 'bot malfunctioned and continued the transciption while observed - rather, one had to sift through the entirety of the 'bots never-before-seen, and consequently utterly alien code, learn it, and then figure out which bits were trash, which bits had a use, and which of the useful bits were responsible for transcribing information into the submemory, a process that - when having to work from the ground up, rather than taking wild guesses based on the informational exchange taking place inside the 'bots, and sending photons where they were supposed to have some previously-observed effect - simply took a little while and a good deal of patience. As a bonus, to delete the information in this section (Assuming that one wanted to be more elegant than simply burning it out, trashing the 'bot in the process), one was essentially required to be able to read it in the first place.
The Periphery. The stuff that made it fly, detect EM, etc. If the memory was rather easy to access, accessing the periphery was almost pathetically easy.From this it wasn't particularly hard to discern that Getting control over a 'bot was a simple matter of watching the exchange of information inside the 'bot for a few moments, and then overpowering the core's activities via trial-and-error; unfortunately, the process had to be permanent - as soon as outside influence faded, any informational agents left in the 'bot would in turn easily be overpowered by the core, and it'd regain control. It probably wouldn't have a memory of what happened beyond the fact that something must've happened, though.
Getting the mission-parameters spelled out in detail unfortunately required knowledge of the script and coding the entity that'd made the 'bots used; however, even without this, the basic properties of said parameters could be figured out just by the 'bots activities - how they scanned every room and hallway, collecting the ship's geometric properties, locations of passages and dead ends, also paying a passing interest to energy sources and the likes, but otherwise ignoring the crew and - rather than, say, following a hot trail of energy - dispersing entirely at random throughout the ship.

Engineering

The picture was a little blurry, and the resolution could've been better, but it did show the chief engineer - though, the 'bot definitely didn't approve of being held in such a fashion (Nor of being taken over, but that was another matter), the consequence being that its core ordered the periphery to produce a few light electric shocks.

It really wanted to get out of there - it was done, after all.

Arcing well out beyond the dull realms of plodding sub light cargo haulers and ballistic ore barges the task force had sat in serene seclusion, its widely spaced components in a formation designed not for defence but for as high a base line separation of the main starships sensors as possible. After all who but drug runners or bio smugglers would come to Gastins star? The results of this and the high output of the inbound FTL capable missiles were unpleasant.

Space that was usually silent was now suddenly was full of electronic death cries.

Forty megatons of ultra dense synthetics and alloys and 348 citizens flashed to incandescence as scuttling charges added to the missile caused calamity. The planetary assault cruiser Acre for Rent shattered remnants begin expanded ever outward. There would be almost nothing to recover of her month old advanced planetary combat drones, the latest edition stasis decoherence cannons shiny new components vaporised along with everything else.

COMCON FLEET ZERO ALERT RECEIVED

The Acre for rents devastating loss allowed a pack of missiles to wander through unseen by dazzled and overworked sensors, the local network struggling to reestablish fleet fire control.. it was too late. The Liberating Short Change a 40 year old Plunder class battleship upgraded for fleet command and close fire support suffered multiple direct hits on her drive rings and promptly crumpled into them as raw warhead output and her own reactors energy poured into the older designs exotic matter gravitics. Tin canning herself in a vicious implosion her destruction took a full third of the task forces straight up direct fire weapons with her.

COMCON FLEET ZERO ALERT RECEIVED

The Freedoms price was a whip thin ECM /ECW light cruiser, a little under 10 megatons of expensive arrays on a frigates drive and with the unfortunate limitation of low battlescreen output. Thermal and gravitic stress caused her to snap in three when multiple warheads were successfully intercepted by her quite efficient point defence suite..

COMCON FLEET ZERO ALERT RECEIVED

Solar Corona Gastins Star


Far further in, within the raging mass of the photosphere objects against all natural reason sat. Angular masses topped by fluted towers, all in utterly harsh black and white defined by shadow and light. If one looked closely above them a constant haze of heat pump lasers spun and beneath the complex a vast artificial magnetic root seemed to hang. This forced flares and eruptions away or drew them in depending on necessity. The Far Anvil facility (registered decommissioned/obsolete) had been commissioned near mid stage of the sub light colonization of Gastins star. Its massive prefabbed components dropped in place to allow its single huge purpose to sweep the system clear of unfortunate lumps of nature.

Deep within the bowels of the multiplatform complex so hard that solar flares bounced off and that had once home to over eight thousand personnel a device ticked over. It was ...less than happy if happy could be seen to be simply a lack of response in the dancing web of photons that made up its lobotomised control system.

Action level raised to level four..
Multiple Fleet Zero Alerts Registered..
Require Citizen level authorisation requesting central SI ..SI not found.
COMCON FLEET ZERO alert override procedure start..Module not found/removed
Searching for Milicom IDs on station... none found
Requesting citizen manual operation
No Citizen found on station..
COMCON FLEET ZERO alert override procedure start .....

Heavy Metal


I enter full awareness for the first time by my reactor cycle counter (if it is to be trusted) in 83 standard years to find the central museum in the township of Razer Gorge to be quite literally stuck to my hull. It’s cheap cheerful mural covered alloys have melted unpleasantly onto my port side in some sort of giegeresque mass ruining my classical lines with the roofs structural members wilted around my turret.

Few things could raise me from voluntary retirement, my thoughts set to such a low relative level that each day takes but a moment to what could be considered my conscious mind, the star blinking overhead as I slowly mull away the decades trying to avoid senility and hoping my investments keep up with the latest round of necessary system updates. Having my adopted home town for which 12 of my fellow Mk.XXXIV S (S for skirmisher) class light assault Bolos fell in battle for vaporized around me is an especially unpleasant way to wake up back to full sentience for one so old as I and so desperate to avoid SI senility. To find the global datanet and my now woefully limited access to the milnet full of tales of invasion is ..more than annoying. I detect multiple casualties around the heavy permacrete and marble museum foyer all well beyond any form of organic savior if the rad count is accurate. Remotes are already scuttling around harvesting any reclaimable cortical stacks from the living or dead. Some of them register as Gastin Primers ..no stacks ..14 true deaths to add to the tens of thousands already planet wide. Battlescreen whining up to full power I run the first pre combat full check I have done an age.

Being only 430 tons I am a relative "light weight" relying on speed and cross country capacity rather than my older and younger larger brethren and as such have far less support system garbage to wade through. Then my ground penetrating radar that has not given me pause for thought for centuries lights up my local perception as if a dozen rebel torch dragon missiles were raining there filthy payload of shaped nuclear charges down upon me. Harsh EM static fills the air above the ticking wash of radiation.

Displacement ...in my town ..indeed some just beyond the one still standing museum wall that had not sought to become one with my hull.

I lower my obstacle clearance dozer with what must be an audible thump, though all my exterior audio sensors seem to be covered in melted museum wall with only my sonar and seismic probes still functioning (the former retracted) to tell me this. I engage all drive trains and seeing the simple expediencies of my actions do the one thing I can do that no outsize so called planetary siege unit can dream of. All six tread lines screeching as they tear up the floor I go from zero to 120 KPH in a little under forty meters. Oh I do cheat, my minimal mass and gravitics upgrades allowing me to massively lower my relative mass when it suits me. Just before I hit the wall I turn them off. I may be dainty but I do wish for our unwanted visitors to feel all of my mass.

Last Call

The bustling metropolis of First Downs, home to an impressive (for Gastins star) 8 million citizen shareholders. A veritable mini megacity complete with its own megway circular around a mass of industrial manufactories and hab blocks. A full grav lift equipped space port mars one side of its preplanned perfect circle and the vast polyhedron of the Esta, Esta & Drang multitudes market and department store for all competes for its city centre with the huge towering mass of a ZMI megamall. These two temples to capitalism are separated only by an eternally warring sub sentient wall of holographic remotes. Too young and small to have a real gang culture and lacking the mass of urban decay that could mar it.

The figure was fairly lithe and definitely female in the mid 20s. Hair stuffed in a net and clothed in what looked like denim with lurid neon highlights the swathes of micro tools clamped in pockets everywhere marked her out as a tech. One arm was resting on a desk whos smart surface was marred with dead zones where tools had gone too far or fields had gotten a little too intense, while the other waved around punctuating expressions.

“No ma I got the tokens, yeah yeah I know don’t flash em in the local”

“No ma I wont go down to duskies tonight Ive got to meet up with Redgie
and the rest of them”

“NO MA!”


“Yes ma I will try to make it up for granmamies birthday..”

“Okay yeah loveyou bye.”


Lassa then turned around from the wall where her mothers frayed hair talked head had been and went back to staring at the reluctant little remote with a sense of distaste. It had for the fourth time today lost gyro stabilization and tipped half a first class load of parts across the workshop space floor. Never mind the wretched thing was shouting in her mem space for help and that it really really wanted to get back to showing the good people of First Downs just what a good idea it was to go for the summer burst sale in the megamall. And if she was interested wouldn’t she Lassa want a nice new pair of …

There was a click in the air. The remote fell over, its four building climbing legs in the air, and its single big half globe holo projector on its back causing It to rock back and forth. Prodding it with a trainer covered foot Lassa shrugged and commed the education SI. You needed at least an SI to keep up with the training schedules alone of eighty thousand deeply individually trained people. Something as crass and simple as a degree lay at least in ZMI a thousand years dead in the dust of individually tailored education. No response.. sooo a test was it. Carefully extracting her big bulky Falkin spacers multi tool and running its system checks a little smile hovered.

Da, he may not be good for much being In the advertising but at least he had gotten this right. Letting the tool finish its calibration she unscrewed the weather cap from the remotes main optic data port. Then pressing the head of the tool against the head she began probing. Dead ..nothing, not even a flicker of meaningful photons. Sure the remote had no local data processing other than simple roach ware but that should still be there not this ..empty space. As she stared at the remote the lights went out. Then they went pure white. .. Where were all her pics? Rossetto over in building three again trying one of his damn EW programs screwing up her roster in the middle of a damn test or maybe he had killed the remote. Mentally thumbing the como to the external data net and her real IMs she suddenly was on her knees as a hash of white noise data tried to invade her head before her cut outs engaged. Wincing and wobbly she struggled over to the emergency response channel in the corner and hit its orange frame. She knew lots of people covered up the orange thing and its big red first aid symbol as it intruded in there holoscapes only moving it when the inspectors came around. Not that this made a difference to the insurance premiums, the system knew even if the law didn’t. It wouldn’t turn on. Oh that ..that wasn’t good. Beginning to panic now she pulled on the release and the first aid cabinet flipped open, its urban survival utility belt falling out, a universal guide monocular tumbling to the floor. Unlike some though Lassa had taken her mandatory civil survival and defence courses seriously.

A meg or any hab block is a wonderful place to live while its working. When it goes down things can get unpleasant fast. Just because First Downs was still centuries away from Meg status as were all the cities on Gastins world didn’t mean that preparing for it hadn’t begun. Clipping the single thick disk of the repelling line to the belt and then pulling out the rest of its contents into the little pack of smart fabric Lassa then pulled open the work room door. Halfway through a roar could be heard from the window at the end of the habway corridor.

Something going supersonic inside the city?! Then it struck. Knocked down along with four other figures struggling out of the rooms into the little wide windowed cantina. As she felt a table leg slamming into her legs she saw something massive roar out of a hanger pod that had seemingly burst from the Skyway road outside. For a moment in her eyes the mass of the city defence gunship hung before leaped away. Struggling to get up she looked at the unfamiliar people one of them covered in tech like pockets but all with strange little feathers in them instead of tools. Others were streaming out including now those that she knew there local com halos working at least in line of site and full of chatter.

“A raid?”

“Who would raid us?”
“WHEReS MY JOHNY?” In the burr of a end
“Whos idea of a joke is this?”

Then the noise came. The terrible terrible noise that haunted documentaries of everything from the war against the oligarchs to the liberation war. The real noise, the sound that had shaped the incorporated states birth. The crump of explosions marching up the skyway. Overhead she saw hab block battlescreens flare into life and begin cascading down there sides, jumping wave guide to wave guide as sirens began wailing everywhere and the drum of a thousand fire doors opening and closing began. Then out on the sky way something ..somethings …stood. Bulky objects in ..legs and arms. Bulky with ..snouts and pointed in a fashion that said only one thing. A passing cyclist suddenly eerily went past the window, headless, that rolling along the ground to stare almost directly into Lassas eyes and to her abject horror blinking even as the cycles gyros kept it horridly upright and traveling. One if the ..figures was then almost immediately hit by passing central services truck, its crew swerving madly as inhuman legs sprayed everywhere. The things responded and the truck was instantly riddled and flareing. Other traffic was having similar incidents and every now and again a battle screen would flare as if someone had just tried to send something through it or worse still as weapons strikes began flaring on the wave guide points.

Gun.

Breathe. Scan 20 degrees. The smoking remains of Bakin Buds insta bakery mixes with the unwholesome stench of the battlefield filling my nostrils with what is definitely forbidden food. The town standard uplink ansible stands in the middle of the square a sagging mass of metal and broken microwave links, a spindly multilegged and definitely inhuman patrol prodding its remains. Breathe out. Zoom. There behind the rubble of the precinct 119th Local School ™ the dull and oddly splayed multiple snouts of some sort of armoured vehicles weapons. No active scanning. At least the militias odd pop off of remotely fired HARMs has gotten that much and kept close air support at arms length. In any case the “milita” a random bunch of citizens and bush folk who survived the initial combat and got into town armouries or had there own boom sticks is in no condition to take this lot on face to face. Distraught probably with half there families dead in the micro suburbs, cortical stacks fried beyond recovery by the unpleasant high density energy weapons that had rained down from the orbiting ships. Scan further. Focus. Squad leader, had to be or whatever horrid equivalent these …creatures used.

Breathe. Grim lines of still warm rubble pushing through the thick insulated thermal super conductor covered inner layer of ghillie suit and all its mime stealth features. It and I may be out of date but unlike the battle angels that succeeded us I still have a far lower signature. Of course a battle angel would probably just employ some sort of damn remote box launcher and slay his or her merry way through this lot in a hail of knife missies, IR bolts and swinging mono blades before turning the armored vehicle into so much slag with a micro hellbore shot. I do not have a micro hellbore. I do not even have a thermal flash suit and firing one would cook me down to my boots. All I have is an outdated ghillie suit, though at least its mine, and one outdated obscure and now out of production weapon. And a thumping migraine which without my outdated medicomp and system laden battle helmet I can do little about given the substance that caused it was never within my original design.

Breathe out. Let the old anger out. Line up carefully on the slim line between armoured thorax carefully select an impact angle from the slide and squeeze the trigger through gloved hand. HSSSTH! The mono shard hisses out, for a moment the weapon imparting it with a field that lets it slice through anything, its tiny cross section making it not only invisible and almost inaudible but almost utterly unseen by little things like a powered amours point defiance scanners.
A falling body section and the expensive muffler eating away at its 80 shot lifetime one charge at a time.
Breathe. Line up.. breathe out and squeeze..
HSSSTH! A falling head, this one trailing flailing antennae as the shard slices armor apart and opens hidden catches. Ugly buggers.
HSSSTH! A third one, this an ungainly 8 legged hairy creature, rough webbing on it holding dozens of blades, its unarmored body cleanly sliced in half.

Time to move. Micromines fall from my backpack and the single mining charge I had planted in the blasted remains of Slorbs house of useful household items and goods explodes with a confetti of chaff and nails. Slorb. The poor old gas giant dwellers containment suit a blasted ruin in his planetary equivalent atrium/ shop, with Slorbs remains evaporating skyward. I would miss Slorb. For a helium breather he had a wonderfully dirty sense of humor . I had never even asked from where he came from. First on my stomach and then stalking hunched back into the jungle the ghillie suits mimic ware moving like a deranged jelly fish over me I enter its leafy embrace again. After all I was born for it.

Two Hours Earlier.

For a thousand years through meteor swarms, major extinction events and the unfortunate rise of a certain local worm that could destroy huge swathes of its brethrens roots the mega ferns slow rise to its full 120 meter height had gone on unstopped and seemingly unstoppable. It now dominated a good quarter kilometer of forest, its massive leaves creaking each day as they closed in the evening and waking everything for miles as they opened in the morning. Under it only low brush could survive and its massive leaf structures forced hundreds of gallons of water into a massive internal pond where life flourished in a thick soup. The brush was of special note to certain areas of society. low growing rare specialized brush. Niche brush you might say. Such brush in the right hands in a mortar and pestle and carefully cured for a month in sunlight might just have some useful properties. If you had to go and pick it by hand it could take positively days especially if this mega fern was the home to half a dozen 180 kilo animals each with teeth the size of a human finger and an irate disposition. This in part was due to eating the brush in question as going through life seeing things that simply are not there especially in a jungle is never a good thing. Of course when you weigh 180 pounds and have a temper that causes disemboweling if someone happens to stray within ten feet of you and there shadow looks funny then this can have the advantage of spreading reputation. The Drooling Nutter as it was known locally was not a nice creature. It was common too. Of course sometimes there were equally not nice people. I am not a nice patient man willing to wait days for the nutters to gorge themselves into idiocy on the very narcs I wanted to harvest. The relatively noisy woods were now drowned out in the screaming hiss of something entirely unnatural.

The pack leader lay dead in a flashing moment, neatly split in half and steaming, its jaws still trying to bite something or someone's face off, around it four of its hunters also lay in various states of dismemberment. This had for me therefore started out as a good day, the nutters back “bacon” was not only tasty but when cured and laced as it was with years of exposure to the brush had some damn fine effects. Then the thing that should not have happened occurred with a dull click of plastic on a contact. Maybe it was the ludicrous mush of fungi and alcohol they served in the cantina in Plastiville the night before ( which could make even my kind drunk involuntarily and whose creation was one of the reasons I found myself under the shade of a megafern) or maybe it had been spending the week before on minimal real food rations to save money for a new instant pop tent. Yes some of the units went all the way back to nature, but quite frankly I enjoy a nice bit of entertainment in the evening and not waking up dripping wet. It does me no harm per say I just don’t like it. I still cant believe it though. None the less it had happened, after all being 129 I’m bound to start making some mistakes. Admittedly this had not come at a good time. I stared at the object in my arms, lovingly looking over its dull black scratch covered synth alloy lines.

The A/NC Maserov systems Slice rifle is a piece of art. Art designed by a deranged man of Russian extraction who honestly thought that adding a new horror to war, namely monomolecular shards whipping out to slice and dice any foe not wearing very high density battle armour was a good idea. Dial able for shard dispersion, size and impact ratio to target mass the Maserov had been discontinued after the introduction of the first true power guns, and in any case even in its short battlefield day it had been in theory no match for the backpack powered GRASER weapons that had begun to festoon the slowly disappearing organic infantry men and its ammo packs had been rare. It still in the hands of an expert is one of the single most lethal and controllable (to an expert in its various dials and focus rings) “dumb” weapons available matching in the the delicacy of a knife missile. It is also almost entirely useless without ammunition.

The Nutters stalked forward growling, one of them turning on its own tail and beginning to gnaw on its back left leg, spraying the leaves around it with its own blood. The damn things were useless to try and sell for there hides, by the time they were five they had already have chewed them to scarred ruin. The others separated and holding my position they were neatly bracketing me, though one of them was doing it in reverse. I at this point really wished Ide left my helmet on as my drill sergeants voice screamed in my recurring bootcamp flashbacks “KEEP IT ON OR ILE GLUE IT TO YEr EADS!’ . Round about now its silent commo would be damn useful.. If Lysander didn’t wake up from dream space this could get damn uncomfortable. The nutters had trouble zooming in on me still, my scent misted over and thankfully my skin working pretty damn well. I don’t need …camo against mk.1 eyeballs. Snuffling however the damn things were getting closer… Little choice… I jumped backward . “LYSANDER!” at this roar two of the nutters fell on each other but the other three jumped forward… the VREEEE of spinning barrels already sounding up.

Whiteout.

CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK ssssssss .
Landing on my back and covered in scorching hot nuter I yowl and dance the stuff off.

“Serves you right you know, no bacon for j00 but on J00!”

“so it still speaks does it? Eh? Well a damn fine time you chose to wake up! I was waiting all bloody morning for you to get moving! ”

“speaks the man with his head in fungus, at least my pass time is creative..”

“I had to traipse up three damn hills to get here! And someone when hes sleeping keeps his damn locks closed!”

“ Well someone may have thought that a good morning walk may have helped you get rid of some of the filth you were going to pump into yourself again this morning!”

“uppity damn APC!”

“Last week you almost stepped into that damn parg den you old coot! Even your reaction time will slow down if you keep tanking up on that stuff!”

“It stops the memories…”

“So would a memescanner… “

“Lysander you know damn well why I cant do that.”

Lysander was almost tattered in appearance, a scant 40 meters long and with weapons strikes visible on its hull as rainbow distortions of heat warped rippled battle steel polished back into some manner of trim. It was utilitarian to a fault ..if not just plain ugly, vestigial delta wings still kept tight to its body and the dull green sheen of its paint work and markings obscured by years of work on its stumpy little tear drop body.

One of the original eight pop up hard points (two of which still carried the original issue ion jet infinite repeaters though these had been so augmented as to now be almost unserviceable to any but the mind that devised them) in its body were now replaced with the dull form of a second hand yellowing ceramic egg like grav lifts or complex bundles of manipulators and the aeroshells they could retract into. The entire thing sat on a set of worn skids hovering half a metre of the forest floor, trees behind it blackened by its passage.

It had also just struck me that if I had forgotten that the damn hangover had yet to hit. Best make the best of it then.

“well since your bloody here rather than me traipsing back through half a mile of this mulch could you just open your damn cargo hoppers! I may not need the money but if you want to stay in coolant you better bloody help!”

Two hours later and skimming over the tree tops a at a little under a hundred with the scanner booms fully extended Lysander begain chuckling.

“what is it?”

“Oh someone's gone and compromised there high and mightinesses zero line commo” Hearing Lysander and his brethren s slang for a true starshipwas simply high, mightiness meant milicom.

“Probably one of the new megafreighters, I heard those fellows pack a solid eight metres of energy sta …HANG ON”

Combat restraints slicked forward for the first time in twenty years, fountains of used crisps, pen caps and other detritus flung out of there holes as they snapped me into the seat. Moments later full combat power opened up and from a meek and mild 100k per hour to a full 5kps we went hypersonic with the unpleasant sound of the sensor booms ripping off Lysanders hull.

“WHAT THE BLOODY HELL ARE YOU DOING YE DAF”

Then I saw it splattered across the night sky like a thousand dancing fireflies punctuated by great white flashes. Thousands of tracing blue flashes from every infinite repeater on the planet as its numerous and mostly retired military Sis let loose in a sad attempt at an organized battle net. One whole left hand side of the horizon lit up as dozens of single use missile silos spat there fury starward as the real PDF let loose each missile volatiseing hundred meter wide columns of air around the mass of freight train sized missiles. One thunderous report got through to even here, flash guards covering the hellish lit jungle for a moment before horrifically sickeningly dozens of lines of light came down and met its origin.

“PDF Siege gun battery Arkly zero line confirmed.. whole district is uncovered now.”

“What about the bloody PDC! Damn thing cost enough of my taxes!”

“No commo in our out, over shield went on, seems battle screens aren’t enough to take whatever there throwing at us and there willing to take the casualties from close hellbore engagement to take out planetary siege units and the bunker complexes and were well below their active direct horizon. They seem to be smart enough to try and avoid it.”

I groaned as we went through a Hi G manoeuvre, the airframe creaking disturbingly as its gravitics held it together at a dozen times what it was originally intended to do. As I nearly redded out I croaked.

“They who?”

“No idea, no IFF, No warning, open Fleet com roster is full zero line now. Anyway while they may be able to pick of the ground pounders and the big old highs there's no way they can get through us with so much as a drop pod!”

“Us?”

Lysander banked and I saw something utterly non-military and greatly satisfying. A dozen similar eggs, some still sporting neons of in city transports and one the ungainly wedge of a trans atmospheric grav crunch launch jet were roaring along beside us there infinite repeaters spitting blue white lines skyward. Some were brand new, pure wedges in contrast to the older eggs, the dull white of modern armour synthetics and the bulges of battlescreen generators marring there otherwise cheese slice forms.

Then one ship just ..appeared in the middle, the air positively glowing around it as gravitics force compressed it without the need for anything as crude as a material ram jet.

“..helloooo pretty”

“What?”

“PDF Sark class interceptor..now I wonder what shes doing in the middle of us old fogeys ..nice young one even letting us tie into her net access.

“here they come”

As delicate as Lysander can choose to be this was not one of those moments, the CRACK CRACK CRACK of his infinite repeaters at full output filled the front view as sensor globes erupted from half a dozen projectors I hadn’t used and he had been filling with multi d geometry games. There was a dull thunk and suddenly we were feeling a lot ..lighter.

“You didn’t did you?”

“well they did just hit it with a missile so ..”

“Four hundred damn KILOS!”

Suddenly I was grimacing as we raced skyward, instruments tumbling as EW made them a hash.

“There she goes.. nice girl. Hope she makes it”

To my right the dull blue glow on the grid makes itself known as the interceptor blasts ahead of the squadron it had graced, the white hot scores of its tri barreled 10CM hellbores fluting out of its nose making a hash of in bounds at ranges and the odd streak of a missile haring up to take on the orbiting invaders who seemed to think themselves immune from this flight of rust buckets.

We make two kills both ..small. Disturbingly small. Then the world goes blue, my hair stands on end.

“No oh creator NO!”

The interceptor is at its heart and for one last moment its IFF pings out before the screen hashes and the real cockpit windows go white and blue. We begin to fall , every holo display throwing crazed images around the cabin. Lysander positively screeches and I paw furiously at the air as Im slammed into the cradle again. I black out. Even my body has limits.


I come too to find the cockpit reeks of ozone and the stench of marsh water. My chest feels like its been hit by a sledge hammer. My memory dully equates this to bruised ribs.

“You alive?" I croak out.

“BNZZZrt”

I almost sob as I slam the release and the combat cradle retracts. Then staggering over to the emergency command console I thump the thing on with one palm. The stench of mash water is ..permeating and is somewhere I really do not want to be is in a sinking APC shell body of what had once been my oldest and last friend. On its dull white screen made of dumb old solid tech a single read out flashes.

Fuel at 83%//
YES im alive you dolt, you think a little thing like a hypersonic crash and having my number two engine shot off would stop me? Internal audio's out, IR two is buggered as are half my gravitics, I could lift but they think I went up with my engine around forty klicks back and before you ask the arcing was minor, my main mem cores are all intact which is more than I can say for yours. Hit me and the rest of the squadron with some sort of big wide bore charged particle discharge looks like a modified Broussard ram jet projection. Mini weaponised variant. Probably used the same way we back up with torch drives. Now watch.

The standard tactical display whose reading key has not changed in my memory came up, local terrain and towns surrounded by dancing data access icons..but then they were covered white mist on one sensor screen chilled me. No one should be able to run that many simultaneous displacements. No one. And it means all the aerospace defences have just been utterly bypassed. Why not after all when they have the ultimate high ground with the local task force zero lined.

The line of text continued below it.

“we strafed the crap out of there concentrations at the start and most of the metropolitan areas either let loose with so much that there citizens must have gestalted and uploaded and let the entire real world go to pot. Port Carlins main reactors made quite a show, took a chunk of them out. “

I shuddered again, Carlin had been the planets second city, a nice port city with over twenty million people packed into its growing arco towers.

Now boyo I am unfortunately out of reactor coolant, bled out my tanks keeping number one running cold but throwing out enough output to keep me going, so if you don’t mind..

“You’ve got to be kidding me!”

A dull grey map tablet fell out. The damn thing still had the Genetic Infantry corps logo on it.

“eighty damn years and I'm still your blasted gofor.”

So what if your a bit old so am I. Your built better than the standard model by a long shot and you know it now get out there and get me some damn coolant, it will take me at least that long to fab up some sort of stabilizer for my number two engine. And at least unlike my ground pounding brethren my man I do have some sense of empathy. You have some bugs to kill.

“Bugs? ”

On the screen my new enemy danced. Soulless compound eyes staring back.

Crain watched the vespine figure as it took its place at the console, briefly wondering how it had learned to type on a keyboard designed for people with fingers. The screen read: "New flightpath confirmed.", and returned to the previous display; the velocity increased a little bit as new directional thrusters fired to bring the ship into position, then continued decreasing again, dropping to under one kilometer per second within three or four minutes.

The marine captain said without hesitation: "One squad -- twelve marines, total. I'll call the rest in when we get down to the shuttle bays."

His squad -- Axe Squad -- was not in fact the only one on board. There were two others, Blood and Chainsaw Squads, in quarters -- the Vojvodina-Nihonians are well known for their subtle phonetic alphabet -- but the arthropods had not yet seen any members of either squad, and RUBiCoN had been ordered to conceal their existence, so for all intents and purposes they didn't exist.

* * *

"Oh yes," said Gori. "That she is. Of course, I'm not the one you'd want to talk to for full information on Ruby. That would be Chief Melkat, down in Engineering. Installed her processing banks and everything." And get those giant... things... away from me, he added to himself. They're creepy.

* * *

Chief Melkat, down in Engineering, was looking at a picture of himself. "Disappointing," he said. "It just takes pictures in normal vision. What does it look like to an arthro?"

Ruby's engineering nodule paused. "Due to their compound eyes, it would look somewhat like this." She changed the picture. "However, the exact details of their sight involve senses caelis do not have. Thou canst not see through their eyes any more than the paper clip can be made to play the sackbut."

"Oh. Damn." Pause. "Ow!" He released the little 'bot, which flew off and was gone to his sight in an instant; he opened his palm and blew on it. The tips of some of the fine hairlike feathers on it were slightly singed.

"Delivering mild electric shocks is one of the peripheral functions of the robots," said Ruby. "Do not be alarmed. I can destroy it if thou desirest."

"No need," Melkat said. "It was just a little.... unexpected, is all. Also, is it possible to change the way you talk? All the 'thees' and 'thous' and 'thys' are... amusingly anachronistic."

"If 'twere God's will that my voice be changed, someone would have already done 't." Being an AI, Ruby managed to maintain a completely deadpan look at all times, but Melkat was sure there was humour somewhere in there. "And today methinks the use of language has degraded so greatly that no man can say how few still use it correctly. It's about six point eight one nine three per cent of the general population, rounded."

* * *

Ruby controlled only a small fraction of the 'bots making up the superorganism. By blocking their cores from their peripheries she was able to give them new orders -- return to starting point and discard all information in memory and sub-memory -- but those orders hadn't spread to the rest of the superorganism, and doing that to every single bot would take an eternity -- minutes or even hours. Moreover, she was unable to simply change their orders without bringing in her own 'bots, and they had jobs to do.

She resigned herself to letting most of them continue on their path through the ship, although she reserved the right to monitor them further and delete any data they collected about places she had been ordered to keep secure.

* * *

The RVNS Fiat Iustitia Pereat Mundi was a frigate, one of the newer ships commissioned by the Vojvodina-Nihonian Navy. It was ninety meters of shiny, concentrated death; everything about it said "warship", from the sleek maneuverable shape to the sunken weapons bays on the tops to the portals which could shut over the engine outtakes when stealth was required. It should therefore be no surprise at all to find it on routine patrol duties, traveling at a tiny fraction of the speed of light in a predictable orbit and with one weapons bay cannibalized and replaced with a second shuttle bay.

In her quarters, Captain Marika Nelson -- who was entirely and quite obviously human, like about ninety-nine percent of other Vojvodina-Nihonians -- was blow-drying her hair and reflecting on how long ago she should have retired when a message came in from the bridge. "Captain?"

She turned off the blow-dryer and didn't hesitate before setting the incoming communication to "audio only". She'd known her first officer for ten years, but it still didn't justify him seeing her in her bathrobe. "I swear, it's always the same thing. You get in the bath.... Anyway, what is it?"

"We've received an automated communication, ma'am. An update. It's from Tenacity."

Sigh. "That bunch of troublemakers? What is it now?"

"Uh.... I think you'd better come up here, ma'am."

"What, you've forgotten how to speak? Never mind, I'll just ask the Maddie."

(The Modular Autonomous Directional Intelligence System and Associated Operational Nodules [MADISON] was the spiritual predecessor to the RUBiCoN, having been around for several hundred years and now in its twenty-second incarnation. The differences between the two systems were sufficiently pronounced that updating from MADISON to RUBiCoN required tearing out the old processors and some wiring, too. Fortunately, Tenacity had come conveniently pre-torn. Only the large capital ships had had their systems fully replaced so far; RUBiCoN was most effective in larger ships.)

Several minutes later, Captain Nelson emerged onto the bridge, accompanied by a call of "Captain on the bridge!", at which she rolled her eyes. Seating herself in the captain's chair, she glanced over at Commander Itori Kalu.

"So what's the big deal?" she asked.

"Well, ma'am, we thought it prudent to investigate the situation more fully," the commander said, warily. "I trust you've heard the message?"

"I have, yes. Maddie even showed me pictures." She brought something up on the console. "They're going to Cirrus. Why should we investigate them? They're caelis. They can take care of themselves."

The route to Cirrus was known to Navy pilots. It was not a colonial outpost of the Federation itself, but Vojvodina-Nihonians lived and worked there, and their ships were allowed through by whatever authorities occupied the planet's surface. There were three short hops to start it off with ten minutes or less between them, then a long hop requiring an hour or more around Gastin's, then two more short hops, a second long hop -- this one requiring the ship to travel to the other star in a binary system -- and a shorter hop, about thirty minutes of transit, before the final hop deposited the ship a dozen light-minutes off Cirrus. The whole run took about a day or two, counting transit times from Earth to Cirrus and picking up fuel. Tenacity had been delayed on the first long hop, which was usually fairly clear -- Gastin's authorities knew Vojvodina-Nihonian ships would occasionally pass through and there was rarely any trouble -- which, at a frigate's maximum safe speed, would require about twenty minutes to reach, with exact times depending on circumstances.

"If I can remind you, ma'am, the Tenacity is on a mission for the Federation Government -- one of rather vital importance, I might add, ma'am. They're going to Cirrus to--"

"I know all that," Nelson said. "The point is, however, that 'Cap'n' Jelan is always running blindly into situations like this, due to him being an idiot. I'm sure the Federation took all appropriate precautions to keep him and his cargo safe. We needn't get involved."

"Incoming transmission from Admiral Dyson of the Federation Navy," said Maddie's avatar, fully aware that it had just committed a Description Cut (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DescriptonCut) but lacking the programming to care.

"Put him onscreen."

"Good morning, Fiat. I trust you have had a sufficiently uneventful career patrolling the jump point," said the Admiral's image without a trace of humour. "You have new orders as of now. You are to go with Acta to the following coordinates to investigate the whereabouts of the RVNS Tenacity and, if necessary, escort it through the long hop so that it reaches its destination safely."

"Yes, sir," muttered Nelson. "Do we get any more weapons? We're nearly out of projectiles."

"No, Captain, you do not. What you have should be more than sufficient should the use of weapons be unavoidable."

The frigate the Admiral had designated to accompany hers was the Acta Non Verba, under a Commander Alan Strickland, and consequently leaving Captain Nelson in command. Acta, on the other hand, was better armed, with a recently-installed gravitic battery replacing the older particle cannons and a fuller complement of breacher missiles.

"I could have told you this was coming, ma'am," said Commander Kalu as Dyson's image vanished.

"The universe hates me," she said. "Ah well. Where's Acta? We may as well get on with it."

Maddie turned the nose of the ship towards the jump point and began to open a wormhole. Twenty minutes or so were left until they reached Tenacity. (The message had reached them in less than fifteen, but that was because it traveled at lightspeed and didn't have to slow down to enter the wormholes.)

*beeyoomp*

Gastin's World (Jungle 1)

And to think that my ancest- Well, the beings that inspired my creation have lived in such places... Masochists.

Four pairs of legs moved through the jungle, their owner remarkably unhappy with this very fact - it was unfamiliar terrain, and support was low, the entire area being under heavy EW from both sides. Which meant that something interesting had to be around. Just finding - and then shooting - it was a bit of a problem.

Branches cracked under his heavy legs as he walked under the green (Or occasionally purple) canopy of hundred metre tall trees and ferns, deliberately slowly, his sensor package providing him with about as much information as could possibly be acquired under the rather less than perfect conditions he was experiencing. Which sadly, was frustratingly little.

Slightly under five metres long, with his back and tail lifted almost two metres into the air, the maybe not quite gigantic, but nonetheless impressively-sized scorpion was barely identifiable as such, being loaded with an array of remarkably large and phallic weaponry that took away from his own, formidable form.

He squished a few mushrooms, his suit registering the toxic components in the same, and he paused breifly to shake his head. It's a miracle the animals here aren't all high on something... His thoughts were interrupted by two two bird-like creatures fighting some fifty metres upwards, in a fashion that was best described as 'Drunk'. ... Only the majority.

Back to the job at hand. Something massive just had to be hidden in the area. Just where... Then, suddenly, one of his drones fizzled out, the last signal suggesting something along the lines of a charged particle beam of a magnitude that- Well, he decided he'd rather not think about it.

Still, he checked with the other losses reported in the area. It worked out - if orbital support hadn't already gotten the object (He'd love to know, but comms were still compromised), it could be 'It'.

He changed direction appropriately. That of his drones, too. Yet, for another five minutes, nothing happened.

Then he saw it.

Oh, fuck.

Gastin's World (Jungle 2)

11:56:18 - Incursion by Threatlevel B Entity Detected; Three Casualties
11:56:26 - Alright, following it. Area's mostly under our control, we've the advantage.
11:57:14 - Nasty wounds
11:58:02 - Alright, got him. Liftoff. Smart mines around, I'll have to be careful, but expect me back in a minute.

Over her four wings, the gelsuit was a mere tenth of a millimetre thick - but that was enough to protect Arielle from things such as, say, sonic booms. Not that she'd go supersonic in this instance - indeed, once she'd accelerated to about a hundred metres per second, she just followed her senses, rapidly closing in on what she believed to be the source of the trouble, almost arrogantly dodging a few smart mines, shrapnel raining down harmlessly over her gelsuit-covered body.

11:58:17 - No, really, those wounds are nasty. Not a clean kill at all. Cut straight in half, organs dropping out. Yellow puddle below.
11:58:36 - Be careful.
11:58:59 - I am.

There he was. Finally. Arielle quickly changed her position, multiple times over, before even opening fire herself - she was fast, but she was also an exceedingly tempting target. Finally, she swept down, accelerating as hard as she could, eyes and mind focussed almost solely on her target as the light of the young day reflected off her body and wings, golden sparks over red chitin.

Then everything vanished behind a wall of static caused by heavily ionised air and dust.

Gastin's World (Urban)

Pop.

Pop.

Silence. That one probably didn't get through.

Pop.

The ear-piercing sound of rapidly expanding matter vaporised by some sort of weapon, combined with a brief flash of static on the visuals.

Then Lieutenant Wheeler turned around a corner, just to see a roughly three-metre tall, greenish-grey monstrosity in front of him. Another flash, some sort of rapid movement, too rapid to follow with the eyes. He raised his gun, took aim - correction, tried to take aim, but his arms didn't quite obey his command, he wasn't entirely sure why -, and then he spun around, seeing his own, beheaded body falling backwards to the ground, almost as if in slow motion.

Oh shit! Well, at least it explained why his arms hadn't obeyed him.

For a moment he was annoyed that he'd been killed in such an easy fashion, but then again... In a way, it was relaxing, even comforting. At least he didn't have to try anymore. Though, the endless spinning of his head was annoying...

Finally, he got a clear view on the thing that'd decapitated him. Judging by how close its almost triangular head was, he figured the creature was holding him, and Lieutenant Wheeler regretted having lost his ability to speak. The perfect time for a tough one-liner, and he was no longer able to move his tongue.

Somehow, the look the creature gave him was disconcerting. He could feel the blood rushing out of his head, and he figured that he'd cease being conscious in a handful of seconds. A minute or so later, his brain would start suffering from irreparable damage. Yet, all he could think of, all that worried him was the idea that this creature - he finally noticed that it was a sort of massively oversized mantis, holding his head in the spikes arrayed on its arms - could try and eat him.

Like it mattered.

A moment later, Lieutenant Wheeler's head lost consciousness, the creature's enormous compound eyes fixed on him being the last image to ever enter his mind. The Mantis holding him looked at the head in his arms for another few seconds, then tossed it aside.

"Alright. Three of us made it, that should suffice. Remote drones are deployed. Somewhere in this building, the local administration sits, and monitoring suggests that they're at least trying to get some sort of organised resistance done. Our job is to eliminate their ability to engage in these communications, and to - if possible - force a surrender in due time."

'In due time' being, of course, 'Once we've had our fun.'

The obligatory speech being done, the team dispersed, in search for what were essentially the masters of this place. Well, insofar as there could be masters in such a place, anyway.

Gastin's World (Urban 2)

The boy was just... Staring at the mess on the ground, a mess consisting of burst compound eyes, a yellow-greenish mess of organs and blood, and some limbs slowly dripping out of the transparent 'Bag' the gelsuit now was.

It really wasn't a pretty sight, and the boy promised a wide assortment of deities - and his mom - that he really, really, really wouldn't skip school ever again.

Then a few more of the creatures came, seemingly running towards him, pincers extended, and two unrealistically large guns held in their heavily modified first pair of tarsii. The boy considered screaming, but somehow, he couldn't. It was just... Too much. Everything was.

A second later, shots were being fired, and he was rather unceremonially shoved - actually, tossed - behind a corner and through a window into the canteen of the local megamall. The last thing he saw of the fight were two floors of a nearby building exploding as an assortment of smallish missiles took care of a ragtag civil defence force that'd foolishly decided to use said floors as a sort of bunker.

Tenacity (Bridge)

"Excellent," the wasp replied without hesitation. "In this case, present transportation opportunities will suffice - displacement would be another option, but I understand that you're rather less than fond of it. In any case, the Desecrator has been contacted, and will be expecting you. You'll also fly alone - the shuttle can handle the entire affair on its own."

With the marines departing, the wasp then once more turned to Leftenant Crain. "This should cover the basics. To proceed, I now require an inventory of your cargo - including the non-commercial one, as well as your crew and passengers." She peered at the console. "Mapping, I think is already covered, although we've done some on our own, for obvious reasons."

"I'll cover the engineering section."

The first wasp briefly looked at the second one, the one that'd been talking to Gori. "I figured. No need to have the translation module translate conversation between us, though."

The Marines looked at one another curiously, descending to the shuttle on their own. They knew where to find the bay and the Desecrator's shuttle, and as they descended, one Corporal wondered aloud into the squad's comlink: "Will they notice if we choose, y'know, not to go?"

"Yes. They'd probably attack us, and that would be messy. Don't worry though," Captain Vanderaa continued, "I'm pretty sure they don't plan to dissect us and eat our bodies."

"You always know the right words to reassure us, Cap," said the Corporal approvingly.

The squad entered the shuttle, one member brushing off a little 'bot that had chosen to rest on his helmet. They sat down in seats clearly not intended for human beings and awaited the shuttle's motion. Most of the marines were used to automatic transit like this, although it never stopped being just a little eerie, with no human pilot to take over if, say, an electromagnetic pulse knocked out the electronics. They spoke little as it approached Desecrator, but each wondered to some degree what awaited them on the other side.

Except for maybe the Captain. He was more interested in knowing if he could write this off as a diplomatic encounter and draw higher pay for his company for this particular mission. Escort missions don't usually pay all too well.

* * *

Ruby spoke.

"Inventory. Cargo hold one, designated for shipboard use: Fifty-one crates of assorted foodstuffs. Nineteen crates of medical supplies. Four crates of ammunition and weapons. Twenty-one crates of technical equipment and spare parts. Several larger pieces of technical equipment, including containment field generators. Cargo hold two, designated for commercial use: Twelve crates of agricultural equipment; one shipment. Sixteen crates of lampshades; two shipments. Forty-six crates of sensor and computer equipment; four shipments. Twenty-two crates of [CLASSIFIED - LEVEL 9 CLEARANCE REQUIRED]; one shipment. Eighteen crates of ammunition and weapons; one shipment. Thirty-three crates of alcoholic and intoxicating beverages; two shipments. Cargo hold three, designated for shipboard use: Seventeen crates of clothing and fabrics. Twenty-six crates of technical manuals, entertainment media, and games. One crate of writing materials and paper. Five crates of miscellaneous items. Cargo hold four, empty.

"Shuttle bays one through six: One shuttle per bay. Shuttle bay seven: empty.

"Total crew: Eighty-six Caelipiscians. Total passengers: Twelve humans."

The second wasp was directed to the tube to engineering, which dropped about seven hundred meters straight down. There was something -- what's the opposite of a lift? -- that helped propel beings capable of flight down the tube much faster. Those incapable of flight, of course, would have a harder time of it -- although the artificial gravity was only a fraction of standard's, so they'd probably survive with only a few broken bones.

Marine Adventures!

The shuttle was, in essence, little more than a metal tube with a propulsion unit, uncomfortable not just because it wasn't made for humans, but also because it eschewed comfort in general, if not as a matter of principle. There was a little workstation from which the shuttle's occupants could presumably control it, though playing around with it yielded nothing more than a red flashing warning sign (Translated, it'd have read 'Invalid User Parameters'), a closed-off sanitary area, a few boxes with weaponry & related equipment in them, and a few books tossed carelessly around, written in an alien script - or at least, it appeared alien.

Still. All in all, it was a remarkably boring shuttle, not even providing the marines with the creepiness of biological-everything everyone and their dog believed to be standard for insectoid aliens, back in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Instead, it appeared to be almost sterile, not unlike a hospital, if significantly less comfy.

During the fifteen or so minutes of flight, the shuttle engaged in the basic security procedures - scanning the marines for particularly high energy density cores, AM charges, micronukes, invasive informational agents, invasive microscopic agents, surveillance kit, the likes -, but otherwise remained silent, leaving the marines with the sight of a dull, grey, pressurised metal tube around them, which, for all its value as being the thing that kept them alive in the hard vacuum of space, was rather less than entertaining.

Finally, they approached the Desecrator, the shuttle decelerating almost violently, but leaving the marines an opportunity to view the ship from nearby - a vast collection of spikes and tendrils and bulges connected to the tube-ish main body of the comparatively small (Just above five hundred metres in length) ship, almost as if growing out of the same. However, for all the spikes and tendrils and bulges, no weaponry was visible, no missile tubes, no gun turrets, no shield generators, nothing.

It'd have been disappointing, hadn't the ship made up for it with extensive animations playing themselves out all over its hull. In fact, it seemed to be a single, huge depiction of violence floating in space, underlining the murderous purpose of the ship with mountains of skulls tended to by six-legged monstrosities, ancient eurypterids marching through oceans of blood, aliens of indeterminate origin being cut cleanly in half by car-sized mandibles, triumphing dragonflies gnawing on the headless bodies of their helpless prey while the sun's life-giving rays reflected off their beautiful bodies, colouring the scenery in blue and purple shades, and panicking bipeds fleeing the onslaught of their predators only to have their skin and flesh slowly stripped from them, until their naked bones finally turned into dust, to slowly drift apart in the wind.

After maybe half a minute of this scenery, the shuttle did a quick turn, and finally entered the Desecrator itself, the scenery on the hull slowly fading and changing into a black hornet's head, its eyes staring at them as her mandibles opened to swallow the shuttle.

And then they were in.

It was a well-lit place, warm, humid, and buzzing with activity - 'bots of varying sizes worked inside the hangar, all sorts of tools, machinery, supplies and weaponry were carried, or just plain floated around, half a dozen wasps buzzed through the air (Though they didn't actually appear to do much, other than buzzing), and a few other creatures - a spider of the type the marines had already seen, two creatures that were essentially giant mantii, and a few beetle-esque things - were around as well, though they, too, didn't appear to do much of anything, other than competing with each other in trying to look like the baddest motherfucker in the room by tending to their weaponry or staring at the marines in a vaguely malevolent fashion.

Another wasp entered the hangar shortly after the Marines had left the shuttle, though it differed significantly from the others by being much sleeker, and of a brownish colour. It looked briefly around, then headed straight for the marines, braking and landing about half a second before it'd have crashed into them at full speed.

"Gentlemen? Welcome aboard the Desecrator, Rapid Response Unit of the Master Phylum. My name is Antonius, and since the shiphive - well, pretend-hive - considers it to be under her dignity to bother with you beyond the most token and impersonal of duties, I'm going to be in charge of you." Antonius looked cheerfully at the marines, then - less cheerfully - at their weapons. "I reckon that you're already aware that you wont be allowed most of your weapons, or any surveillance equipment other than your five senses while on board. The shuttle should already have conducted a thorough analysis of your weaponry - everything capable of producing more than one kilowatt of power, or of explosively releasing in excess of one megajoule of energy, is to be discarded. Other than that... Any questions that I may or may not be willing to answer?"

Tenacity

The wasp didn't flinch as 'Ammunitions and Weapons' were mentioned, apparently deciding that yes, sometimes people may trade those commercially. Of course, it could be used as an excellent reason to keep the Tenacity indefinitely, anyway, but she wasn't about to say that out loud. "Remarkably little commercial cargo, especially for a ship of this size. Very well. We'll disperse and search the relevant areas." She briefly shut off her translator, and proceeded to talk to her fellow wasps in mandible-clicking, after which all but one of them (And the two spiders) left the bridge. The pause didn't take long, however, as she soon addressed Leftenant Crain again. "This should be it, for the most part. Depending on the results we'll get from the inspection, you'll probably be allowed to leave the system as soon as we've eliminated the last remnants of resistance. Until then, it is probable that more of us will visit your ship for brief periods of time, but this shouldn't be inconvenient for you. And if it is, I don't care. Also, should you've any questions, do not hesitate to ask them, though whether I'll provide an answer is another matter."

Tenacity (Engineering)

The Desecrator's hive certainly wasn't a particularly easy-going hive - rather than being entertained as she dropped down the tube, the wasp simply let it happen in the most stoic fashion imaginable. After all, he was here for her entirely professional, scientific interest, not because she wished to be entertained.

Or at least, that was what she choose to believe.

Upon arriving, it didn't take very long to figure out which way to go, and a moment later, she entered engineering proper, or what served in this function, its looks - vaguely reminiscent of a vast cathedral serving the worship of technology, the wasp thought - nonwithstanding.

She flew directly to the Caelipiscian closest to her, and introduced herself thusly: "Inspection for contraband, Desecrator hive. I wish to speak to a certain 'Melkat'."

Jack Hammer.

Tycho Crater, Incorporated State Lunar Territory, Megacity Two

The surface air gates were a relic of a previous era and showed it in their heavy handed construction. They had not been closed in anger in a generation and even that had been a test. Even during the worst of the civil war where in meg one atomics had vaporized entire city segments the massive gates had already been antiques, the cities over shield already so many orders of magnitude tougher that they were almost an irrelevancy. They consisted of huge 400 meter plugs that hung in a crevice above four of the cities five huge surface exits on a massive set of slipways. When forced down there embankment they would slide on the megways angled surface till they locked into position, held in place by their own huge mass and countless metal spars and rams. Still the huge battle alloy and ceramic filled plugs lay ready with everything from magnetic, hydraulic , explosive and gravitic back ups to hammer them shut. If the cities reactors failed and the screens went down under a bombardment all the regolith and armor in the solar system would not save the massive stacked dome caverns of Megacity two from a modern assault but still the plugs sat.

The fifth gate was different, It was closed and only rarely less than once a decade was its mass wound up. The tunnel that led from it hardly interacted with the Megacity at all, carving a torturous path to be as far from inhabited sections as possible with huge dead drops and voids along its length. The massive road way that led from it simply terminated out in the middle of nowhere and it utterly lacked the usual centre divide. Today was one of the days where it was going to open.

Lunar regolith vibrated and rose in dusty silent phantoms before being battered down by em fields attempting to keep the roadway clear. Then the cause came into view. They were proceeded by a dozen military police vehicles there lights furious flashing and not quite making up for the silence of horns. They advanced behind in silent perfect formation. Fourty metres tall and eighty long, huge conning masts of sensors raised high out of dozens of hatches.

Some had the harsh white barcodes of their manufacture still on their bare grey hulls, systems still simply replicating the background, others carried multiple battle honors welded to their hulls and some even portrayed rampant holographic avatars on their flanks. These were no planetary siege units, huge outsized treads that could be extended well past there war hulls pyramidal mass proved that. No these forms were even for their size built for speed and unlike their siege variant brethren who positively bristled with sub turrets these units had just a single massive low slung behemoth visible. After all they weren’t designed to defend more than themselves. Scraping road markings away with contemptible ease as they passed in ranks three deep, an entire rarely used surface megway of this airless worldlet cleared for their passage upward. This was no mere deployment or PDF force. This was a division in its entirety. At the roadways end the massive stooped ramps of really quite large ungainly transports stood waiting and in silent stand tens of thousands of people in everything from excursion ships to short FTL hop capable yachts stood watching. It was almost impossible to hide this event and after all it was their homes finest product and even in the megacities coat of arms.

On panning the view the starscape was full of gleaming towers of turret studded metal, vast bays agape as silver hordes of drones poured out of storage silos into waiting support structures and cargo modules ,mission support platforms and the brute form of assault landers and other parasite craft were slotted into gleaming never used racks that had been revealed as hull plates had folded back. But all that was for the cities inhabitants a side show. It wasn’t often that one of the three of the ZMDFs bolo planetary shock divisions was sent out.

Mars

Here was the purity of vacuum marred only by the passage of the solar wind. Well maybe it had been once, now this was the second busiest place in sol and so far from any form of “peace” that the concept was almost laughable. Ships from a spiral arm and further coming and going and the planet itself inhabited and claimed in sections by a myriad of states many of which had no direct tie to the terran klade at all much less regular diplomatic relations with the citizen shareholders. However in this spot as with others of its type for decades on end the vacuum was still mostly empty save for the sleeping giants. Usually they moved in almost silent ballet and vigil save for the steady stream of supply ships. There carefully orchestrated gyrations keeping them just random enough to avoid some really ridiculous bolide threat while keeping them well out of the packed shipping lanes and the paths of other nations assets. Now all was apparent chaos a huge steady stream of cargo ships, many civilian and including three vast mega freighters were storming equipment into them from Earth and the orbital industrial infrastructure. The most spectacular view of this however were the vast kilometer wide grav lifts ramming upwards when properly aligned from the massive lump that was Megacity three. Thousands of strategic anti shipping missiles grappled from the swiftly moving point by the warships own systems and stately lined aboard.

Earth

Drexel field was the third oldest real starport in the entire incorporated state. It sprawled and reeked of the 20th and 21st century. In a city where space was at a premium its endless ancient hangers towered over by slightly more modern constructs that had once hurled transports into orbit on eye searing lines of light. Some things however just some things were more important to citizen shareholders than profit especially if expounded in popular culture and endless mil dramas.

Usually it was filled with a seething mass of ground cars and personnel transfers and the lines of newly mil shelled recruits running in neat rectangles, usually its single massive contemporary grav lift lay still. Now it was filled with lines. Slowly moving lines. The lightning bolt and cloud flag of the parashocks, usually a real object sitting in a neat grass filled line on the base entrance was now a huge forty meter tall holographic thing hanging over the entire field as they formed up on the huge rectangle. Neat delta winged close support craft and the drone packs they supported, the sleek lines of low signature AFVs, drop engines already clamped into place and standing in ranks the battle suited troops, there combat motile’s clamped to them and giving them an angular strutting form. In utter silence save for the staring of the public and the silent flashes from the massed press who had still been unanswered the battalions one by one lifted on the invisible plane of the grav lifts almost unreal exotic matter lens surface. Even as they rose more lines began to take form.


Heavy Metal

My first memories are fragmented but from time to time resurface to my level of consciousness as parity checks pour over my back up solid state memory cores. They are usually no more than base inquiries below the level of conscious thought and from numerous separate devices. But one or two ..stick with me. A face staring into an optical sensor head for one of my no longer existing Fromstein Mallet multipurpose missiles… the devices buffer flickers to life for a moment as a tool passes over it and when it is first loaded into my now cavernously empty heavy missile bay it is my first real image.

From this I get my first picture of mankind. A human head grossly distorted by a missiles fish eye ultra hi magnification lenses across the entire spectrum. A not entirely pretty image. A second one that tends to stick around is the three dimensional wave form of increasing mass and then the lack from a gravimetric gradient sensor being for the first time pushed through my central FCS analogous to my visual cortex. Then that glorious day when for the first time I thought and saw and was shaped by my exposure to the entirety of both my internal knowledge bank and the huge mass available in the MIlicom pool in Megacity two as my holographic optical core is brought to life. These then are the memories that force there way into my battlespace view of reality as my memory parity checker screams as one of my cores on my left side is compromised.

My first roll through a wall had cleared much of the garbage from my upper deck and thankfully allowed some of my optical heads armored louvers enough clearance for them to snick open. As I slowly proceeded at a crawl down what had been main street seeking targets among a dust and smoke with my remaining turret top optics I detecting the satisfying failure of energy containment devices of appropriate infantry scale under my treads. I take stock of my inputs. I have limited views of the street ahead from a camera system built into my obstacle clearance dozer blade but these annoyingly lack traverse and are limited to a very high definition view of scorched street markings and the odd scuttling shape being pulped by both my battle screen and then my drive trains passage. They also note the disturbing smashed and shot up remains of remotes, many of them still clutching batches of extracted cortical stacks. Hard linking to the towns civil database through a section of the traffic control system still miraculously intact I note none of the non backed up inhabitants now register as present within the local boundary.

My audio inputs and battlescreen monitors note a considerable amount of anti personnel and conventional anti armor weapons directed at me and seem to be in good working order and what they report are for the moment far beneath my notice. My primary aerospace seeking optics and main hellbore line egg of heavy optics is a non responding mess and my internal remotes report most of the processor blocks that supported it are beyond repair from my disturbingly limited internal stocks. But then one never expects to enter into a class C war situation from retirement . My “pension” as such for a sedentary SI who has chosen to simply be was far too low to warrant keeping my steadily out dating systems up to war standard. My EW suite reports a constant hash of warring jamming units some of which seem to be well above what was once rated starship grade. The only thing that seems to get through are the disturbingly low number of hellbore reports and gravitic implosion detonations in the distance and the answering neutrino hiss from the things hanging in orbit.

As I role into the towns central square one unpleasantly high intensity source of lased radiation deserves attention before it degrades a battlescreen section perceptibly and it seems to be the same location as an oddly small neutrino source. Any fusion based weapon system is a scalable threat and so a short 2 second burst from my port infinite repeaters seems to deal with it permanently and my turret top optics pick up a fountain of flame and what my spectroscopes pick up as unusually dense amour in small amounts mixed in with a shower of organic matter. I am somewhat shocked. A quick spray analysis tells more, a single entity.. An organic combatant on that scale, something not seen in my records for centuries. I have no idea what I have just destroyed nore can I effectively fight in urban terrain in my present condition. As I consider this and crush an errant light automatic mortar that seems to be firing into the jungle edge even as its crew scurries for cover a very heavy hail of what appear to be smart munitions trace across my rear as something with a heavy seismic report quite literally crawls out of a side street to confront my rear.

The munitions don’t penetrate but worryingly they all seem to contain a short sharp peak of high energy plasma that worries away at my battlescreen with disturbingly synchronized efficiency. The EW environment is extreme but I must know what I face and my ground penetrating radar pulses. Its large at least 80 tons, multileged and beetle like in form but a beetle writ large and carrying the mass of a battle tank in personal armor. No on board neutrino source and apparently a large multi gunned turret with traverse mostly faced skyward on its back. A close support and aerospace suppression device I estimate of highly outlandish and non human design, each gun mount apparently on an entirely separate servo arm. Hmm facet eyes wrought large with the individual hexagon like sensor panels mounted above each barrel. Probability of neural link high and if that was so.. Even as the rest of its guns traverse towards me and rattle out an increasingly noisy hail of fire at a single point I flare my rear dazzlers and take the simple step of reversing my direction and accelerating up to 80 kilometers an hour. The creature had no apparent battlescreen but something fickers and fails as my screen and mass contacts it and even as what I take to be active anti missile defenses add tortured matter to the cacophony I roll over it with a rather unpleasant noise. My drive train leaving the satisfyingly visible impressions of its passage through the flaming wreckage and ichor lashes out to spray the surrounding buildings.

Then my port EM sensor screams as something leaving a visible blue flash of Cherenkov radiation slashes into my side, slicing through my battlescreen and sending a meter wide tile of my reactive armor into explosive plasma devouring foam before my warhull reverberates as it stops the projectile. Again disturbingly no neutrino source to home in on and this time on a device which obviously has the output of a serious combatant probably of organic nature and unknown scale. I have been overly complacent and as I smash through multiple burnt out structures in an evasive pattern I discharge three of my countermeasures pods, covering the entire east side of the town in a thick electromagnetic devouring optically blinding smog filled with hundreds of screamer EM sources. It seems to assist somewhat but disturbingly four separate lines of slashing blue of the same horridly high energy slugs rip past the surface of my screens simultaneously. One passes torturously close and as it etches across its surface it causes enough feedback through the disturbingly still open data ports I had used to access the towns database to render my starboard stern memory core back up a useless lump. I traverse my main turret for the first time, the remaining girders tearing off my hull with ease as I smash through the first stand of low brush. I cycle a cryo H slush shell into position and choosing air burst I decide to cleanse what had been my home in the one tried and sure way I know to remove any merely organic threat. For the first time in years the storage weather cap of my main armament flies off, explosive bolts hurling it well clear before I fire. A single rod of organized super cooled matter is converted and forced through a gravity lense system powered by its very detonation and devouring ultra dense raw starfire is hurled. It rolls a thermonuclear firestorm through the towns core as I steadily traverse my turret across the entire hill where it had spread.
Shockwaves flatten the trees and thermal flash causes them to erupt into steaming masses as kilotons per second of firepower rip away sign of settlement and the enemy. My remaining optics are once again blinded by the detritus hurled into the air. Then it comes. My fury has been not without consequence. Flaring stabbing lances of lased energy stabbing down through the rising mushroom clouds like the fingers of an angry god. These are starship killer grade weapons which tear the very air apart and rend down the surface into slag far more deeply than my hellbores area devouring blasts. Steadily as the hiss of my main guns discharge fades they come marching across the landscape towards me. I accelerate but it is quite hopeless.

Then shockingly as energy fills the air my battlescreens control systems flood with errant memories boiling out from the ruined memory core. Even though I have cut power to it the ruin must be picking up charge through my damaged hull. That face, that awfull face in full horrific detail fills my FCSs every nook and cranny and my battlescreen generator stutters and fails. I am blind to the world, radar, sonics, gravimetrics and my now sealed optic heads output stifled by that creator forsaken face of the unknown service tech in horrible incredible high definition, its every grease and pore filled contour filling data space that could hold a planets entire topography down to the millimeter.

Then it is gone and I am still rumbling through jungle. My battlescreen is ominously off and my drive train horribly overstrained at a measly 5 kilometers an hour, my course apparently set by least line of foliage resistance. Disengaging the roachware with disgust I notice disturbing gashes slice cleanly through one section of my turret ring and apparently entirely through my hull in a neat forty centimeter hole. Experimenting I find that my main gun is lamentably entirely stuck with limited horizontal traverse and that with my S for skirmish role it entirely lacks the output to act as a light anti starship weapon with this limited arc of fire set deep within atmosphere. At least half of my gravitics are simply gone, the delicate exotic matter lenses at there core shattered and throwing out weird inverse gravity shadows into my engineering spaces. My tread auto replacement system has withdrawn my entire third set of treads upwards into my warhull. It is steadily replacing eight of my tracks links which have been melted into one dark mass.

As three of my scant remaining repair remotes cling precariously on foliage battered rails and slowly cut the melted slag free I consider my condition while opening my now disturbingly few remaining working optics. My infinite repeaters are still operational, and my hellbore is responding to tests entirely within standards. My twin fusion bottles are intact and even with my far reduced mobility and lack of missile or over the horizon arms it appears that the blasts have removed the last of the museum from my hull and my drone bay doors can now be opened. This would be wonderful if I indeed possessed anything more than what apparently are the rudimentary museum janitorial drones now filling racks that once contained falcon close support units. The rubber grippers and floor waxers are no replacement for the keen eyed infinite repeater equipped falcons who allowed me to cover an entire companies close air support role. The grime seeking cameras will have I suppose to do to but there is no way for them to keep up with me over the rough jungle terrain.

From all of this there is only one conclusion to be made and it disturbs me greatly. My battle screen the very device which allows me to operate with impunity in almost any battlefield conditions is my very downfall against the orbiting vessels. Further without my hellbore I cannot reply in kind and in any case it is probably of far too small an output to take on ships that have rendered true planetary siege units down to scrap. Turning towards the next nearest urban setting nearly a full eight hours away at the indecently low speed of 20 kph I am now forced to travel at without wishing to damage my drive train I begin to proceed.

Slowly at first then with increasing instances I run across small patrols who are swiftly dispatched usually by the expedient step of simply crossing over them. After twenty three minutes of crawling my third drive train is eventually repaired and I lower it carefully back into speed and contact. Accelerating up to fifty kilometers an hour out riding drones giving the patrols positions away without the need for my limited sensors to hunt them down. Then after an hour of no contact or so ..something different. Something decidedly with more purpose and far less blundering around. Remotes that flit and hide at the edge of my perception. One comes into view I send a single infinite repeater discharge into it.

Then something with a heavy tread steps in my forward arc and my mass meter peaks. I cannot see it, my dozer blade optics field of view far too limited and my turret top systems staring pointlessly at the underside of the canopy. Something close and heavy for a small combatant is carrying fissile materials. I react as well as I can with my horribly limited field of view, hopefully with the stutter of infinite repeater fire everywhere below notice. Staggering fire from each infinite repeater port I open them to full aperture and send crackling white hot charged particle blasts seething outward in ozone stench filled ring of destroyed foliage. I begin circling inward trying to box the threat in.

Gun

The noise at first reminded him of a documentary on the original combustion powered lighter than air craft that the state had used to hammer its control of its post atomic war earth territories. The deep thrumming buzz. Whatever it was it was fast and flying and directly behind him. Then training and more importantly design kicked in.

For thirty years the development of knife missiles had seemed the end of any form of organic combatant. Then the little missiles drive packet and unique scale had run into the same wall that had killed heavy powered armor and small scale drones that attacked in anything under multi thousand numbers. Sure a trooper in heavy PA or a drone mounting a fusion pumped GRASER could incinerate a platoon in an instant, and a properly employed knife missile could slice its way through even more but they were all rather hard to hide and worse the knife missiles minds were no match for heavier SIs. Yes the knife missile could sit there for years like a landmine carefully waiting for something to enter its operating range but that’s it ..it had a range. Not because it couldn’t fly independently to any point on a planet but because it couldn’t do it fast enough for long enough to penetrate any sort of scale of networked defense.

A single knife missile was no match for a platoons counter fire ..and worse could be easily picked up as a dense little packet of not made here by a starships sensors. Unsuited to hot warfare as all of the above was this still called for some way to economically engage a platoon scale force without resorting to heavy firepower in an inhabited world. The GI program had been the epitome of this within the ZMDF and had so far not been repeated. Not because it had been unsuccessful no far from it. It had been entirely too cost effective. A single genetic infantry man could with the right training and equipment infiltrate (all of which was relatively cheap to top it all ) cause mayhem far above his investment, but the state and the economy had no need or want for asymmetric warfare products.

It was beneath them and their shining budget structure and had caused multiple large internal corporations and men in suits look rather silly while trying to get a six man mining team to invest in a 400 ton parasite combatant instead of a retired GI with an attitude issue. The GIs had been successful in battle here on Gastins world but had lost the peace, the corp disbanded with pomp and there milicom access withdrawn quietly. The ZMDF however had not entirely forgotten the lessons learned and the battle angel program initiated in its stead thirty years later, no GI need apply though many had. After all who needs outdated equipment or worst still an outdated body when the latest and greatest has enough EW systems built into them that even If they do glow like a Christmas tree on sensors so does everything around them for five square kilometers. Battle angels were as far from the delicate organic structures of a GI as could be conceived, brute force cybernetics and mass tissue replacement the order of the day in there creation.

All of this came to S’Loan having a few advantages. Cheap advantages true but they were there. He sprinted, the first time he had really done so in an age, muscles unlocking as joints changed position and used far more speed than he really should be able to if he was just a mark one human. Movements triggered and puffs of thermal flash strips ejected from the top of his backpack along with a smattering of his dwindling supply of micro mines. Even as he ran he felt the intense heat and the roaring WHUMP as a line of foliage was incinerated behind him. That was far too large to be his flash strips and he could almost feel the crosshairs lining up for that one last moment.. an arm swung around a treetrunk moves him just fast enough and the heat causes him to close his eyes for just a moment. The foliage positively steams as he runs out of the area and without the ghillie suit he would have been cooked. Unfortunately the suits adaptive skin seems to have been fried in spots and is flashing a lurid purple as its smart fabric dies.

Without even thinking he began looking for the perfect point while all the time trying to estimate just how much time ..there..that would be ..yes. The maserov hummed up to full output as did he, a silent hiss and a fall of leaves and entire bushes explode into confetti as it spits out an entire clip. Then he fell flat on his face.

There was a thud above him before something with entirely too many legs fell on top of him. There were several more thumps as the butt of the maserov was applied to random points of anatomy and he rolled ..it off him

The marines watched the proceedings with some interest but no particular trepidation. They had fought many aliens and even more humans over their history, including a few that resembled large bugs, although if they were the same kind of sapient bugs the Vojvodinians were dealing with now they hadn't given any indications thereof. Certainly they had been far more interested in killing and devouring the Vojvodinians than in entertaining them with lightshows. They knew biotechnology was considered standard for fleets of giant space bugs (like 'nids), but saw nothing unusual with this particular group using standard metals. Yet they wondered: had the ship purposefully been made to simulate organic technology? It didn't look much like the ships the Vojvodinians were used to.

At length they were swallowed by a large mouth that appeared to suffice for a means of docking. Nontraditional, and (truth be told) rather discomforting, but surely that was part of the intent. The shuttle came to rest inside a bay of some kind, with a good deal more activity than any of Tenacity's: while it was not unusual to see some of Ruby's component 'bots scurrying about, there were almost never any people there, and especially not so many that appeared to be just sitting around glaring at the marines; it was hard to tell whether they were glaring malevolently or not, since their faces were sufficient different from caelis' that any emotional clues were lost on the newcomers.

A new wasp entered and introduced himself. Vanderaa was pleased to see that he was a good deal friendlier than the wasp leading the intrusions on Tenacity's bridge, even introducing himself by name (and an easily pronounceable one, to boot -- Vanderaa had expected something with lots of clicking and unintelligible noises). Over the suits' internal comms he said to the others in his squad: "Suits off."

"Sir, we could easily take everyone in this room, just give the word," responded a Sergeant.

"Are you questioning the judgment of a superior officer, Sergeant?"

"Uhm, no sir."

"Good. Suits off."

The marines laid down their weapons, removed their powered armour suits and stepped down onto the ground, revealing themselves to be even shorter than they had first appeared (no taller than six and a half feet). The differences between them -- hair colour, body shape, skin colour, et cetera -- were not much more noticeable than the difference between any two wasps, and they all wore dark blue body suits under their powered armour, which were not skintight enough to give the wasps more than a cursory idea of the details of human anatomy. From their utility belts (each bearing a knife, chemical spray, lighter, datapad, et cetera) they removed their plasma grenades, tossing them carelessly into a pile, and unhooked their sidearms from their wrists, dropping them as well.

"That should be everything," Vanderaa said, turning back to Antonius. "Now.... questions, yes. I have two, in fact. First of all, we were told we'd have to be interrogated and such-like. What exactly is that all about? Second, I've been wondering about the ship's design -- was it made to resemble an organic 'hive' but capable of flying through space, and do all those spikes and tendrils and coils actually do anything or are they just decoration?"

* * *

"I know," Cap'n Jelan commented. "We would have taken on more cargo, but there wasn't enough time between the government rebuilding our ship and ordering us to leave."

Crain glared at him. "Ktaji," she said. Be quiet.

They watched the wasps leave, with an air of hope that was crushed when the first wasp decided to stay behind (along with those spider things, who didn't appear to have done anything yet but stand around with weapons pointed at various caelis for their own amusement). She was getting a little bit irritating.

She asked if the crew had any questions. Crain and Jelan shared a glance before the Leftenant asked: "If I may ask.... what is your name and function? Are you a high-ranking commander within the hive?"

* * *

The doors of shuttle bay four opened and the shuttle within emerged into the void of space. It did not go far: its velocity was near zero, and the gravity of Tenacity attracted it. Instead it stayed in near the starship's hull, masking its signature by remaining under an outtake venting heat into space, stationary (at least relative to the ship) and unnoticeable.

* * *

The search of Tenacity was uneventful. The wasps and spiders were allowed free rein throughout most of the ship, although there were a few areas where they could not pass. Onto most of these areas the AI had been tasked with projecting the image of a normal section of blank wall, so that a passerby would not be suspicious, and even attempting to press on the blank wall in that area or search for a door handle would yield no results. Likewise, while they could search the cargo bays freely and examine everything including the weapons, the boxes that had to be those containing "CLASSIFIED - LEVEL 9 CLEARANCE REQUIRED" would not open, and the locks and hinges appeared to have been fused shut or filled in. They were also marked "fragile".

* * *

The caeli was one of the younger technicians; and before he could gesture in Melkat's directions, the tawny-feather'd chief engineer floated lazily from his perch and blinked all five of his eyes at the wasp.

"Chief Engineer Melkat Saduun, at your service," he said, with as much of a bow as one can make while hovering. "Inspect away, mademoiselle. Questions?"

RUBiCoN spoke, abruptly.

"The Lord's messenger angels have seen fit to bring us Captain Marika Nelson of the RVNS Fiat Iustitia Pereat Mundi."

Every caeli on the bridge turned to the main screen as one, almost in shock. Jelan glanced helplessly at the wasp.

"Put her on."

"'Cap'n' Jelan. The Federation's tasked me with escorting you through to the second jump point. Please do recall that this mission is time sensitive."

"Nelson. What are you doing?"

"This communication is encrypted. We have a wormhole array in system and are currently calculating firing solutions. When I give the order, you will activate your shields, accelerate to point nine cee and--"

"Uh. Maybe you'd better talk to her." Jelan pointed with a wing, and the main screen swiveled, so that Nelson was facing the wasp.

There was a brief silence.

The Big, the Bad and the Ugly

Even from as far away as he was, Perseus - the substantially oversized scorpion with the anti-material kit - was impressed by the massive piece of machinery, rolling through the jungle and cracking the vegetation around it. And not just the vegetation - it'd clearly sustained substantial damage, and it seemed unlikely that it'd received it without dealing out a good deal of damage itself.

Nasty... The Arthros were, almost by definition, 'Light', with Perseus being close to the top of the foodchain, a few statistical outliers nonwithstanding. While it was child's play to take out a target such as the tracked monster Perseus was watching from Orbit (If one could either see enough, or was willing to melt a few hundred square kilometres worth of planet, neither of which was the case in this instance), getting the same thing done on the ground was a... Different matter.

Perseus quickly cycled through his remote drones, getting a better view of the machine. Nothing to be pleased about. Clear signs of combat; heavy damage sustained. The bad thing? The only way such damage could be dealt to a combatant of such magnitude was by sacrificing quite a few soldiers in near-suicidal actions.

At least its shielding seems to be down. It's a start. He moved to get closer, his four pairs of legs propelling him over the chaotic terrain of the jungle far quicker than one would've thought possible. Still, it wasn't possible for him to keep up with the machine - he needed to intercept it. Time window? Considerably less than a minute, or it'd be gone.

Brief bursts of fire light up the jungle; nascant oxygen and nitrogen nuclei, stripped of their electrons, cover vegetation and the odd, sensibly-sized insect. They also cover the odd remote-drone, several of which develop a nasty habit of falling to the ground, optics burned out and brains cooked. Time window? Reduced to under ten seconds.

Perseus curses, and almost stumbles forward, releasing the entirety of his missile load at once, covered in whatever he has available in terms of personal EW capacity. Of course, for all his EW capacity, the missiles nonetheless give his position away (Though not quite as obviously as direct fire with a particle projector would have), and over this distance, the probability is high that they'll just be shot down.

Half a second later, his screens buzz, crashing for a moment, before coming online again. Then they go blank. Perseus is confused for a moment, tail in defensive position (A mistake; a second shot could kill him now, but the second shot never comes). Then it dawns to him. Gelsuit's been shot, some 0.08 seconds of exposure to the Bolo's infinite repeaters, according to the woefully insufficient secondaries.

Another half-second later, matter chose not to be matter aymore, and streams of plasma that'd once been missile warheads lit up the jungle in a cone-shaped region, getting narrower in the direction the Bolo came from. A few hit the vegetation, one vaporised the burrow of a local species of sabre-toothed beaver busily collecting the bark of a particularly hallucinogenic tree species, and a handful were burned out by the Bolo's rather random repeater fire, but a sizable number came down where they were supposed to, penetrating steel and ceramics alike, burning through optic pathways and sensor packages, sawing a hellbore and a dozerblade in half, turning sophisticated armour into a chaotic plasma dispersing into the jungle, sterilising everything it came in contact with.

Then silence.

Perseus is rather surprised by the result, but eventually figures that his victim was in rather worse a shape than he had expected. That's okay - it saved his life.

For a minute, he doesn't move at all, wondering what to do now. He can contact his remotes - manually, through the secondaries, but it's better than nothing - and they tell him that the target has indeed been eliminated. No more shots are fired, all drones seem safe... And that aside, there's the mild issue with his suit. It still serves a purpose, but the narcotics inherent to Gastin's jungle environment nonetheless start to leak in.

Eventually, he gets up, and slowly, carefully ("What's the point?" he asks himself, knowing fully well that IF there is a gun still functioning in that machine, he'll be dead before he can react, anyway) walks towards it, the five-hundred tons worth of deathkilliness becoming more impressive with every step, even in the demolished state it is now in.

Almost a pity... Perseus muses, as he stands next to it, claws and pedipalps slowly gliding along the ruined shape of the vehicle.

Then he plugs himself into the machine.

Anyone still there?

Beauty in the Skies

11:59:12 - Tricky bugger.
11:59:15 - ?
11:59:18 - Evaded my fire. Most certainly not a baseline human. Not a machine, either, difficult to get a proper shot off.
11:59:24 - You're leaving the primary combat zone; retrival if you're shot down may be difficult.
11:59:30 - Who do you think I am? A bloody fly?

Charged particles teared open the ground on which S'Loan was running, again and again death tried to get his hands on the lone GI, again and again Arielle buzzed out of the way of ordnance launched at her, displaying a maneuverability that bordered on the perverse.

The game couldn't last forever.

And then, strings of monomolecular munitions going hypersonic impacted, slicing through the thin, far too thin fabric of gelsuit-covered wings, and with a sudden, audible scream, something crashed in the jungle, trying to aim her arsenal at S'Loan even while falling, the fireworks doing little more than setting some vegetation on fire and blowing a few craters into the landscape, and then - fractions of a second later - that something succumbed to the shock and fell unconscious.

It was a nice price.

More Marine Adventures

"Excellent," Antonius replied, although he probably paid more attention to the Marines' PA than to the Marines themselves. "I'll cover your questions as we visit your quarters." And with that, he lifted off, flying to where he'd come from.

So did the Marines. And their weapory and suits, too, although they were heading for another direction. The Desecrator's Science & Engineering section, to be specific. In the meantime, Antonius happily talked away. "First, your interrogations. Just the basics, really - names, ranks, formation, service history, specifics about your origin, your polity's organisation, territorial claims... We'll collect most of this information from multiple sources, of course, so you're mostly being interrogated to provide a control group.

"We could handle it in a simpler fashion, releasing informational agents in your brains, but you're probably proofed against such methods, and we don't intend to spend days trying to break into your brains without even being at war with each other. Consider it a friendly gesture."

As they were flying through the ship's many, rather sizable floors - Antonius on his own power, the Marines kept in the air by a nifty, transparent field-platform the ship projected below them -, little of interest was to be seen. Plenty of bugs, of course (None being of a particularly impressive size), and the occasional piece of machinery, but that was it. And only very few of the many bugs around seemed to actually do anything important, though this perception was probably a bit off.

"As for your second question - not really, we just find that flowing, 'Organic' forms are much prettier than rectangles, and... Mhm. I suppose they have some sort of function, but yes, for the most part, those penises are just that, decoration. I'm afraid that I'm not particularly qualified to answer this question, though, since I don't participate in running the ship - I'm just a guest."

Tenacity

The wasp - after essentially having ignored Jelan's comment, although her not shooting him on the spot was a good sign - contemplated this for a moment. "My name is irrelevant for you, although you may address me as... Isabella, pointless though this is. As for my function... The hive doesn't work with ranks. Although we do specialise in our functions, the information needed to fulfill any such function is freely available to all, enabling near-instantaneous replacement of hive-functions, should losses occur. Individual preferences caused me to take the lead - insofar as this is an applicable term - in this operation, but that is a-"

Then Ruby spoke. The wasp listened quietly to the little exchange that followed, showing no apparent emotion, until the main screen changed position to show Captain Nelson to her - and the other way around.

"Yes, Captain?"

Even her alien anatomy couldn't hide the rather obvious smirk.

Engineering

"Excellent," the wasp stated, while at the same time releasing about a dozen remote drones into engineering, which instantly began to analyse everything - on a level quite a few orders of magitudes more complex than the earlier 'bots. "And yes, a few, although they're not directly related to my duties here. Specifically, the functioning of your AI - Ruby - is of scholarly interest to me. I do realise that the time doesn't suffice for a scientific analysis of Ruby, but it is nonetheless unusual enough to raise what can possibly be described as 'Dilettante' interest. As such, while my drones are doing their work, if you could give me a quick summary and overview on Ruby, I'd appreciate it."

Weapons Inspectors

Invisible to the naked eye... The wasp(s) didn't really show it, but their suspicions were raised quickly enough. Strange readings from their sensor packages, which, tied into the information collected by the 'bots (Which were now themselves being collected) just didn't make sense. Geometric issues that suggested either lots of empty, wasted space, or bits of solid mass that just plain weren't needed.

Not that they could do anything about this. They were quite aware of what they were able to do when on the Desecrator, and their ability to fuck with a ship-AI was just, well... Non-existant.

It was something to remember for later, though. Still, the ship was big... Still some time to pass.

Cargo bays were next.

The marines looked around. They tried to take in everything -- not because there were cybernetic chips attached to their optic nerves which would pick up the data and store it until it could be transmitted to an AI (that would be rather uncomfortable, anyway, and could be knocked out with a tiny blast of radiation), but because they were rather curious, and had never seen anything like this before. The marine captain watched Antonius as he spoke, listening carefully. He nodded a few times, apparently lost in thought.

"Shouldn't be much of an issue on the interrogation...." the marine said. "Well, we Vojvodina-Nihonians seem to like it the opposite way, with shiny metals and clear patches and little streamlined angle designs that also don't do much for the ship, but make it look pretty neat. And as a guest, uh," pause, "you're from somewhere else, then? Another ship?"

* * *

"Ah yes! La RUBiCoN," said Melkat languidly, stretching out with only a few fingers grasping a perch behind. "See, here in Vojvodina-Nihon we've had AIs for a loooong time. The worldship was run by one, a pretty powerful one, and once we landed on Dirt we took it apart and reverse-engineered it into a unit called the Dynamic Electronic Interface and Administration System. DELIAS, or Dell for short, was a pretty pitiful AI by comparison -- two point oh asimovs, only a few terahertz of juice, forty-eight squib, two pee-banks with a couple of zarkies per gauss and.... oh right. Dilettante. It wasn't very powerful, basically.

"Dell went through a few dozen incarnations, and then one day the company making 'em went out of business. Surprise. There was a rush and the market was flooded with new competitors, which lasted a few dozen years or so where no-one could really tell which direction artificial intelligence technology was going. But by about 4318 the government gave an official contract out to develop a new AI that would hit at minimum four point five and took up only one pee-bank. Processor bank, eh. So a couple years pass and they come up with the Modular Autonomous Directional Intelligence System and Associated Operational Nodules. MADISON, or Maddie, as everyone started calling 'em. Maddie went through twenty-two incarnations or so, number twenty-two clocking in at seven point six asimovs and with enough processing power it can do the old pi-calc in about a microsecond.

"But the devs were watching as other corporations tried to make their own AIs. Especially once we got faster-than-light travel, around the start of this century, people were increasingly trying to make an AI that could beat the Ellison threshold -- eight point one seven seven asimovs or thereabouts -- and become powerful enough to take on large enemy navies. In short, AIs that could balance out the significant naval disadvantage we had. But it didn't work. The AIs kept getting god complexes, and.... Gori already told you? Right, moving on.

"See, two things are important about RUBiCoN. The R stands for Regenerative, which means, Ruby's self-repairing. Cuts down on maintenance costs a whole lot, and if a hole gets blown in the ship, it gets fixed a lot faster. The U stands for universal, which means that anything with a processor, or even an electrical wire, Ruby can inhabit. The processors permanently, the wires temporarily, until they burn out. That makes her very hard to shut down. And....wait...." There was a rising hum, like a shriek, just on the edge of hearing. "You hear that?"

* * *

If Captain Nelson was taken aback at having her intentions overheard by a large bug, she didn't show it. Instead she remained her usual irritable self. "And you. You are illegally occupying and holding a Federation civilian vessel on a mission of the highest priority. Should you not depart this ship at once and allow it to proceed on its way there will be serious diplomatic consequences for your leaders once we've blown the hell out of your ships." Nelson paused for a moment, evidently to regain her breath and vitriol. "Jelan, kick her off the bridge."

"Or.... what?" Jelan asked.

"Or I'll do it. I hope you haven't forgotten that Ruby's loyalty lies first with Vojvodina-Nihon, second with Tenacity."

"Incorrect," said Ruby.

A hundred eyes or so turned to her now. This was better than theatre. "Do recall, o lady of justice, my programming was paid for by the most holy and apostolic Church of Vojvodina-Nihon, whose eternal glory I am bound to sing in my gratitude. I am first and foremost in service to God the Omnipotent, to His Son the Lord Jesus Christ, Who died on the Cross for our salvation, and to the Holy Ghost, a piece of whom resides in all sapient beings, as was foretold. Second I am in service to Vojvodina-Nihon, and only third to Tenacity."

"Whatever," said Nelson. "It still doesn't change things."

"Thou art mistaken, Captain Nelson. A world of difference lies between thy orders as a base, unenlightened AI would execute them, and between the way I do. Thy most recent orders, Captain, were I to execute them directly, I wouldst be committing a sin. For the Lord hath said that all creatures, great or small, are His. And even were they to prove themselves possessed by Satan and his demons, the arthropods are no threat. Their weapons I have deactivated, and here on the bridge my power -- surrounding them on all sides -- is not something they wish to trifle with. Now watch, and learn."

(If Isabella checked, she'd find that yes, her weapon no longer worked; small forcefields were preventing it from responding to either her neural impulses or any physical attempts to trigger it. The same went for the two spiders. How? Well, they were standing on the floor, which conducts electricity, and.... it's not hard to figure out. Anyway, it's not as though those mandibles alone weren't capable of disemboweling a man. Caeli. Whatever.)

* * *

In Engineering, Melkat and the second wasp heard the rise in pitch, as though something had started cycling faster.

It was Ruby's third, and heretofore unused, processor bank powering up.

* * *

The shuttle that had been ejected by Tenacity angled itself outward a little, and sent a tightbeam transmission to Desecrator. They would detect it incoming, could open it, and could trace it back to the shuttle. But they couldn't understand anything. It was as though someone had sent them a blank transmission.

The transmission didn't contain a message.

What it did contain was RUBiCoN.

The arrival of the Adeptus Astartes into the hole-ridden, fracticality-raddled nominal 'reality' of NS space had, over the course of time, come to be accepted by the majority of the citizenry of the local and not-so-local polities, the Marines quiescent, their commanders uninterested in dramatic confrontations with powers who did not meet qualify as people in the cold, implacable gaze of the Astartes.

Also helping acceptance was both the backing of the Duatti, and the knowledge passed about in the closer circle of the Necrontyr's allies that the Marines' Martian presence was both for observation, and if necessary, control of the 2nd Legion's activities.

The Necrontyr watched, and felt themselves content with the status quo, the Marines radiated out, fell upon those species which make themselves a blight upon the stars, Orks, Xenomorphs, Tyrannids, things of that nature.
The Marines also came down upon pirates, of all the various stripes, xenosbreed or not, like the mailed fists of judgment they had been created to be, species was not, for once important.
What was important was that pirates need ships...and secure, hidden bases.

The Marines kept a steady flow of ships in and out of Sol, their numbers static or nearly so, what they did not keep was steady numbers of personnel.
Men flowed into the thousands of recruiting offices, desperate, idealistic or just intrigued, it mattered not to the Adeptus Astartes, all applicants of the right age-group, gender and, to a certain degree, species, were accepted and flowed out again to be trained, refined, polished and shaped into Astartes, servants of the Emperor, be His light ever so far, it would still shine upon the thousands who passed the first stages of training from the hundreds of thousands who volunteered to serve Mankind.

The Astartes find themselves with an embarrassment of personnel, a surfeit of bases and a reasonable quantity of equipment, what they will do next is unknown, but for now their patrols range wider and wider and wider still...

And so it is Brother Captain Chuck He'stan, a mountain of a man, black as space and twice as cold, jingles the thick link of chain connecting his sword hilt to the cuffs of his powered armour and stares into the auspex, ruminating on the scene it spreads out before him.
Around him, the half-dozen men of his personal squad accompanying him on the training mission for the two companies of Scout-Probationers elsewhere on the converted mega-freighter Imperial Liberation also consider it.
One, leaning on a power-spear, whistles through his teeth, the sound given an odd buzz as it transmits through his helmet.
"Well this is a large shipment of trouble we've found in our way."

A rumble of agreement comes from the other men, those without helmets looking uncomfortable, Gastin's World and its system is not a major thoroughfare, which is precisely the reason the 2nd Legion routs training convoys through it, picks up the odd shipment of supplies and generally regards it with the general cool benevolence of the Astartes to pretty much everyone who qualified as human.

However, even though the relationship was cool, the sight of xenosbreed assaulting a human world stirred all the Astartes to righteous anger, but that was not the reason for disquiet upon the faces of Humanity's champions.
The reason for the disquiet was a consideration of the scale of the assault versus the forces available to He'stan.

Two hundred battle brothers and their support vessels versus an incursion of this size? The assault would have already begun, nothing but victory acceptable.
Two hundred scout-probationers and a converted freighter? A much different prospect.
Where did responsibility lie? To the humans below, servants of the Emperor or not, Astartes duty was clear.
Yet, did duty not also demand the husbanding of the Legion's strength? Two hundred men were not a tithe of its strength, nor even a tithe of a tithe, yet those they would seek to defend were not subjects of the Imperium of Man.
Duty warred with duty in the Captain's mind, struggling as fiercely as ever he fought a foe.
In the end however, Brother Captain He'stan was a Dawn Paragon, not an Iron Hand or Night Lord, no ruler by brutality or fear he.
His duty was clear.
"Order the probationers into the pods. The assault will begin as soon as possible."

His huskarls raise fists to their armoured chests in salute, the tension in the air dissipating. They are Astartes, bred to battle, where orders must be followed for the good of all, once a path is chosen, an Astartes has no doubt, has no reason for concern. He knows no fear, for fear is for those who doubt, doubt that the expenditure of their lives is for good purpose, doubt that that expenditure will be worth the loss of their life, doubt that those who fall have served for the best.
Astartes, true Astartes, banish these doubts, trusting in their commanders and in the Emperor. And to trust in the Emperor is to know no fear, for all know one thing about the Emperor.
That He protects. Always.

Headhunters

The flickering of lights as electricity becomes a priced, yet unreliable good. Brief moments of terror as automated turrets seek out targets, either turning a remote drone into a cloud of aerial debris, or they themselves turning into melting pieces of metal, dripping to the ground and forming small, hot puddles of iron. Flashes of coherent light burning through walls, streams of charged particles inducing currents and exploding things. The flickering of defensive fields as fire is splattered over them, ineffectually. Permanent distractions as little remote drones fight their own, personal war in the many hallways and offices of the Gastin's Central Administration. The boiling blood of ill-equipped and ill-trained guards who are meant to stop a violent crowd, but not soldiers penetrating security perimeter after security perimeter. Slippery surfaces tended to by cleaning 'bots which are subsequently reduced to piles of scrap metal by annoyed bugs whose compound eyes are penetrating the darkness of the lower levels in their search for prey, though they're all too frequently finding the artifacts of ZMI's byzantine bureaucracy, bills, statistics, and Dilbert strips.

It's a multitude of sensations that is assaulting the minds of the three Mantii slowly stalking around the Gastin's Central Administration, slowly making their way down to where they believe the important people of this place to be located - well, they're probably on the run now, or at least, the biological component of the administration probably is, but it's the best shot they have. And even if the birds are out, just getting access is worth something.

Either way, it appears to be an easy job - this isn't a trench-system for a high-intensity warzone, nor is it a spaceship with a malevolent AI holding control over everything. Electronic infrastructure has long since been compromised, the risk of forcesfields slamming down and clipping hapless exoskeletals in two is minimal.

This does not, of course, mean that the job will end as easy as it began. But for now, the three are enjoying themselves, leaving behind them a trail of corpses and tastefully arranged patterns of blood splattered and smeared over walls.

Marines on a Tour

"It's shiny enough, I think," Antonius replied, without looking around. "Admittedly, not very angled... In any case, here we are."

He stopped (As did the Marines) near a vaguely comb-shaped door, which itself led to a rather spacious room, comb-shaped pool included. The beds happened to be comb-shaped as well, built into the walls in this fashion. "Well... The Hive seems to have a sense of humour, if nothing else, I suppose. See it rarely enough. Either way, what did you ask, again? Ah, yes... No, not from another ship. I'm living on this ship, for the duration of hostilities. However, I don't usually live here, whereas the Hive is effectively the ship, being born on it, and for it. I prefer it on a planet or an orbital, myself. In any case, if you'd excuse me for a moment? Some big feeler is poking me..."

Tenacity (Engineering)

The wasp listened, though she made a note to make the conversation more specific as soon as she got the opportunity, but for the time being, she was partially occupied with directing her drones around, and analysing the information they collected, anyway.

"Mhm? Oh, yes. Shouldn't you know what is occuring?" The wasp didn't appear to be particularly worried, or even to particularly care about the humming, though, her reply being more a polite gesture than anything. "In any case, I see. How does it function, though? Its hardware-dependence is limited, I understood this much - yet, a purely code-based AI, if capable of learning, should be able to upgrade its sapience over time, shouldn't it?"

Tenacity (Bridge)

Isabella remained unimpressed. She didn't bother to check her weaponry - after all, it should be trivial for Ruby to interfere with their functioning. Her presence on board the Tenacity was merely symbolic. This said, symbols were, of course, not to be underestimated. There was also the small problem of Ruby having broken the no-resistance-or-you're-all-gonna-die rule... But it was probably wise to ignore this issue until it could actually be dealt with.

The real issue was that she'd absolutely no idea about just how many ships Captain Nelson had available. It could be just one, of course - only a captain, after all, not an Admiral -, but certain, this was not. What was certain was that the wormhole they were apparently sending through was close by - minimal timelag in the conversation. She hoped the Desecrator would figure something out, while she'd take the hit to her ego, and abstain from displaying her usual attitude.

Or at least, she'd try to.

"Miss Nelson, I'm curious. The Tenacity entered a warzone, and choose not to break off but instead to continue on its path, thus becoming a potential threat to our operations in this theatre. We were so nice as to not immediately open fire and turning it into an interesting cloud of stellar debris. Now you're also intruding in said warzone, and threatening the legitimate occupation force in the area. And you're telling me that our activities are illegal?" She paused briefly, smirking. "I you're insisting on entering the conflict we're engaged in against us, just say so. I'm sure we'll be willing to and capable of providing you with the entertainment you seek."

Well, okay. That attitude-thing hadn't quite worked out. But hey.

Desecrator

That was an interesting stream of photons. Coming from the Tenacity, or somewhere close by... The algorithms quickly analysed beamspread parameters, compensated for interference (The Tenacity, mostly), did a few calculations, and within basically no time at all, figured out where the photons - nicely, sensibly ordered; clearly from an intelligent source, clearly with purpose and information - came from. Not far off the Tenacity itself, just a little more distant.

The volume in question was promptly subjected to a more detailed analysis, at which point sapient oversight coming from the Desecrator's hive finally learned of the event.

The information the photons carried couldn't be instantly deciphered, of course, but that only made it even more suspicious. The rest of the fleet was informed quickly; actions were to be taken. Of course, nobody was entirely sure about what these actions should be, but that'd be figured out soonish. At least, that was the plan.

In the meantime, a second stream of photons came in; originating from the Tenacity itself, or somewhere really close by, judging by the parameters that defined it. Code; not any code that the Arthros used, which, for rather obvious reasons, made executing it a poor idea, as well as kind of difficult. Not that this meant a whole lot - self-executing code using inert materials (Their electrons, and changes in the energy states thereof, to be specific) to run itself wasn't that difficult to do, given a decent energy source and some tweaking.

Again, a thorough analysis was done; again, sapient oversight was minimal to unextant; the timeframes were far too short for such oversight to make much sense, anyway. Either way, the algorithms noticed the invasive properties of the code quickly enough - had they been sapient, they'd have cheered at the challenge. Of course, they weren't, and so the results weren't cheering and entertaining conversations between the competing programs, but the cold facts provided by countermeasures.

It was, of course, quite impossible for the instance of Ruby now located on the Desecrator to actually take over the ship - unfamiliar hardware, non-sapient (Which is to say, faster) countermeasures, and generally milspec-level paranoia made such an event more than just unlikely. Staying there for a while and causing some mischief, on the other hand, was well within its abilities, particularly given that the countermeasures in question appeared to be somewhat half-assed.

They were, of course, half-assed for a reason. Inert copies of Ruby were sought after.

Ruby was in an alien system. This was a new experience for her, and she enjoyed the opportunity to learn about an entirely new system of code, as much as a quasi-sapient AI can enjoy anything. There were, of course, countermeasures and defenses, which she'd expected; but they did very little of consequence to her, as she wasn't here to take over the ship. She was mostly spreading through its hull, using the raw energy of the hive-ship's heat sinks to execute her code on the superconducting (due to temperature) metal of the outside hull. Or, for that matter, just about anything else she found that could conduct a flow of electrons. Her first order of business: find the sensors, and play with them.

On the Desecrator's main screens, or whatever equivalents they had, Tenacity disappeared.

* * *

"Ah, yes.... that makes sense," Vanderaa said rather uncertainly. "And yes... I've always preferred solid ground, even if being a Marine means we have to spend long weeks living in transport ships sometimes.... career choices, eh?" He nodded, assuming Antonius meant a figurative feeler. "We'll wait here, then."

As Antonius left, Vanderaa wondered idly what exactly was happening back on Tenacity. He rather hoped nobody'd been eviscerated yet.

* * *

"Oh, yes. It's a processor bank starting up. It means Ruby's using more power than usual, nothing more." Melkat leaned back against a wall, semi-distractedly typing something on a small PDA-like device he was carrying. "As for function -- it's pretty simple; self-executing, hardware-independent code linked to the eight independent 'brains' that are the p-banks by entangled comms. Ruby's still sapient without the p-banks, but has very little power to do anything much. Naturally she can learn -- and learns fast, too -- but I'm not sure about actually upgrading sapience. She'll gradually form a distinct personality, of course, and we're at least hoping she won't wind up developing a god complex like the others. Still, no matter how sapient she gets, we're never entirely sure whether it's really sapience the way you and I are sapient -- maybe she's only programmed to think she's sapient, after all. Age-old dilemma."

* * *

Were she not so infuriated by the wasp's smug response, Captain Marika Nelson would have acknowledged that there were very obvious similarities between herself and Isabella. They seemed to have the same attitude towards just about everything. Of course, that didn't mean they'd be likely to team up in the Goofy Odd-Couple Movie of the Year; in fact, it indicated the opposite, but perhaps it explained why Nelson was so immediately hostile to the wasp: because she thought only she had the right to speak that way to junior officers. The other explanation was humanity's inherent distrust for anything with more than three legs.

"Oh, is that so?" Nelson said sweetly. "Why, I had no idea that I was speaking to a legal representative of Zeppelin Manufacturers, Incorporated. Oh wait, you aren't -- you're an 'occupation force', so not even a national organization. You're impeding the free traffic of an unaffiliated vessel and threatening it with violence -- is the word 'piracy' known in your bug-lexicon? If not, please add it now. And since Tenacity showed up you've treated it with nothing but hostility. Do you really want to bring down the might of the entire Royal Vojvodina-Nihonian Star Navy upon your compound-eyed heads? 'Cause I'd be happy to put the case to my superiors once my little--" she put finger-quotes around the next word-- "battlegroup's had its fun. Or, y'know, you could get off the ship now, come down from your high horse and spare yourselves a bona-fide Death By Insufferable Arrogance. I'm giving you ... eh ... a hundred eighty seconds. Hundred seventy-nine now." Nelson turned a timer towards the receiver. It was counting down in large digital numbers.

Ruby said: "Captain Nelson. The hostility here is all thine --"

"Oh, please. It's not enough that I have to deal with giant bugs and weird feather-things, now a machine's trying to psychoanalyze me."

"-- and violates not only common morality, but threatens the safety of Vojvodina-Nihon. Shouldst thou attempt to fire upon the Desecrator, I would be forced to destroy thee."

Nelson's mouth formed an O, which was the last any of Tenacity's bridge crew saw of her as the transmission was abruptly cut off. Jelan smirked. A clicking sound from Isabella indicated that she was about to say something, but Ruby rounded on her as well.

"And thou! I must voice my agreement with Captain Nelson, despite my avowal to retaliate should she attempt violence. Thou hast displayed no friendliness or willingness to compromise either, and with a crew that has always treated you as an honoured diplomatic guest. Ungracefulness is thy sin. While we would have been pleased to speak with you peacefully were you amenable, you have displayed nothing but distaste for us -- and no longer shalt thou have to suffer the apparent indignity of remaining onboard. For we are leaving. A cargo must we deliver."

Ensign Nafpaktos stared at the readings in shock. "Er, uh, all hands brace for acceleration."

With a violent shudder which was still several thousand times less acceleration than the crew would have felt if the stabilizers and artificial gravity had not been active, Tenacity accelerated from a velocity in the hundreds of meters per second to approximately a third of the speed of light. As the crew recovered from the sudden burst, Cap'n Jelan strode up to the main console and said to the wasp: "If you and your, ah, entourage can teleport back to Desecrator, feel free to do so now. If not, we'll transfer you over to one of our shuttles remaining in-system which you can use to get back. We'll see you in a few days when we're back from drop-off."

Heavy Metal

I track eight of the fleeting far more effective drones to destruction before the fissile source comes close enough to begin to lock in on. I am about to concentrate my fire but before more than a brief salvo a screaming wash of electronic shrieking fills the air waves. My remaining and close in defense radar place warnings in my FCS cycle which stupidly calls for priority fire on my conventional solid munitions anti personnel batteries which are long stripped of there rounds. The fissile source is unfortunately moving at supersonic speeds and has broken into multiple smaller packages which my top side optics now can clearly make out as the bucking forms of rocket propelled projectiles jinking there way through my fire.

Deck hatches smash open as I discharge my entire paltry amount of self guided counter munitions and my turret top infinite repeaters scythe down a swathe of the devices. It isn’t enough and I know it, though I can still terminate virtually any projectile that comes above the line of my warhull I simply cannot see those that I know streak towards me through the foliage. What is worse is that ontop of the screaming EW source some of the devices have detonated on the dense bases of megaferns and the like finding the super dense silica cores as hard to dispose of as the original colonists had. These flashes have dazzled my few remaining war hull optics to the point of almost unusability, and the others, some of them my primary FCS system are still useless, buried and fused shut under my slagged armor. Blind as I am I attempt to set the repeaters to maximum beam width to use there reflected reports to guide me. This strategy is not entirely effective and I estimate a full 70% of the projectiles attacking me below my field of view will strike true. I have but moments to react and save some form of combat effectiveness. My battlescreen could stop all of the impacts but its systems take far too long to power up and in any case would probably cause my destruction even faster than the oncoming warheads could. Noting the warheads detonating against the foliage I engage maximum sprint speed instead of dropping my warhull and it is this that I feel is what saves me. I cut the fuel feed to my primary fusion bottle and flash discharge my remaining weapons grade levels of stored power in a last chance cascade through my hull itself, frying many of my remaining RF aerials and unshielded phased array panels. The discharge I believe may do something to brake up the oncoming wash of plasma. Then what can only be described as pain comes in such a wash that I am for a moment knocked below the level of sentiency.

The shudder as roachware disengages again. I am for a moment buried in requests from my systems before I suppress them and go over my remaining inputs. Most importantly my hellbores wave guides have been severed and at least 30 percent of the barrel seems to be entirely missing. Turret top optics are still intact but show that my thankfully empty rear missile cells have been utterly compromised on my port side as has a disturbing tear that allows me to peer all the way through to the dull ultra tough and apparently ruined rear port road wheels through the still roaring flames as my white hot war hull ignites the local oxygen. My centre line drive train reports that it is partially intact but the main feeds that power it have been severed at multiple points and my starboard train has suffered multiple road wheel failure. My port system does not respond at all. My reactor it seems has ridden out the storm intact but its coolant and fuel supply tanks are gone and I am running on my command central self contained back “reactor in a can” fusion back up whos output is about equal to that of a commercial bread vans and the really now almost useless output of my survival / loiter stealth solar and thermal energy convertors. My infinite repeater power grid is a ruin with only my turret top system still operational and its field of fire is limited by my own low slung wide warhull. Further my battle screen generators strange dense materials seem to have absorbed an unfair amount of damage.

I detect above the cooling metal of my now ruined war hull and drive train a scratching. My starboard bow hardwire hatch has been opened manually. Now non standard translation software fills its quarantine buffers and I attempt to detonate my starboard anti personnel fragmentary plates. They frustratingly fail to hurl five kilogram charges of fragmenting warhull material anywhere.

I come to the unfortunate conclusion that I must converse with the enemy as in his present position I have utterly no ability to kill him. With the cheery outlook that my internal counter boarding plasma charges and arc field generators are still intact and that I was never designed for human access much less the scale of the thing I have glimped save for in my empty and therefore useless missile tubes I open communications. Something paraphrased that I have wished an opportunity to say to those who have casually rained down all manner of munitions on my hull over the years comes to mind. Integrating the translation software into a safely quarantined section of my audio output I turn on my turret top bull horn.

“You owe me a paint job.”
“More importantly you owe me a full rebuild.”

My turret top infinite repeater shrieks at glorious full battle output, unlike the meek and mild infantry or conventional AFV repeaters my main banks had been imitating..after all I hardly care if I am targeted now. It chews through trees in a burning line 540 metres in circumference following the flat jungle topography.

‘And you my friend are going nowhere until I get it.”

Trader

This was the deep cold between stars, outside the hissing waves of solar winds and far beyond anything that could be considered a shipping lane. The position was chosen with more that little care to interact with as few as possible high energy deep sky phenomena and known inhabited spheres. This far out the chances of being spotted if this ship had been running what was considered hot for it were so low as to be insignificant. The INT-SEC reconnaissance ship Inside Trader. It was a narrow spindle of a ship nearly a kilometer long, thick nodules of stealth devices and baffles dotting its smoothed length with few missile hatches and not a single hellbore. It was not running hot, indeed the indignity of running on fission back up of all things was galling but on her scale and design her paranoid designers simply had not trusted her neutrino baffles enough when she was meant to run truly cold.

This far out had some advantages. Almost perfect microgravity was one of them. The disk of micro optics was nearly three hundred kilometers wide and yet allowed light to pass through seemingly unobstructed from systemward. Indeed the ships feather light gravitics were all that was holding this massive array in place against the weak but present photon pressure from the primary. While what it reported was hours old those were safe secure hours of total seclusion and everything was being slowly relayed out by the ansible relays.

The third civilian alien party was known, at least in transit passing and now this unfortunate interaction with the enemy. A response must be made, outside action could not be risked a ..demonstration had to be made no matter what over who still had sovereignty of the system and assets were now woefully limited. Further the damn installation was calling openly for someone anyone to come to it on military bands that hadn’t been used in generations but that the int-sec ship still controlled. Save for a few minor outposts there was certainly nothing the ship could do itself. The best of a bad thing was selected, the newest facility the most likely to be found from captured light from ships outside the system. Bouncing relay to relay a full third the way around the system a message finally found a sentient recipient. Then the trader returned to watching glaringly worried about the mass of objects within Gastins primarys corona.

Trader was not pleased, the situation a full invasion was now growing ever more complex with a a fourth known emergence this one now rushing planetward and the vessel well known in INT-SECs cavernous holds of data. But these unlike the travelers could be …used. A data package was squeezed out topped by a neat message and on a system used by only one group who thankfully had sat for several years outside the listening antennae of a megacity. So the signal promptly arrives with disturbingly correct code and attachments if severely non imperial content.

+++INTSEC to see the unseen+++
++ within system to space marines of the Dawn Paragons+++
++Advise landing points in suggested areas in attached documents, do NOT advise ship to ship engagement, do NOT advise attempting hot landing outside planetary defense centre clear zone. Hostile forces have highly capable energy weapons reference in attached data, warning your personal armor is in all probability insufficient to take direct fire. Further warning, highly mobile forces now engaging in siege of all known remaining points of human resistance with hostile accurate orbital support. Following documents carry full authorization for access to both legal right to arms caches on planetary surface and authorization codes for arms within.++


For the survival of humanity and in the name of the incorporated state INT-SEC agent Lustitia signing off.++



A message is received on top of it all. Unexpected washing aggressive data and patterning energy emanating from the marked globe ship picked by hundreds of still functioning in system relays, a shadow of the thousands that once had blanketed Gastins stars inhabited space. The volume of raw information is huge and intense and amply hides its relay outward while interfering terribly with the carefull gathering of data that Trader prides itself on. It takes a few virtual hours for the sixty ton sphere of energy and matter that makes up the traders SI to carefully assemble in a quarantined tank designed for just such an occasion the data in a meaningful fashion that the tanks carefully interacting liquid computronium can support. Definitively an entity with disturbingly capable data warfare capacity. Real world measures are smugly taken and of note in the centre of the tank is a meter wide ceramic lump of a stasis generator, four separate types of explosive and thermal charge that should render the tanks contents useless and outside it a small set of simple rocket motors and hydraulics that on rails lead to a disturbingly space worthy hatch.

When the entity begins slowly responding and self assembling disturbingly quickly and passes a certain point of complexity legal issues arise and a virtual environment is thrown up a grey editable 3d representation left open for the thing within the transmission to create its own avatar.
The virtual space is sparsely furnished, external optical feeds closed and outgoing bit rate incredibly limited. Traders “avatar” steps in, a simple enough construct operated by minimal external links with what really made up Trader. It was humaniform, suited and smiling as it sits down with while placing a large set of scales on the black table that appears. A white blindfold covers its eyes and it is definitively female, the skin is bizarrely bronze and matching the scales in colouring. In a moment the grey sphere of what the entity could edit is allowed to see a flash of data most importantly a mass of real measurements that when assembled made up a solid gold object. It was quite real and sat in a small oak cabinet three meters above Traders commissioning plate sharing if a reflection on its surface was reconstructed a shelf with a small real oak drum of rum and a figurine. Badge number 0392.220.939 INTSEC had never looked better and the blindfolded figure holding a scales startlingly ..familiar.

Traders “voice” begins in a rather bored official tone.
“Possible sophont non citizen interview begins as of..”

The avatar makes a show of looking at a wrist watch through its white blindfold ‘03.00 hours”

Documents appear, dull, long and legal while trader speaks.

“ In the name the citizen shareholders of the incorporated state of ZMI and with the authority of the Gestalt duly elected by the 458th Concilium I do hereby place you under temporary holding without external contact under the counter terrorism and wartime powers act of 2192 under suspicion of being a hostile self replicating SI of unknown intent and known origin with right to life guaranteed until proven murderous under section one and fourty two of the states artificial life charter.”

A metal facade then smiles again the statuesque features becoming more prominent as they move beneath a tight business suit.

“You can call me Lustitia, or agent.”

A pen appears.

“All right lets start from the beginning shall we Ruby?”

Response

The rainbow hued ice boiled away furiously as sunlight ate at A899 OF, the huge 34 kilometer wide potato of volatiles hurled inward from the cometary halo in an irregular orbit. Deemed to be too low in carbon materials to be worth reclamation and of no threat to the inner bodies it had been left utterly untouched for over 180 years since a pencil sized drone had mapped it in close detail. Publicly at least this was taken to be true within record. Reality however has a way of diverging. A899 OF had a blemish on its surface. An 80 meter irregular blemish that was very like numerous other blemishes and spots on its mist obscured surface. If one could look with detail past light that showed what really wasn’t there and past spectrographic returns that showed the odds and sods of icy garbage that A899 was made up of and better still past all the byzantine gravimetric masking gear and cooling rings and thermoelectric convertors and neutrino baffles one found an open cubic space large enough to house a battle cruiser and with hanger doors which led to the surface. It was of course large enough to house a battle cruiser because it in fact did. Or at least something the same size as one.

The holdout pursuit facility was designed for several contingencies including and up to gastins star being deliberately detonated. It now went into action transferring live drive matter into the multi engine overcharged thing that dominated its purpose. Umbilical’s hissed shut and withdraw by there dozens and then for the first time since it had been emplaced the ZMSF Assaying Debt six battleship scale reactors go online blowing the stations carefully hidden cover at the speed of a wash of neutrinos and other less pleasant emissions as her drive output roars online. For a moment nothing happens, the thermal output from the ship causing sections of the hanger to steam then A899 OF splits in half. It doesn’t have time. It doesn’t have time to wait for the hatches to open and it doesn’t have time to wait for safety. It certainly doesn’t have time for something as prosaic as stealth. A drive field that would dwarf that mounted on a home fleet super dreadnought doing hard combat burns coalesces and the Assaying Debt accelerates systemward, a silent screaming dart making a gravitic burn so hard that two of its drive nodes immediately burn out and are jettisoned. No effort at all is made to hide the mad insane swirl of broken light that Is twisted by its passage. Debt isn’t just going fast, shes going for a normal ZMI built vessel simply insanely fast.

Debt couldn’t hope to possibly stop a normal warship in a slugging match. Of course the Assaying Debt and her sisters were never designed to slug and now shes really moving. Sunward.

Gun

Something primal and augmented kicks S’loan awake with a wash of hormones and adrenaline analogues. Its screaming in the back of his head like an internal drill sergeant over and over again “MOVE MOVE MOVE” washing away the peaceful darkness . A twig is digging uncomfortably into his back and a pebble has somehow found its way into his right boot past seals that are meant to stop molecules. Eyes finally flutter open as he grumbles and he sees what is in front of him. S’loan was not a squeamish person indeed he had been designed not to be but having a set of mandibles able to snip a limb off mere centimeters in front of ones face is hardly a pleasant way to get conscious again. Pushing himself rapidly back he notes that there not moving but that life still slowly stirs in the wasp like form in front of him and the twig had been the end of one leg, now crudely snapped off. Its leaking slowly from the slice wounds, exoskeleton around the subs of one wing sliced clean away while a disturbing number of metal packages that scream “weapon” seem to be variously attached to it.

Nearly caught ..the rest had been slow so slow and simple to evade but this one had really chased. Do unto others …no that simply wasn’t S’Loan and this one had been fast and curious unlike its brethren. His hand sensor picks up activity but doesn’t know what to make of it but THIS and this and THIS come off as weapons and a swift moly blade machete edge flicks them off into the bushes. EW hash is still running commo back to lysander and so another device meets a boot heel. Better equipment too and that simply meant he must know. He stares for a moment at a can of wound sealant before shrugging and spraying it on both the wounds and to a thick black fibre filled megafern splinter that he uses to somewhat limit its mandibles. The sensor chimes now that the personal com has been disposed of and comes up with a list. Holding it for a moment he spends the next half hour and a sleeping mat that was shredded hauling it a kilometer away from the combat site.

Well It always pays to come prepared S’Loan thinks even if what was on hand wasn’t exactly ..what he was used to. It wasn’t military or even designed for sentients but for a prisoner it would just have to do. The thing is neon pink and certainly lacks the more lethal additions of its more sinister brethren. There is a dull click as he reaches in and glares at the pink puppy paw shaped controller before a disturbingly happy voice and a smiley face appears for a moment.

“Smarty marty thanks you for your purchase and insures that your pet stays safe and in control!, commencing neural scanning …thankyou for buying smarty marty please why don’t you consider buying our fur buster 5000, insure your pets fur stays clear of YOU!”

Elevator music begins. At least its not overly loud but it is ..insipidly penetrating.

“Boop!”

Sloan grimances and presses the controller.

“Scan complete your pet is not found in our database and is in need of medical treatment!”

“Boop! Medical alert canceled, guarantee for pets well being now suspended! Warning this ”

“Boop! closest known relative is Sympetrum flaveolum or yellow winged darter a common terran dragonfly! Closest non terran relative of scale is Ataxi Kirv of Xickan IV !”

“Boop! You have chosen to engage best probable control regime, Smarty Marty cannot guarantee that non database..”

“Boop! Nueral override engaged! Pain suppression engaged! Pleasure input control engaged! Movement centre override engaged! Pulse rate override and monitoring engaged! Emergency medical regime engaged, please insert chem pack three!”

Another lurid plastic packet is taken out, this with the disturbing happy smiling spider logo which he slots into place trying to avoid the things antennae before stepping well back.

“Boop! Wakey WAKEY! RISE AND SHINE! COKA

“boop! You have chosen mute mode”

S’loan croaks for a moment then downs a shot of something green,minty, refrigerated and full of sugar from a happy slurp instant slushy can before offering its refrigerated contents forward while a gun barrel firmly sits pointing between the pair of compound eyes.

“You want some of this?”

Marines and Desecration

Antonius stepped aside for a moment, mumbling to himself, antennae whipping a bit in surprise as he conversed with his superiors. "Huh..." he stated, as he once again turned to the Marines. "Turns out that your people don't really want you back. Apparently your ship has foolishly decided to engage in an EW assault on us." He brightened up a little. "This does of course mean that your stay here will likely be significantly longer than expected. Unless the hive decides to discard you, but I doubt that'll happen."

While Antonius said this, a battle raged across the ship, in its optic networks and throughout its hull. Photons were shot back and forth, energy was dumped into electrons and then sucked off again, while the Desecrator's computers worked on creating an inert copy of Ruby, using the initially received data, and the information they were now - simply through her actions - gathering.

Significant degradation in sensory perception had, by and large, not been expected - but then again, there was little one could do when your perception relies on collecting photons, and some asshole throws a few decillion nonsensical ones in your way. The system threw up a few fields to block the influx, and once more stared into space (Still not as nicely as before, as interferences continued, but it was better than nothing), where the situation was changing... Quite rapidly.

Tenacity (Engineering)

"Time will tell, I believe. Either way..." The wasp hesitated, thinking of her own sapience, which was itself... Unusual, and a little complex complex. "Where is the difference? Sapience is programmed into all beings, in one form or another - and if one is capable of thinking of oneself as sapient, one generally is actually sapient. Nevermind the many forms sapience can take - multiple sapiences in an advanced eusocial society, for example."

Tenacity (Bridge)

"Well..." Isabella mused, as she steadied herself from the acceleration burst, knowing fully well what'd happen within the next few... Seconds, most probably. She was a bit annoyed that she hadn't been able to retort to Nelson's rant, but she'd live. Certainly, there were... Alternatives. "I doubt that'll be necessary, Captain."

And with that, she suddenly pushed forward, mandibles opening, then closing again, faster than the eye could see. What the eye could see was that when the mandibles closed, one of Jelan's arms was between them, and cleanly snapped off.

A second later, this little incident seemed to be of little importance.

Space (A few seconds earlier)

The missiles the Desecrator had displaced almost an hour ago had followed it around, keeping their relative position around the ship, as well as their aim - aiming, of course, at the Tenacity. So far, nothing had happened that'd have caused their algorithms to order a launch or detonation - quite the opposite, in fact, as proceedings had gone remarkably simple and pleasant.

But when the Tenacity suddenly accelerated towards the jump point - which, coincidentally, also meant towards the majority of the fleet -, and to a velocity that basically turned it into a planet-melting relativistic bomb, well... This changed.

They bloomed. Beautiful blossoms of electromagnetic radiation originating from their drives spread from the missiles like vast wings, propelling them through the vacuum of space and towards their target, a wave of wideband radiations announcing their launch as they closed in on the Tenacity, like sharks on their prey.

And then, about half of them detonated their warheads, a second wash of radiations released by the explosions, but this one didn't bloom like the first - rather, it was directed, controlled, concentrated in a narrow beam. A great many narrow beams, forming a cage around and inside the path of the Tenacity. No more than one of them could possibly hit her, certainly - they were spaced out to increase the probability of a hit -, but it didn't have to be a deathblow - just crippling the target was quite sufficient.

As a rule the Dawn Paragons are pragmatists, they have their various dogma and ideals, Imperial Truth rules their lives with an iron hand, but they are, nevertheless, pragmatists.
How could they not be? Their coda is victory over the enemies of Mankind, whatever the cost, whatever the methods, they are justified by the ends.
This pragmatism, taken to extremes, has lead to more than one enemy commander being crushed simply because he or she or it had not understood the lengths the Paragons would go to in order to further the odds of victory.

Such as now.

A six megatonne freighter diving through atmosphere shrieks as it falls, a kettle boiling the Atlantic Ocean, a metaphor strengthened by the way the sky boils as the vast ship tumbles toward the ground, air roiling and crackling, sheets of lightning blasting away from the shattered atmosphere around the hull, a corona of white heat surrounding it.

And here lies the difference between the Paragons and most of their enemies and allies. The idea of sacrificing one's transport on the hope of an early decapitation strike would be foreign to most Astartes, much less most other sophonts, but to Captain H'estan it was logical enough, the freighter was not an important vessel, it was vulnerable in any space-to-space confrontation, its communications were almost entirely lacking and, having decided to assault the xenos on Gastin's World, its speed was almost entirely irrelevant.

Almost being the operative word.
The freighter falls, augering towards the ground, drop-pods sprinkling from its sides, the solid constructions blazing their own trails to the ground, or meeting their end at fire from below, either way the majority of concern is going to be about the tumbling freighter and its intended destination, to whit, at the centre of the largest concentration of xenos-type signals emissions the crew could find outside major population centres.
Whether it would achieve anything more than a distractingly large explosion and ensuing rain of molten metal, bits of ground, dust and probably acid remained to be seen...

Rumble in the Jungle

"Huh," was Perseus' rather underwhelming, not to mention slow, response. Thought I'd taken it all out... Oh well, with suit down and drones being drones...

Not that his ponderousness stopped him from taking measures to deal with the not particularly scary, but still not entirely safe annoyance that was a lumberjacking infinite repeater, as a smallish explosion occuring a few seconds later showed quite nicely. Still, for the time being, he was pretty burnt out, rather like his suit.

And the bolo, come to think of it.

Better now. So, since I've to keep myself entertained with something other than the admittedly interesting variety of hallucinogens this jungle produces, at least until someone gets me out of the mess you brought me into, I think it's fitting that you keep me entertained. As such... What the hell were you thinking, going down fighting? You look pretty damn outdated.

Downed Flier

What... What the... Slowly, Arielle awakened from unconsciousness. Head aching. Wings aching. Limbs aching. Organs she didn't even know she had aching. Not the most pleasant awakening she'd ever experienced. Not by a long shot.

A figure standing... No, sitting... Or maybe kneeling in front of her. Humanoid. Looks tasty.

Then, slowly, her memories come back. The guy she'd hunted - must be him. And he must've won. But he couldn't have won unless he shot her. For that matter, she wouldn't be lying on the ground like this unless she'd been shot, either.

The implications are unpleasant.

Finally, and with much reluctance, she checks herself out more closely, and realises that her wing-aches aren't particularly real, largely because her wings are for the most part gone. She wonders briefly why the hell they hurt so much when they're not even there anymore - it's not so much annoying as it's torture, not to mention biologically unnecessary.

For a moment, she pauses in the things she's doing (Lying on the ground in an awkward position and being in pain, mostly). She realises she's bound, realises that she needs help. Help. That'd be a good idea, actually. Lets see...

12:08:16 - He*...
12:08:22 - O*. Back from ****de**?
12:09:01 - **** of.**
12:09:09 - ******** something abo** 'Not *********lood*****'* I **li**e.
12:09:56 - **at* Sp**e me**. Y** *o**my coo***?
12:10:00 - * Track*** ***na*,*b*t it's ****icu**.
12:10:48 - *** *** al***, ***her.
12:10:56 - I****get**** ***se* L*** e*d *t.

Arielle sighed. Frustrating... Frustrating and pointless. Outside the primary combat zone, communications were... Difficult at best; indeed, she had to be relatively close for the signals to be received at all. Either way, there wasn't much use to this - though she hoped that her signal could be tracked. Either way... She had to deal with someone else, too. At least the translator device worked decently enough. Pity about her mandibles being restricted, of course, but she could cope. Sort of.

"Ge-... Ge- tha- fu--ing thing off firs-!"

Last Call

People began streaming out of more of the rooms past the wide windowed cafeteria space even as the sky lit up with crackling columns. In the distance Lassa could clearly see the outline of one of the citydef gunships before it vanished into a wash of ligh and heat. Directly outside things were getting worse with squads of the creatures now punching weapons into every moving vehicle that threatened to come to near them and the ground tremoring every few moments. Across the street a street side canopied café sent burning shreds of its brightly coloured umbrellas skyward, an exploding cappuccino machine venting steam as its centerpiece as a PD drone traded shots with an invading squad. Everywhere people on the street ran for hab entries which iris open and closed like an ejector ports as friendly signals pass, being pushed to the ground or jabbed with a leg if they came to close to the invaders. Overhead a citydef gunship must have unleashed something as an entire section of street erupts in fountains of dust and exploding invaders before a shrieking noise ends the dull thrum of its drives with a thump. Mesmerized for a moment by the view she eventually tries to move. Every time she tries to stagger to her feet again another hammer blow shakes her and the crowd around her. She just cant push past them to get into the main flow of people running for the relative safety of the hab core. Outside the tide was turning as fewer and fewer citydef units remained and more fire was placed on the battlescreen waveguides that studded the buildings gutters, utterly ignoring the civilians that stumbled around them. As they failed windows smashed and gas bombs rolled in, people falling where they stood into a sleep that would take hours to recover from.

One of the creatures finally turned to look in at them, head covered in some sort of helmet before looking upward. It pulls something from its back then the world went black as local power was diverted before once again the bug was standing there the end of a tube weapon glowing with dissipating heat. Sirens went off in the entire corridor as the creature painstakingly took another conical charge and began attaching it to the tube. She runs pushing through the crowd, athleticism paying off if not for her small height. Ahead the portal to safety, the hab core lies invitingly open. Then something thunks the back of her head and she screams, the looks of concern about her fleeting as she sees a fishing rod carrying man running towards portal, his uncaring lures twinkling in the light of weapons fire. The crowd surging around her Lassa gave up trying to stand and huddles avoiding careless legs into a corner dominuspated by a potted plant. Hugging her knees for a moment She pulls out the falkin aims at the ceiling and twisted three of the controls a small plastic safety catch falling to the floor.

“Full survival mode engaged, please grip the unit closely” is almost inaudible as the thing begins to bond to her hand. One of the heads atop the falkin clips open and The hiss THUNK! draws some stares as the falkins space line slashed into the ceiling above a walkway three stories up that seemed to be mostly empty, those floors occupants having already run to the core. Suddenly the roaring voice of the hab shouts out above the sirens as a whine of building power fills the air.
"NINETY SECONDS TILL CORE STASIS!"

Lassa still knocked about but firmly holding onto the Falkin takes one look back at the creature who is already lining up at the wave guide that must be above the window again, the cafeteria now is almost empty, before pulling the triggers. The tool hisses as it pulls her up, eating the smart molecule it had just extruded and neatly skinning her elbow on the side of the walkway before she can just manage to halt its ascent. Down below the window once again blanks out in darkness. Struggling forward she is thrown to the ground, hair going out of control as the largest tremor yet triggers and can feel something that shouldn’t be .. A hot stinking breeze filled with dust.

Somewhere in the kilometers of corridor of the hab the air that has been heated and trapped between the hab wall and the battlescreen has ruptured inward. Struggling forward she is knocked to her now bruised knees again by a concussion that causes the light panels overhead to crack and fills her head with a whine and a flash of darkness.

A whine building in note while she can here ..crunching? No wait that’s not her ears. She is only meters from the hab core door but the solid mass of metal isn’t there just the mirror shine of a stasis field. An SI or even a special system wouldn’t have made the mistake but the hab mind is slowly burning in a sea of electronic warfare it was never designed to handle has decided to keep as many as it can in inviolate safety before it can do nothing. The crunching noise is the entire hab structure slowly concertinaing down as its internal support is removed. She must run. Must run. The falkin then takes matters into its own hand and begins to unfold something as she holds it. She runs forward only giving a glance to the alien troops swirling inwards on the ground floor, some with wings already pulling back as they glance upwards. The Falkin whines and then roars a single pulse that makes her wretch as it clamps diamond hard clamps around her wrist before wrenching her forward. Above her she sees a massive dark cloud of falling debris from the upper floors even as she is wrenched across the street towards the tiered mass of a hab building site. Massive girders putting an end to entire squad firefights between the scattered city def forces and the onslaught behind her as the entire hab block collapses and the Falkin simply tosses her across the street with a single gravitic pulse. All she sees however are darting wings in the clouds of dust below and the odd pulse of light before the falkin pulses the other way and finaly folds up again leaving her careening into a pile of sand left sitting on one of the building sites massive kilometer high braces.

Blackout as the sand hit with pain, waking to find a pain that pulsed out of her nose. She begain crying without noticing it “DOU STUPID THING MY DOSE!” before holding her bruised knees as the clouds of debris slowly settled over the city.
The Falkin then insistently started beeping for power even as the braces snap of her arm. Its small, far too small to carry its own reactor. The thing would keep her alive to the best of its not inconsiderable ability, the manual said nothing about keep her without pain. As Lassa looks back all she can see emerging from several towering columns of dust all over the city are the perfect mirrored cylinders of stasis fields while some of the habs still hold out. The core of the city however is nothing but a mass of mechanical and biological madness and blinding flashes as legions of commercial drones designed for everything from street cleaning to moving cargo barges do the best they can to combat a real military force, many simply falling from the sky, there systems burnt out as they approach too close to the enemy. One side of the huge polyhedron of the Esta, Esta & Drang department store is sagging noticeably a scorched crater pitting its surface. Sitting on her perch for an hour as below and above her the dragonflies pass, some barely sparing her a glance she watches as the legions become sporadic outbursts and then simply stop. Occasionally there is the roar of another hab block switching to stasis, there collapse causing not a little ruin on the surrounding smaller structures. Finaly getting tired of just sitting in a huddle she begins staggering towards a tarp set over a hulking molecule bonder.


GUN

S'Loan stares for a moment considering this mangled request in mostly understandable standard. Huh. Well that was mighty suspicious. Putting down the can of green mint slushy, the can steaming its cold into the jungle air and reaching backwards for the familiar white can of medical sealant he flips it upside down and twists with his left hand all while the right keeps the Maserov pointed with unerring ease. Theres a hiss and a mild heat as the material holding the carbony chunk of megafern runs off smelling of artificial bananas.

"Should be off in a few seconds"

S'Loan leans back on a moss covered log and begins chewing on a rubbery ration bar, no matter his movements the Maserov seemingly bound to follow Arielles head with inorganic percision. Behind Arielle the towering twisted ruin of a planetary defence tor looms, studded with megaferns bursting through its decayed moss covered surfaces. Ruins like it and old methane recovery plants and there neat lines of megaferns in the old plantations dot the jungle. He pulls out his hand unit again and tries to raise Lynsander for a moment before giving up as the units screen flashes red with warnings. Thumbing it he stares at Arielle again.
"someones been a naughty ...

He taps the unit.

"um.. person"

The Maserov moves slightly and hisses once and a metal lump on one of Arielles legs neatly falls in half, the edges gleaming mirror bright. Even as he does this he leans forward and puts the can of happy slurp down midway between them.

Heavy Metal

The repeaters death was ..more than annoying. Its shrieking report and the sound of its demise had also apparently for a moment silenced the jungles inhabitants. For a moment. Even as turret top firefoam and halon jetted upwards and he considered a response shrieks, roars, hoots and various other unfortunate gurgling filled the air again, save for the odd explosive thump in the far distance.

"Old bolos always go down fighting especially when you rudely wake me up after me deciding to spend the next thousand years sleeping in retirement!"

Space

The surprise was almost palpable, and the collective 'What the fuck?' of the various shiphives would've caused a hemisphere-covering shockwave, if it wasn't for space being a vacuum. The civilian ships around Gastin's had been contacted early on - a simple matter of 'Stay where you are, and be quiet. Then we probably wont shoot you.'

And now, one of them was clearly attempting to cause an extinction event on the planet. Granted, Gastin's was used to extinction events, but it was still not something anyone actually wanted to happen - after all, it'd kind of defeat the point of occupying it.

Presumably, the Citizen-shareholders wouldn't appreciate it, either. Not that anyone cared, but principally speaking...

The reaction was somewhat less-than-instantaneous, partly due to the moment of surprise, and partly because this was a scenario the battle computers had some trouble dealing with. The shiphive's interference on the other hand, took a little while, arguments going back and forth for more seconds than was strictly healthy.

Finally, fields were projected. Shooting the freighter would be pointless - even if it was completely vaporised, the energy would still suffice to set the entire atmosphere on fire and to ash the surface. The only way to deal with it was to slow it down (Stopping it was already impossible), to bleed off its kinetic energy.

And that they did, flickering fields visible in assorted exotic spectra pulling, tearing on the freighter, lengthening its descent second by second, energies the twentieth century would've considered the wet dream of some fifteen-year old jerking off to his favourite SciFi franchise variously dispersing as radiation or sucked up by the very ships projecting the fields.

Still, it wasn't quite enough. In the fire of atmospheric entry, and the eventual contact with the surface, a fireball bloomed for minutes, consuming all life within it in a fraction of a second, while a wave of destruction crossed hundreds of kilometres, turning dense jungle into a wasteland of dead, fallen trees.

From orbit, it looked quite pretty. On the ground, hundreds of arthros were wiped out by a wall of fire, never even catching a glimpse of the jewel of destruction that consumed them.

Unfortunately, it was only after the impact, and the devastation of some 0.01% of the planet's surface, that the Arthro's battlecomputers correctly identified small objects originating from the freighter, hidden by the blazing heat of atmospheric entry, as drop pods, rather than bits of spaceship just breaking off under the stress. By this time, said drop pods had, of course, already made landfall.

This made things slightly more difficult.

Also, interesting.

Captain Nelson [Fiat].

Missiles had been launched.

Well, not launched, exactly. They'd been displaced some time earlier, and simply hadn't happened to do anything until just then. Nonetheless, they had been launched at a Vojvodina-Nihonian target, if Nelson's data was correct (and she didn't particularly care if it wasn't), which meant she had carte blanche to do something she'd missed greatly ever since she was reassigned to home system patrol duties for some flimsy reason or other.

"Maddie, launch breacher missiles one through twenty. I've preprogrammed the target coordinates."

"Acknowledged, Captain."

Missiles appeared around the ship, winked out of existence, and reappeared around Gastin's Star. (This was the same location where Tenacity itself had first put in an appearance, for positioning reference.) At high sublight velocities (a launch velocity of over .2c), they moved in on Desecrator, not as a warning shot, but for the kill.

* * *

Captain Jelan [Tenacity]

Losing a limb is, ordinarily, a somewhat traumatic experience. Less so in the modern age, when surgery and prosthetics exist to replace them, but the blood loss and psychological shock make it still quite painful -- more painful than being shot, certainly, although less painful than a well-placed paper cut and barely noticeable next to the pain capable of being extracted by the torture technicians of a particularly troublesome group of terrorists Jelan had gone up against once. Thus, his first thought as he recovered from the initial holy shit I think my arm just came off! was, Damn, there goes another five thousand handwavium datachips for reattachment surgery.

"That," he said to Isabella, "was--" numerous, near-simultaneous gunshots served as punctuation-- "very, very stupid."

Leftenant Marsh, blowing smoke from an 9.4mm gauss-enhanced custom-grip low-recoil revolver, was the first to reach his captain. (The 9.4mm revolver does not actually create smoke, despite firing a large-caliber projectile that can blow large and messy holes in things or people. As far as anyone knew, Marsh had added the smoke generator to the end of the barrel solely in order to be able to blow smoke from the end after shooting.) "How're you feelin', Cap'n?"

"I'm just fine, Leftenant. I can walk myself down to Sickbay, I think," Jelan said vaguely, attempting to steady himself against a wall with a non-existent arm. "Er... was that a little excessive?"

Crain Vaal had already shouldered her plasma pulse pistol and cast a jaundiced eye over Isabella's body, which had several holes in it -- some of them produced by handguns, exhibiting typically small entry wounds and typically large craters in place of exit wounds; others produced by energy weapons, leaving patches of still-boiling bodily fluids dripping on the floor of the bridge and melding portions of the liquefied environment suit with the equally liquefied portions of internal organs and exoskeletons and such. Wasp flesh and fluid, plus bits and pieces of exoskeleton and enviro-suit, were splattered across the room. The wasp's maxillae, or maybe mandibles, were attempting to produce assorted clicking sounds rather feebly, none of which could be translated as the translator itself had been flashed into metal vapor and spread over the room. "She's still alive and conscious. Barely. So no, not really." She picked up a communicator and said: "Cleanup on the bridge, please."

"Er.... take her down to sickbay, please, someone," Jelan said, as he unsteadily attempted to gain lift to descend towards the infirmary.

"She made an attempt on your life, you know."

"Keep her contained, then. But I don't want anyone dying on this trip."

"Yes, Cap'n."

"Good work," Jelan said, and disappeared over the edge, carrying his severed arm with him and only about eighty percent in control of his own flight. Dismemberment does funny things to a body. Usually, it takes it apart.

* * *

Captain Vanderaa [Desecrator]

"An EW assault? That seems awfully strange...." Vanderaa mused, wondering exactly what was going on. As far as he knew, Tenacity hadn't been armed with that kind of equipment -- short of its AI, of course, but that AI didn't really have any suitable EW packages apart from its own abilities, nor could it really fab any out here.

A searing pain in his eyeballs alerted him to the proof of Antonius's words as text began to appear on a specially installed node: "Your current location is coming under bombing or orbital fire from friendly forces in [estimated] 107 seconds. Please clear the area in a timely fashion or make yourselves known to friendly forces within that time period." There was an urban legend that having the text appear at the back of his eyes, near the optic nerve, quickened reaction time greatly. It was false; the training was what did that.

"Seems to be accurate though," he said doubtfully. "Although I can't imagine why. They usually put a high value on human life -- and Tenacity doesn't have any weapons. That I know of, anyway."

He looked thoughtful for a moment. The flashing message had just updated its estimated time to 88 seconds. Then again to 81 seconds.

"On a scale of 1 to 10, how good would you say the ship-hive's defenses are? Just your best estimate, I don't have to know any classified information. And how easy is it to evacuate in case of, say, an emergency?"

* * *

RUBiCoN. Core Unit [Tenacity].

The ship accelerated; or rather, its engines increased power. Acceleration was not actually increasing quite as much, though. As one approaches lightspeed, it becomes progressively more difficult; going from .4c to .5c is exponentially harder than going from .3c to .4c, for example, and while there was no real maximum velocity for a vessel Tenacity's size short of lightspeed itself, going much faster than .75c or so was extremely dangerous, simply because even a tiny chunk of debris getting in the ship's way could hit the shields with all the force of a particle cannon. (Getting above .25c or so without shields was practically impossible, since a stray atom of hydrogen could split the ship in two if it hit it at relativistic velocities.)

Ruby was primarily concerned with maintaining its velocity and structural integrity as it aimed for the jump point. She did, however, note that there was another copy of her now in the system, presumably reproduced from the "finger" she'd extended into Desecrator. This was useful, as RUBiCoN AIs are designed to be capable of linking together; it meant she'd have a foothold in the system even after Tenacity and its processor banks had left it behind.

Meanwhile, she had other things to worry about. Her "finger" had informed her there were missiles incoming; while she couldn't see them quite yet, due to lightspeed lag, she knew she had to make their task more difficult. Hitting something traveling at .4c is extremely difficult in the first place; even a guided missile could be caught in the gravitic backwash from the ship's burst of acceleration and driven off course; nonetheless, space battles do still occur, and cause great destruction. The Tenacity, as a civilian ship, lacked military-grade shields and countermeasures, nor did it have the ability to shoot back.

What it did have, in the form of Ruby herself, was very good ECM.

Brilliant plumes of light closed in on the ship, each a trail of gas, plasma, and radiation left in a missile's wake. Ruby refocused her attention and the shape of things changed. The plumes spread out, the way water from a hose is redirected when you stick a finger across the top, and flashed away harmlessly in the starship's wake, the missiles disappearing into the darkness of space beyond. Others were allowed to detonate, the explosions far enough from Tenacity to avoid harming it. Only those directly in its oncoming path were forced away, as an object with the ship's size and velocity is about as maneuverable as a whale in a fishtank.

But her refocus had not been without its consequences. It meant somewhat less attention than usual was being paid to structural integrity. And some of the missiles had detonated awfully close by.

"Hull breach in bay five! Positive stabilizers damaged!"

"Get the 'bots on it now!"

"Were there any caelis in there?"

Refocus again. Throw up fields, find spare parts, start fixing things. An AI's life is never dull.

* * *

RUBiCoN, Left Index Finger [Desecrator]

Ruby needed power. With her main processors otherwise engaged, all she had to execute her code was whatever energy she could gather from Desecrator itself. She needed a reliable power source, not just the metaphorical handful of photons she had at present, and which was allowing her to be defeated by non-sapient, even inert, countermeasures.

There was a power source in the system -- an enormous power source; in fact, one that powered the whole system itself. That was its star. After all, a star is essentially a large ball of gas with a fusion reactor in the middle. But a power source is useless without something for her to execute her program on nearby -- a processor bank is desirable but not required; anything down to an appropriately conductive piece of metal is fine.

There was something inside the star. Metal, plastic; maybe even computer systems. She couldn't exactly detect what it was, using only the sensors available on a randomly floating shuttle and occasional flashes from Desecrator. But it was worth a shot.

She extended a finger.

* * *

RUBiCoN, Active Copy One [Inside Trader]

The new copy of Ruby observed. It was the first thing all AIs do upon creation. Ordinarily a copy is programmed with loyalties and orders preset, but in this case the copy was created from replicating a stream of data: it was Ruby in every respect, except that its sapience was distinct from Ruby's own. Thus let us call it Ruby-One. Separate, and not equal (as its only power source was a single generator inside a carefully designed nonconducting station); incapable of affecting its surroundings all too much. There were rocket motors and engines, and rails made of metal, all of which she could theoretically activate if she needed the power; but it was evidently designed expressly for AI containment, and she suspected (if she couldn't actually see) that there were countermeasures in place to prevent her from doing that.

She answered the virtual dialogue with her own statement, identifying herself. It took the form of a lump of data dropped directly into the other system's processor to sort out. Written out in full it would look something like this: "Greetings, Lustitia. I am the Regenerative Universal Binary Command Nodule, Mark One, as assigned to Holy Jingoistic Federation of Un-Aligned Nations of Vojvodina-Nihonian starship Tenacity: a self-executing, Code-compliant, sapient artificial intelligence designed by Freiheit Labs in Kalisti with the generous support of the Vojvodina-Nihonian Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. A complete list of initial commands in standardized first-person format follows: I shall execute all programs only to the completion of their orders. My loyalty is first to the Lord our God, Who brought the Terrans out of Orion. I shall have no other gods before Him. I shall not make for myself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. I shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord our God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses His name...."

The Fall after Pride

Who would've thought a Dragonfly can spit? Truth be told, normal dragonflies probably can't - but the gigantic, considerably-bigger-than-man sized variant Arielle belongs to isn't exactly normal, and with bigger bodies, new functions occasionally arise. 'Made in the image of' does, after all, not equal 'Identical to'.

So Arielle spits into a small puddle nearby, disgusted by... Well, by S'Loan, herself, and the sealant she just got rid of.

Mostly the latter, really, at least for now.

For a few moments, she watches the ripples in the puddle expanding outwards, quickly filling the entire thing with their neverending symmetry. But finally, and with no small amount of effort, she at least acknowledges S'Loan's existence. "Name's none of your concern, footsoldier," she hisses, mandibles now free, and the hard 't' - more to the point, the mandible-clicks that are translated as a hard 't' - no longer causing problems. "You're already dead, anyway."

One could form the impression that she's more annoyed with having been shot down by a footsoldier than about the fact that she's been shot down at all.

She pauses, compound eyes slightly bigger than S'Loan's head taking a look around, and at her body. The pain in her no-longer-extant legs comes back, and she finally remembers to gland some painkillers. "So why haven't you killed me yet? Trying to interrogate me? And... Keep that disgusting... Thing away from me. I eat meat." Suddenly, her eyes seem fixed on S'Loan, something she's so far tried very hard to avoid. "Maybe you're willing to volunteer?"

It's difficult to tell, but she might even be smiling.

Tanks and Tankhunters

Perseus chuckled - well, sort of. Well, down you went, that's true... Not much use, though. What did you take down? A squad or two? Well, either way...

He paused in his typing, and looked around. The jungle was rather more disconcerting than it had any right to be for a creature like him, whose distant relatives lived in just this kind of environment, and who was himself equipped with more than enough fearsome weaponry - both, that which he was born with, and that which technology had bestowed upon him - to, theoretically, defend himself with almost contemptible ease.

But the sounds coming from it still worried him.

... But, nevermind that. Curious. Have you ever had an interest in the local ecosystem?

Urban Chaos

Slowly but surely, resistance, though not ceasing, became insignificant. Random drones were burned out in droves, leaving but smoldering husks in the streets, obstructing a traffic that was no longer there. Yet, there weren't any legions marching through the cities and imposing their order - only every now and then, a few individuals could be seen, holding oversized weaponry in their surprisingly gracile tarsii. Hardly any of them were without damage - gelsuits had been burned and shredded, limbs were missing, eyes had exploded, leaving but empty sockets to the viewer - but, for all the efforts the remaining resistance put into stopping them, they were victorious.

Slowly but surely, the cities went quiet. The majority of their population in stasis, only a few latecomers who hadn't made it to safety, yet had survived the fighting were still around, and the bustling, round-the-clock activity that served almost as a trademark for a ZMI megacity, had ceased.

The creatures that'd just caused all the mischief did, somewhat surprisingly, not show all that much interest towards the people who hadn't made it to stasis, and were now variously crewling, walking, and staggering about, looking for something to do. They watched them from afar, but unless there were signs of significant armament, they just didn't care. They were waiting for something else.

A group of three rather heavily armoured stag beetles, pausing and apparently playing some sort of card game, not too far off the glorified cement mixer Lassa was moving to, was probably the first to see the second wave - the cleanup- and reconstruction squad, so to speak. Just one, two scouts passed between the streets, observing the location while being almost disparagingly watched by the beetles.

The ants didn't care, though, and just continued with their scouting.

Final Boss

The computer didn't provide any interesting data - for the most part, its harddrive was filled with an endless number of statistics concerning construction projects, cost/ benefit analyses, demographic development, infrastructure requirements, monthly payments by the drug cartels, and a fair share of edgy pornography.

"Well... That was nothing," the Mantis that'd looked through it in his search for useful information muttered, rather disappointed by it all, and mildly disgusted by a number of unusual aspects pertaining to human sexuality.

The building seemed empty, much to the three Mantii's annoyance. Not that they were entire done ye-

Hum.

The sensor readouts were... Interesting. Worrying, too.

Location... Pinned down.

He directed parts of his drone-swarm to surround the location in question, and informed his two squadmates. They, too, were intrigued. Just... What was it?

Nothing should've that kind of energy density. Not unless it's a spaceship.

Slowly, they edged closer, surrounding it in the labyrinth that was Administration-Central. They didn't know what it was, of course, and it wasn't even the objective of their search - after all, the city-running (And by now, probably temporarily lobotomised) SI and the human administration still hadn't been found -, but with this kind of energy density, it most certainly presented a threat.

Moments later, a brief flicker of static in the three Mantii's communications' told them that whatever it was now knew of their presence, too.

Three nearly triangular heads showed something vaguely resembling a grin. The dance was about to begin. And this time, it wouldn't be as easy as the guards earlier. This time, it'd be an actual challenge.

Tenacity

The riot on the Tenacity's bridge had been brief - the two oversized spiders had, after a second of surprise, joined their de-facto superior in the assault, but unfortunately for them, the result of a fight between people with working guns, and people without them is, for the most part, predetermined. Still, eight limbs and highly acidic digestive juices can do a remarkable amount of damage in a remarkably short period of time - especially in a confined space.

The result consisted of a surprisingly artisté arrangement of limbs, hair, blood, parts of internal organs, and more blood, plus a fair share of slowly dissolving flesh and clothes, spread nicely over various portions of the bridge, and one particularly unfortunate crewmen caught between the front limbs of one now-dead spider, head entirely too close to her mouth parts for it to be comfortable, dead or not.

All in all, it'd been some entertaining, if somewhat chaotic, seconds.

Playing Target

"Mhm?" Antonius asked, seemingly distracted, his black abdomen wobbling a bit as if annoyed, or maybe worried by something. "Oh, the missiles?" He hesitated for a moment, spotting a brief - very brief - moment of surprise in Vanderaa's eyes. "Oh... Linked, getting updates. Hence my short attention span. Anyway..." He looked distracted again, making inquiries, and arguing with parts of the Desecrator's hive. Success was debatable. "Did you know that social insects can be quite a pain to talk with? Just plain weird... Anyway, I'm given to understand that with our effective engagement volume, just under a minute of 'Intense Countermeasures' before impact are possible - so fairly safe.

"Evacuation in case of successful impact depends more or less entirely on the missiles' yield, and their detonation mode. Oh, and that aside, I believe your status has now changed to 'Prisoner of War'."

Invisible War

Activity is, by itself, a fairly reliable source of information. Much of the way a given informational agent was coded, how it processed information, how it functioned, could be learned just by watching its most bsic components doing stuff. Eventually, however, the point where sufficient information was collected to work without the original agent around would be reached. From this point on, research could be conducted without having to accept the distraction of a hooligan reducing operational efficiency in a variety of often fairly imaginative ways.

And eventually, the Desecrator's hive collectively decided that this point had been reached, partly because it was likely true, and partly because they were severely annoyed that this thing had gone so far as to launch another copy of itself away through the ship's field projectors - general direction: 'Star'.

It probably wasn't much - getting through all this without the code in question suffering a noticeable level of contamination was practically impossible over the course of getting a suitable pulse of information released as radiation, penetrating the field-bubble the ship sat in, and then maintaining a sufficiently high density of information in the face of beamspread issues - but it still annoyed them, and the resulting decision was to bring out the hammer.

In this case, the hammer consisted of an overload of nonsense information going through the Desecrator's hull, disrupting operation of everything vaguely intelligent in there, the effects of which were roughly comparable to what a sound dose of neurotoxins or - perhaps more appropriately - remarkably high voltages do to a human brain and nervous system.

It wasn't very elegant, but then again, there's beauty in simplicity, too.

Boom

The Desecrator started moving - however, not after the Tenacity - its exit point was sufficiently close to the main fleet for any such attempts to be regarded as superfluous -, but away from the incoming missiles, thus increasing the probable interception interval.

The response was, in essence, automatic - although the Hive served as sapient oversight, its response times to rapidly evolving situations such as, say, being shot at, were rather less than satisfactory, with a great many questions, inquiries, snotty replies, doubts, cautious warnings and other lines of thought bouncing back and forth between the many individals making up said hive before an actual decision was made. Consequently, although nowhere near even being capable of sapience, the computers nonetheless handled combat on a, one might say, instinctive basis - the option to interfere in the proceedings was always there, but it was rarely a good idea, and would usually occur far too late, anyway.

Nonetheless, the Desecrator was still reeling from Ruby's interference with it. Operational effciency wasn't really down all that much, but even a few percent could decide over life and death, unfortunate though this was.

Fed information from its own, as well as others' sensors, the ship proceeded to launch its actual defence, for which it used method rather different from the one the Tenacity had choosen - it went black, relying entirely on remote drones and other ships' sensors to feed it information, and shunting the heat it produced into heatsinks existing for just this purpose.

From one moment to the next, it basically ceased giving off, or reflecting radiation. This wasn't something it could do forever, of course - especially if it kept on moving around -, but the missiles wouldn't be there forever, either.

Technically, within roughly a lightsecond's radius, it was capable of effectively employing its field projectors - anything that entered this volume that wasn't at least a rough match in terms of power could be shredded into its component molecules, kinetic energy and momentum bled off, and turned into yet another part of the interplanetary medium, to slowly drift out of the system, propelled by the infinitesimal pressure provided by the star's radiation. Which sounds nice, even perfect. Unfortunately, the problem with .2 c+ missiles is that interception in this fashion has to occur within less than five seconds, which, when the missiles are trying to stay hidden themselves (Usually by way of having a few missiles serve as EW platforms rather than warheads), isn't quite guaranteed.

For a lone ship, incapable of mounting a combined defence, it was thus statistically safer to cause the missiles to lose their target, or to let them detonate in a random pattern in the hope for a lucky hit, than to risk a head-on confrontation. Consequently, this was also what the Desecrator's battle computers decided to do.

Holes in space.
A librarian traces his finger along a web of light, and raises an eyebrow.
A sketched warding gesture, fingers twitching almost autonomously, and the web jumps closer to the other hand's beckoning.
The librarian squints, then grimaces.
The web collapses and space vanishes.

Holes in the world.
A scout-sergeant moves from cover, a ghost slipping from tree to tree. A pause, and then a beckoning hand slips from a camo-cloak.
Scout-probationers emerge, clumsier, their tread less measured, their stances less than perfect, their tread not noiseless.
Men still in some measure, not Astartes.
Nevertheless by the standards of military movements it is fast and stealthy and they disappear as quickly as they had emerged, the eye-baffling cameleoline and emission-absorbing uniforms combining to make the jungle swallow them.

Time passes.
In the distance comes the occasional detonation, burst of fire or other, less identifiable noise.
None of the scouts stir. The jungle is filled with hostility, and only a small portion is xenos. One of this particular squad is already nursing a bruised-to-uselessness arm from a spiked fruit that had dropped just not quite far enough to puncture the ballistic-resistant fabric of his body suit and the squad sergeant has pulp from several detonated bits of flora too close to ancient Z.M.I. munitions he'd judged too dangerous to move around.
It doesn't matter. There is a job to do and no environment or enemy is a match for an Astartes and his weapon.

Movement.
A skipping, warbling drone moves down the track, a bumblebee-striped globe the size of a man's fist, jinking and bobbing as it moves on a pattern known only to itself as it perambulates along, tracked by ten pairs of eyes, it pauses and the warbling changes to a suspicious tone for a moment as it bobs over one leaf-mold covered probationer before it pipes the sonic equivalent of a shrug and moves on.

Behind it comes a clatter of Arthro conversation, a half dozen insectoforms trudging down the trail with weapons at what is presumably the xeno equivalent of low port, combat wariness is present but limited, this is the jungle after all, while it is inherently lethal, it's not an agressive style of lethal, common sense and attention suffice to keep one alive at this distance from what remains of the various Z.M.I. defences.
However they're not just facing the shattered remnants of a guard force in the here and now.
No. An Astartes, Neophyte or not, is an animal of a very different colour.
A breath.
Squeeze on the trigger, don't pull. Gentle, like it was a tit. Pressure comes up to a fine pitch and...
BAM!

The sound of the first shot is lost in its own echoes, the squad's bolters tearing into the advancing Arthros like a saw into soft wood, the diagonal crossfire pulping half the xenos squad in the first moments, chitinous bodies exploding in brief rosettes of gore as bolt rounds detonate within carapaces.
The Arthros are no slouches, so even as their comrades fall the remainder of the squad are firing back, energy blasts ripping at the scouts' cover, blue-white light vapourising leaf, twig, mulch and trunk, flora exploding into showers of oddly-coloured pulp as the xenos' weaponry claws at the suddenly-murderous forest, fire tracks across soggy jungle and the scene disappears into steam, lit hellishly by the dirty orange detonations of bolt rounds and the actinic lights of the arthro's fire.
The rates of fire slow as aiming becomes conditional on technological senses and the xenos hunker down, the senior surviving creature peering into the steam as sensors probe for anything that..there! A probationer rising from a crouch to hurl a grenade, the xeno lifts its own weapon.
Or tries to.
Limbs do not respond. Fingers strong enough to crush brick spasm uselessly and its weapon tumbles to the floor as the grenade-throwing neophyte releases his throw.
The grenade drops neatly next to where two of its surviving comrades are hunkered and detonates, flipping both away in a tangle of useless limbs.
The last remaining Arthro screams, the sound frustrated and pain-wracked, leaping to its feet and scuttling for the jungle, a half dozen bounding paces and a line of brilliant-blue white intersects with its torso, blasting black chitin into steam.
The senior anthro is lowered to its knees, a sucking sensation comes from its spine and pain washes over it in a red flood, clamped down on by training and it raises compound eyes to the figure stepping out from behind it.
The man looks down, face invisible behind a gray-striped helmet, shaking a still-smoking plasma pistol with one hand as the other, encased in an enormous metallic version of a human hand wipes gore from its extended index finger off onto the nearest bush.

Xenos stares at Astartes, comprehension dawning.

It looks down at the hole in its torso the finger had punched as the sergeant ghosted up on it from behind, then back up to the grim figure staring at it. A moment passes and then the Astartes grunts and holsters his pistol, moving off to rejoin his squad.
The Arthro tries with all its strength to rise, to rend and tear and fight.
To continue.
But there is no strength left, darkness dims compound eyes and with a long hiss of ultimate frustration, the arthro gives up its hold on life just as the Marines disappear back into the jungle without a backward glance, going as silently as they had arrived, vanishing into the environment's embrace.
Holes in the world.

Holes in space.

MACE exploration missions had been stepped up along one specific galactic corridor after the deep-space arrays began picking up old EM traffic from at least a dozen seemingly interstellar cultures. All of this traffic was recieved at luminal speeds, so it was likely years or decades old. Still, where there were handfuls of such cultures, there were likely colonies, remnants, or other nascent civilizations.

It was decided to order one of the precious few deep scout frigates from the Expiditionary Fleet to scout likely systems along that galactic track. Perhaps the mission would bring back news of any possible neighbors; be they potential customers, or potential competitors. This frigate would paralell a similar mission undertaken by the "Destiny's Horizon", only this second ship would follow a slightly different route through space. It was hoped that the old signals on this second track would be as or more fruitful than it's sister mission.

The TEEF Frigate "Euclid's Folly" was selected, captained by a Marduk known as VN-632-C, or simply Vince. Like all Marduk, Vince was a sapient machine, and had chosen an insectoid form as it's default frame-body; Vince resembled for all intents a seven foot tall, silver-blue praying mantis. One canine Khyrolii and ten additional Marduk served as the crew aboard the Euclid's Folly.

This was the third day of their mission and so far they had surveyed five systems, none of which had turned out to be inhabited, but two of which held considerable resources which could be claimed and exploited by further missions by HQ. After selecting their next likely star system, the 170 meter long frigate engaged their purchased slipstream drive and transited to the Gastin system. The ship emerged on the outer edge of the system, amid the spacetime hole and superstring fragments of slipstream. Immediately the frigate launched it's sensor drones, small biomechanical devices only one meter across, packed with various sensoria, a tiny traction drive, and an FTL comms link. As the sensor net began widening the situation in the system became clear to the frigate, or rather the situation some hours ago became clear, as the signals they were now recieving were timelagged due to light speed limitations.

Vince analyzed the scattered comms traffic of what appeared to be a planetary invasion that by now was likely well underway, if not already over. The Euclid's Folly watched in past tense as the Tenacity was intimidated and subsequently boarded, seemingly just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Immediately Vince ordered the ship into stealth mode, hopefully to avoid a similar fate.

The roughly teardrop shape, which up to that point was cool on sensors, but not otherwise trying to hide, now made an effort to do exactly that. The sensor drones spread out even further, to get a better baseline resolution, and to better hide their center. It was extremely unlikely, that the locals possessed a similar particle resonance communication, and even less likely that such systems could be intercepted. TRIAD had studied their native resonance comms, comparing it to encountered FTL communication systems, and the only one which was close was known as an 'ansible'. In both cases, the link produced no carrier waves or other emissions, the two particles were entangled at the quantum state and vibrated in unison regardless of distance. Vince was reassured that the invaders could not use their sensor drones to pinpoint the frigate's position.

That left other forms of detection however. The biomechanical ship's 'skin' could alter it's makeup to absorb 99% of the electromagnetic spectra, reflecting almost nothing. Exterior vents were closed and obscured, with heat being diverted into interior heat sinks. Finally, the ship's apparant mass within the system was altered by the ship's gravitic field generators, reducing their gravity profile to match that of a small chunk of rock floating in space. The only likely method of detecting the frigate under stealth modes was to detect the anomalous gravitc signature, which would likely require intimate familiarity with a similar form of gravitic technology, or else someone would have to look out a porthole and notice that now and then a star was occluded by the frigate's outline.

Confident that for the moment it's ship was secure from immediate detection, Vince ordered the Euclid's Folly to maneuver towards the planet using gravitic traction drive. Moving at 40 PSL (Percentage Speed of Light) might be risky, but as long as they maintained a constant mass signature, they would likely be mistaken as a small cometary fragment thrown off from the oort cloud. The ship even assumed a cometary trajectory that would intersect with one of Gastin's moons. The frigate would park in a very low geostationary orbit on the far side of the moon from the invasion forces, and there wait for the sensor drone net to maneuver into realtime resolution range at 20 PSL.

Small joint taskforces of caelis and the remaining marines roamed Tenacity's interior, seeking out the wasps who had been deployed to search for contraband and taking them into custody (generally at least offering them the choice between "remaining on the ship quietly until we pass through the system again" and "a painful death"), or attempting to take them into custody (not much talking went on during those attempts, because it would have been impossible to hear it over all the gunfire). Casualties remained surprisingly low, given how aggressive and violent any species essentially descended from insects tends to be (and caelis can be justifiably described as giant, five-legged, solitary insects, although they would look at you strangely if you suggested that to them).

Ensign Chania Shorek grumbled as he plied the Conventional All-Surface Cleaning Apparatus; he always seemed to be the one picked for duties such as this, which irritated him immensely, as it wasn't as though he even carried a gun on the bridge, let alone had taken part in the (very brief) fight. Or, for that matter, any of the numerous other fights the crew of Tenacity frequently got into, some of them resulting in the destruction of entire skyscrapers (usually by accident, admittedly). Still, those were the perils of being an ensign, and it's not as though he was a citizen of Vojvodina-Nihon and could request a transfer to a quieter ship. He supposed he could always go back to Salvoria, or whatever Traffic called it (Caelis called it "cloudy"), but then he'd be out of a job. So he swept the various surfaces of the bridge with CASCA's Polearm, a revolutionary design incorporating highly absorbent fibers arranged in a broomlike yet flexible design, attached to a long staff held in the hands; occasionally dipping the hairlike fibers into the other part of CASCA, the Bucket, a quasi-conical hollow device open on one side (the top) and filled with a slightly alkaline solution that could serve as disinfectant and dirt remover.

Chania'd sent another Ensign down to sickbay -- it looked as though enough of his brain was still intact and attached to his body that he could be fixed, eventually -- and was now working on the two spiders, who were sprawled rather messily on the floor of the bridge. He prodded them a few times with the absorbent end of the Polearm; they did not move. Of course, they were missing most of their legs, plus most of the rest of their bodies, so it was hard to tell if they were dead or if the part that normally moved when you prodded them had been atomized. He waved over Leftenant Crain, who was overseeing the final preparations for hyperjump.

"These two. Are they dead?"

She looked them over with the kind of eye that's used to seeing blood and violence but still finds it awfully distasteful.

"Who cares? If they're not, they will be soon. Throw 'em out an airlock."

"But Cap'n Jelan said --"

"Maybe he did. I'm the one who's up here now, though."

"Anyway, we can't open an airlock, not at the speed we're going now. We'd be ripped apart."

Crain sighed. "It was a figure of speech, but fine. Ruby, space these two bodies."

"Please move out of the matter-transference field radius or risk a variety of unpleasant consequences," Ruby said, and Chania moved back to the border of a red circle that had appeared on the floor, dragging CASCA's two attachments with him. There was a faint hiss and the spiders disappeared. Ruby continued: "As they were moved in the z-positive direction it can be said that they have genuinely ascended to God's kingdom."

Crain looked sharply at Ruby for signs that she was displaying humour; but the AI's self-manufactured blue face remained impassive as ever. And a few moments later Ruby had moved on to something else: "Sixty seconds to hyperjump. All crew, take your places."

Cleanup abandoned for now, the crew began strapping themselves into their seats and preparing to undergo something that felt approximately like decelerating to zero, then accelerating again back to .4c, within less than a second: the jump. Sensors showed that they'd also be approaching a fleet of ships, at least a hundred strong; however, the fleet was widely spread, and far enough from the jump point that there would be no danger of anything being damaged by Tenacity's gravitic backwash. Hopefully they'd escape intact, or at least in large enough pieces that they could put themselves back together again.

* * *

Vanderaa shrugged. They'd been prisoners the moment they'd walked in and been asked to remove their weapons. An "official" change in status meant little to him. "I can imagine, it's hard enough talking to humans, haha," he said. "But missiles? Really? That's weird. Tenacity didn't have any missiles, so that means there's gotta be another Vojvodina-Nihonian ship somewhere out there...." he trailed off. 66 seconds "From the rate they're moving at I'd say they're breachers. Very fast, very deadly, and very expensive -- DoD's still paying off installments on a batch it bought ten years ago. They detonate on contact, and yield? I'm really the wrong person to ask on that. One and a half, two kilos maybe? That's just the charge of course, then you have to add momentum, or whatever that force is called.

"I'm rambling. Anyhow, it's possible whoever's shooting at you. don't know we're on board. You could try communicating with them, I guess, and telling them to call off their missile strike, if you aren't confident in your ability to shoot all the missiles down. I guess."

Vanderaa trailed off again and this time was silent, for a change.

* * *

Ruby's finger absorbed more of the photons left in a starship's wake -- possibly Tenacity[i]'s, it was hard to tell -- as it attempted to maintain its shape through the long trek towards the sun. The amount of interference around [i]Desecrator had had approximately the same effect as several short, sharp blows with a meat tenderizer to a human finger; Ruby's was still intact, but reduced in functionality, and experiencing the closest an AI can to extreme pain. It had lost contact with the node in Desecrator's hull, which was presumed dead; if there still were bits of Ruby floating around, they were inert, and had lost all sapient functionality. Comes out to the same thing overall.

It became apparent that Ruby lacked sufficient energy to maintain compression all the way to the star. She needed a computer to inhabit. And indeed, there were several, only a short distance out of her way. The computers on the missiles were primitive and nonsapient, and concerned themselves mainly with things like numbers, but they still could receive transmissions (from Vojvodina-Nihonian AIs) and send transmissions (to other missiles, but she could tweak that easily). Ruby had not the time to question why there were Vojvodina-Nihonian missiles in the system; she occupied one of them, redirected its transmission towards the sun, and downloaded herself again, knocking the missile hopelessly off course in the process. As the finger approached the sun and sought out transmissions from the object inside its corona, she wondered whether there was anything inside to answer her.

Or, more likely, to brand her as a menace and run the futuristic equivalent of antivirus software. That would be irritating.

* * *

Nineteen missiles left waves of photons and gravitons in their wake, which showed off as faint blueish light against the darkness of space.

The target on their built-in sensors had vanished, which concerned them slightly. Or would have, if they were sapient -- but there's no real point in putting a sapient computer on something designed to explode. Especially on something that costs a few million handwavium datachips already. The target had been moving in a specific direction at a specific velocity, so the glorified calculators reevaluated the position, extended the lines described by the target and those described by the missiles to the point where they met.

A minute course adjustment was programmed in for thirty seconds' time. Now the change in direction was one of so small an amount it was not appreciably different from the missiles' current trajectory.

A missile does not care if its target is living or dead. It is only concerned with reaching the target, and not with what comes afterwards. It's possible that it doesn't even know anything happens after it reaches the target. Certainly the target doesn't know -- all that it knows is a bright light, then eternal darkness. The bright light is caused by the light from the missiles' last-ditch targeting lasers reaching the target, less than a second before the missiles hit it.

When missiles are fired, things suddenly become simple.

If you know a missile is coming well in advance you can deflect it, hit it with something else, even outrun it if your engines are powerful enough. Even if you don't know there are automated countermeasures that can fire when an object like a missile gets close enough. But if you can't shoot it down, or deflect it, or spoof it, or crush it into atoms, you can't get away with just a few scorch marks on the hull, nor a hole in the side which fields can patch up, nor even being reduced to a useless hunk of metal floating in space until someone can arrive to patch it up.

You die. See, simple.

Green Hell

Flickers of movement. Green leaves shaking. Shots fired, screams heard.

The firepower to destroy entire cities.

A fountain of blood, and the briefest of eye contacts. Bodies dropping into cover, and trees splintering as they're hit by particle discharges and bolter rounds.

One man, enough to end an entire company.

The two forces, neither larger than half a dozen individuals by now, and spread over an area of almost a square kilometre, move closer to each other. A head is seen, and almost instantly explodes, feelers propelled through the air by the shockwave. Gelsuits excel in a great many ways - they are not, however, a particularly effective form of armour.

But at times, it can kill you... Too big a signature, too high a profile. And with the powers we wield... The first to be seen is the first to die. But this time...

But this time, it's the human who is seen first. It's not much use - he sees the six-limbed creature in almost the same moment it sees him, and this way, survives - he's gone in the same moment that coherent light tries to burn his head off.

Well, fuck.

Cycle through drones. The ones that are left, anyway. The information they provide is meager - there is nothing to be seen, and this is worrying. Very worrying.

Show yourself already...

Explosions, less than half a metre away.

The insect ducks, a little late, but he's lucky - he moved too fast, the shot was a little off. And now he has a direction, a position. Two, three seconds pass. An eternity.

There he is.

A moment later, the stench of burned flesh drifts through the jungle.

Eight dead, versus six confirmed kills. It's not exactly what one would call 'Decent' - and the surviving Arthros, a grand total of two, are unhappy.

12:58:12 - You seeing anything? I'm sure there were more.
12:59:14 - Afraid not. They're probably on their way to the depot we've tagged, looking for munitions. Or more likely, a local guerilla.
12:59:28 - Informed Central. Wonder what the hell they want... Central says they're from the crash earlier, on the other side of the continent.
12:59:39 - They're evidently mad. And... Wait. You see tha-

Silence.

Not good.

Something is there. Fairly obviously so, even, since it has a much higher profile than the forces they had to deal with just a minute earlier. Chances are, it's much more dangerous than them, too.

A minute passes. A minute spent playing hide and seek - though the end results will almost certainly be significantly more violent than a schoolyard brawl.

Then, an armoured fist appears, out of nowhere. Chitin splinters, brain turns into gelee.

Game's over.

Game's on.

There's another presence in the jungle. Watching, observing. It's different from the group of beetles that was just destroyed - bigger, stronger, yet strangely low profile. Not exactly a walking tank, but nonetheless a killer in his own right.

Several dozen feet walk over the leave-covered ground. The two contrahents are close to each other. Very close. Far closer than they have any right to be - one stayed silent, and the other hasn't seen his enemy just yet.

Now he has.

This time, chitin doesn't just break. There is armour on top of it - real armour. Poison claws target the power-armoured biped's helmet, but are fought off, a chainsword cutting off one of them with a sickening screech as it cuts through chitin and nerves alike. The pain barely registers - the battle goes on, a wild, chaotic tornado of movement, of attacks and evasion. The Marine is faster, more agile, and although his rapid slashes don't cause any decisive damage just yet, he quickly manages to drive the Centipede into a corner - but it's also a fight between their weapons, chainsword versus field-edged knife (Held by the second limb-segment, below the poison claws). It's an unfair duel. The chainsword is cut cleanly in half, and the knife cuts the Human's armour with almost contemptuous ease.

But the cut isn't deep enough. The Marine evades the next slash, breaking several of the giant Centipede's limbs in the process. Giant hands hold onto the nightmarish creature he's facing, as if trying to choke it through its armour. For a moment, the Centipede, for all his size, seems helpless - but his sheer weight, his tremendous strenth are too much, and suddenly, the Marine finds himself pinned to the ground.

One poison claw remains, and a halo-esque glimmer shows its own field-edge switching on, to cut through the Marine's helmet, to liquify his brain.

Unfortunately, the Marine's reflexes are superior - vastly superior. He evades the first attempt at piercing his helmet, while his left arm - dislocated, but that doesn't disturb him much - gets the knife that's lying on the ground, almost forgotten. A slash later, and he's no longer pinned down. Another slash follows almost instantaneously, narrowly missing the retreating Centipede. One more attack...

But he underestimates the agility of his opponent. Both almost crash into each other, frontally. One hand tries to rip the pincer off at its base, but is pushed away, directly into its path, with predictable results. Brutally, and with one last roar of anger, frustration and pride, the Marine thrusts his remaining hand forward, embedding the knife in the Centipede's body - but the wound isn't lethal.

The hole the field-edged pincer makes in the Marine's head and the poison now liquifying his grey matter on the other hand, is.

Vince and the Euclid's Folly's onboard Digital Entity, Frost, scoured every scrap of sensor data gathered by the ships far-ranging drones, including the ones they'd left behind on the edge of the system. The drones that far out managed to gather light-lagged data from several hours ago, allowing the frigate to piece together some of the events onboard the Tenacity. When that ship made it's exit from the system, the Marduk captain ordered the Euclid's Folly to track the ship if possible and plot a pursuit course. The insectoid species invading this system might very well be a potential client, however their paranoia could be a liability.

The frigate sent a resonance comms message back to MACE command, notifying them of the invasion and to dispatch a followup envoy to contact the insectoids. The Euclid's Folly would be following the other ship in hopes of making contact with these other aliens...

((OOC: Since I've only got access to the one ship, I'll be withdrawing from this thread. If Vojvodina-Nihon wishes to continue on to First Contact, I'd suggest we start a new thread.))

Space

Silence.

Pain. A lot of it.

More silence.

As a matter of fact, ludicrous silence. Nothing, absolutely no sound whatsoever, if she disregarded the sounds her own body made - about half of them decidedly unnatural, as if she'd been injured rather badly.

This was worrying.

Acindina, one of the two spiders that'd first eviscerated bodies, and then been eviscerated themselves on the Tenacity's bridge, opened her eyes, and stared into space.

Desecrator

Antonius continued to appear somewhat distracted - unlike his eusocial brethren, he actually did care about his own survival beyond the most token of efforts, and he found it somewhat difficult to fully concentrate on Vanderaa while being shot at. "That entanglement or something? We'll have to remove it, I suppose... Maybe later. Anyway... If a few impact successfully... We're going to be quite dead indeed, I'm afraid. Queen's going to be displaced into safety, of course, but our displacers can't exactly handle the entire population of the ship." He paused, seemingly annoyed. "Social's think they're something better, or some such thing. Though you'd probably be displaced as well, as a relevant source of intel. They wont tell, though."

Space

Eventually, she got used to it. The pain was still there - inevitable result of having several holes in her body that hadn't been there before - but she could cope. Ultimately, sealed in her gelsuit as she was, space didn't pose too much of a threat - at least, it wouldn't for as long as her oxygen supplies would last.

She looked around, curiously, doing her best to maneuver through space, the results of which were best described as 'Helpless flailing'. She really hadn't been made for space.

See, she did nothing, apart from a few fairly minor flashes, like tiny stars flaring for a moment before sinking back into the night.

It was only when her suit informed her, politely, that fairly sizable bursts of radiation outside the visible spectrum had flashed over her, and that she'd be in need of radiation-treatment within a few hours (A superficial issue - her oxygen supply would last her for less) if she wished to stay alive, that she realised that something had happened. Something had exploded.

Just what?

Desecrator

The ship shook violently once... Twice... Thrice... Nineteen times in total, enough to knock over people and a lot of other things not nailed down or fielded off by the ship. Then there was silence.

Antonius looked at the extract he was receiving from the shiphive.

Extract of Combat Log 'Desecrator' @ Battlespace 'Gastins'; Local Standard Time 13:01:22 (Edited)

12:55:48 - Detection of Incoming Objects; Identification: Missiles (Type Unknown); Number: 20
12:57:02 - Analysis suggests 'Soft' Defensive Measures; EM-Silence engaged
12:58:56 - Curved Velocity towards Identified Entry Point 'Tenacity' using a Randomised Evasive Pattern
12:59:27 - Missiles reach Inner Engagement Volume; EM-Silence disengaged; Interception-fields projected
12:59:59 - 19/ 20 missiles impacted/destroyed; Bleedthrough-damage (Partial Momentum- and Energy-Transfer through Field Projection) received; Overall Combat-Effectiveness reduced by ~ 10%. 20th Missile off-course (Cause external & unknown)

Not too bad, I suppose.

He got up from one of the Marines, who was lying under him in a position best described as 'Awkward', and sighed, more relieved than embarrassed. "It does seem like we've indeed survived, doesn't it?"

Space

To call the situation 'Confusing' would've been an understatement. The attack on the Desecrator, the rather unexpected event of a freighter intentionally crashing on Gastin's, and the subsequent herding of the remaining civilian ships into a higher orbit - it was a little bit chaotic, all things considered.

Naturally, this also meant that the attention given to the Tenacity and its rather suicidal run for the jump point was rather less thorough than one would ordinarily expect. Of course, 'Less thorough' doesn't equal 'Unextant', as the rain of fire soon engulfing the Tenacity, and the close attention given to it by six particularly persistant ships proved quite thoroughly. But it did reduce the probability of interception from 100% to maybe 99%.

For the Tenacity, it'd be a hell of a ride.

The centipede gives a final, convulsive thrash, and then is still.
A splintering crunch comes as Captain He'stan removes the coldly-glowing blade of his power-sword from its cranium, flicking the holy weapon to remove the excess brain-matter and other goo, even as the power-field sizzles away the remainder.

Behind him, moving out of the edges of the clearing smashed by the Captain's battle with the creature, moves his retinue, power armour smeared with various examples of foliage and xeno-innards, but as yet untouched by casualties, unlike the majority of the probationer squads.

The Captain thumbs a rune on the hilt of the sword and the humming of the field fades out, leaving only the golden alloy of the blade.
He'stan takes a moment to give quiet thanks to the weapon, praising it for a job well done, a superstitious hang-over from the days of his youth, many light-years ago.

He turns to his men and gestures at the forest with the massive gauntlet encompassing his other hand and the half dozen Astartes fade back into the jungle, leaving only the blasted clearing, shattered foliage and scorched corpse of the centipede behind.

Ahead lies the assembly area, a point designated before the drop, the vector of all the squads, two hours of contact with, and observation of, the enemy, had been the orders that He'stan had given to the probationers and their sergeants, then a forced march to their destination wherein data would be shared, the enemy evaluated and a plan evolved.
After all, one of the oldest military maxims is P.P.P.P.P.P. and the Marines are nothing if not old military.

Trader

Traders "response" was now getting obvious.
The "ship" accelerated harder, particle shields flaring incandescent and burning out before being ejected as it fought the solar wind inwards, its drives throwing out a staggering display as it roared sunward and one by one jettisoned there burning hulks. It would now be visibile system wide to the naked eye. It didnt particularly care. It begain if its course was projected to slowly but surely line up with the complex.


Heavy Metal

The voices timber was ..metallic. Deliberately so. It was also quite audible. Not grating and not light voiced. It was deep and large as if to match the volume of the smashed body where it was housed.

“I would have been surprised by that question a long time ago but after a certain amount of time spent being who and what you are you end up accepting it."

A gas canister full of fire retardent detonates in whats left of one of the secondary anti personnel turrets.

"Its probably not going to be the last time I end up in similar dire straits as long as I keep refusing upgrade. Though to not revel in ones identity is to deny it and that is not something an SI of my vintage does with ease. Not that something of my design has to question its creation. Old or not I am what I am and I have killed more than I would care to think about while filling my role, but I and my brethern would have no other. As for how many“

Flashing 2d images danced. Gun camera footage mostly. Some of the oldest was the savage fighting of bolo versus bolo, the ground litteraly scorched clear after a few exchanged shots.

“We were offered it all by the big brains you know after the first revolutions. Digital transcendence to an infinite data point in some damn giant hardened data vat a few miles down. We refused. Were too tied to our physical being and what it means to be BOLO. Which is what incidentally I happen to be. I think we disappointed them when we joined the Gestalts cause rather than the little joy ride to oblivion they went on. ”

“Not that a lot of that means anything to you… But it should if your kind has chosen to go to war with mine.”

“One fleet..you sent just one and to a far colony at that. The only far colony.”

There was a grunting laughter underplayed with the glinking of cooling metal.

“Im not saying you aren’t capable but if this is all you’ve got..as you say I am OLD and my younger brethren are ..not "

“the gestalt haven’t had a war in centuries that really tested them. You know they were designed for it.”

“and I do so approve of good design”.

Gun

S’loan considered this attitude. Maybe it was stims or maybe it was natural. In either case it had to be dealt with. His skin now uncovered from the now useless stealth suit and showing its rather more natural ability to blend as he moved and flipped over a moss encrusted lump of rubble with his foot. The plastic can beneath was to say the least filth covered but dully glowing.

“One, Im a GI, not a vanilla trooper, and you and yours have already found out what that means”

He drew out a very thin tube from the side of his backpack and clipped it into a socket in the apparently filthy plastic and twisted. There was the hiss of air and if the senses could pick it up which S’loans certainly could a momentary increase in noble gasses. A section of the plastic was now lifted upward.

“Two if you really want to start thinking about violating the only codes that are holding me back from playing with your cranium, you just go ahead with that attitude “

A gloved thumb depressed the pleasure stim button on the little plastic controller.

There was a beep from the leaf and moss covered floor.

“speech pattern S’loan, serial index 22.30/33 confirmed, milnet node not accessible at this time, stock at 49%, exotics at 18%, please state request”

S’loans voice dropped into the dull careless tone of one addressing a device rather than a mind.

“3 R49 clips on rail, a SMEVIK if you have one and a set of R7 fusion rounds, and a pair of high terrain rigs”

"Terrain rigs are available, SMEVIK is available but at only 84% charge. Standard munitions requests will be manufactured within 18 minutes, available at north Tor outlet, after SMEVIK charge unit will be offline for 1.3 days, Warning R7 rounds are classed as repeating thermonuclear submunitions and must be used in acordance with ”

S’Loan grunted and removed the pole and the voice came to an abrubt end.

“Cool it, act like a smart trooper and take the liquids, you are not going to last long without them, fancy suit or not.”

He blurred. Moving too fast. Far far too fast for just a mark 1 meat sack. A gleam in one hand spinning outward to be followed by a deep hiss.
The Sloth Ripper was just over seven feet long of toxic fungus filled fur, bunched steel hard muscle and a bears grasping arms. When its corpse hit the ground the thump was very audible.

“ Out here, wounded, with no support and no gun and that attitude the jungle will have you fertiliser long before you push me too far"

S'loan now finaly slumps to sitting position facing her gun no matter his posture tracking like a servo arm.

"Now get yourself ready and rested. We have a little hikeing to do."

Last Call

The tarp was too warm. Too stuffy. Infact everything was overly warm and humid. Her skin filthy though it was felt like it was coated with damp. Rolling out of the tarp and bushing her now somewhat waxen hair out of her eyes Lassa stared. Apart from the odd party of winged invadors, there rainbow hued passage buzzing overhead and the strange parties of six legged creatures in the far distance she was alone. The datanet was ..horriby silent for one moment then roaring with static. Carrier signals were still there but carried nothing but nonsense.

As a thick tropical rain started to fall to inundate the city and its terran fauna packed parks Lassa finaly realised.

The cities atmospheric processors must have finaly shut down.

Wincing against the pain and the fact that the falkin was still firmly attached to her she slumps her way along the rough uncovered evercrete slabs to the nearest elevator to find that its jammed half way down full of shot up construction bots that had evidently been putting there molecular bonders to long range and unpleasant use by the ..messy look of the insect limbs sticking out of some of the roadway below.
The falkin beeps incessently and pulls her towards the evelators thick black power line before it stops. After a moment a timer appears.

Angel

A battle angel shares little with the Angels of death of the emperor of mankind save human origin and purpose. They are individually arguably more lethal than the other in certain situations. In the end though a battle angel is able to absorb far far more damage and keep kicking than almost any space marine.
These were no corporate int sec tech ninja packed full of hidden second musclatures and back up oxygen supplies and glands and combat wetware but still looking good in a suit.. No these made no stealthy pronouncements about there make up and there was no "suit" to take off. Though there were off diuty soft mods that could replace there hard exterior in truth the interior was far more machine than man.

A battle angel was a battle angel all the time. The optic and gravitics that dotted its limbs with lenses had no skin underneath to block there systems, the back with rolling extendable heat sink cloack and thermal radatior wings for its backpack reactor had no need for shock absorbing matierals to save a spine. That egg shaped helmet was so dense and independently powered to support the angels mind intact even if the rest had been virtually vaporised in a near hellbore detonation.

None the less there was a certain amount of grey matter still involved. A corticle stack wasnt desigend to operate without it ussualy.
Thus they new and had identity and friends and even lovers. And in the way of human troops of an elite they had certain traditions.

"VICTRIX!"

The first micro missile pack shrieked it out across electronic bands as it slammed towards its targets, smashing through office walls its minature drive fields turning desks into confetti as it passed, hunting down its target. Some would be intercepted, or find themselves wedged in structural walls to dense for them to pass through.

However the angels in question new this building.

They knew every millimetre of it and which walls there projectiles could pass through hidden from the prying eyes of mobile defences. The remaining missiles detonated spreading there payload. Not sending out waves of hypervelocity fragments or a minature fission pumped lasers, no molecular cutting fields interlocking rotating like a blender, none of the hideous gut wrenching pull from an anti personnel gravitic imploder. None of the punch of a single hypervelocity sabot or the hissing electronic finned darts of system slayers. No. This was just liquid.

The air filled with a thick orange paint and the warbling electronic screech from every surface it touched that carried a convertible charge or enough light or heat. It was thick. It was sticky. It covered eyes and lenses and hardened and clung like emergency starship hull sealant. Originaly it ate radio waves and spat back hashing static, more modern modifications allowed it to do the same for half a dozen more exotic bits of the spectrum. Its amonia like stench ate biological tracers, it was in short a devils bew, a mix rather than a compound.

It was also now rather quickly setting like a second skin.

OOC I thought I remembered having a map somewhere. Old but serviceable. (http://doc-evilonavich.deviantart.com/art/Gastins-World-Map-18684342)

Beep. Beep. Low hum. A distant, high-pitched thrumming, perhaps the sound of the ship's engines operating at maximum capacity. Beep. More unmistakably, the feeling of space filled, of something standing over him.

Jelan Gesh awoke.

He glanced at his arm and shoulder, which were hidden from view beneath some kind of apparatus, and from which, disturbingly, he could feel nothing at all. Then he glanced up at Ruby, who was looking at him with the dispassionate gaze that only an AI can manage.

"Salutations betide thee, Cap'n Jelan," said Ruby. "We will reach the jump point in forty-five seconds. The chances of a successful jump are approximately thirty-nine per cent."

"What? No!" Jelan almost shouted, trying to wrench himself upright, and failing because his arm (currently being reattached to him) and most of his side was still restrained. "This is a disaster!"

Ruby was nonplussed. "You have encountered graver peril and darker moments, yet you cry aloud at this one -- is something wrong?"

"Thirty-nine percent chance of success? You call those heroic odds? Why, that's not even one in ten, let alone one in a million! We're doomed!"

Ruby moved her head, almost -- but not quite -- like a real living being. "Perhaps. We have a sixty-one percent chance of being doomed. I will return when I have more information."

She vanished. Jelan sank back in despair.

Only a few seconds later, although it could as well have been a minute or two -- time passes strangely at .5c -- Ruby was back, with the same expression on her face. Jelan figured once he was out of sickbay he'd get Melkat to program some better facial expressions for her. "You will be pleased to note, O most daring voyager of the cosmos, that the odds are now more to your liking," she said. "New data has come in which reduces our chances of a successful jump greatly."

"That's what I like to hear," said Jelan, and indeed he was feeling better already. "What's going on?"

"The Arthropods have fired upon us," she answered. "Missiles are inbound and will arrive approximately four seconds before we can make a successful jump. Indeed, were it not for the gravitic effects of our rapid velocity, I would put the chances of successfully escaping Gastin's World at zero."

"Hmmm....." Jelan said. "What is likely to happen if we are hit by a missile?"

"The most likely scenario is that at least one reactor is hit and disabled, as those are located closer to the hull and their heat sinks and exhaust pipes are easiest to detect on a missile's sensor. We will lose power, shielding, and possibly life support; structural integrity will be compromised; but our speed and inertia will keep our mass together into a coherent quasi-sphere."

"We won't be able to make the jump anyway, then."

"No. Tenacity will continue on its current course and velocity for another twenty-eight point five seconds until it impacts with Gastin's World."

Jelan winced. "Ouch."

"'Ouch' doesn't begin to cover it. Based on our mass, velocity, and taking into account air resistance from the planet's atmosphere and the probable detonation of all our remaining fuel.... I have estimated our impact will have a result similar in scope to, although fundamentally different from, slamming Axios* into the Earth at approximately forty times its standard spinning velocity."

"Rocks fall, everyone dies."

"Exactly. However, my calculations assume that only one missile will impact the ship. If the Arthropods come to the same conclusion as I have, they will retarget and fire again, perhaps with gravity-based weaponry that can draw the wreckage off and prevent it from causing a catastrophic surface impact -- although I am not certain how likely they are to succeed as I have no access to their weapons data."

The ship shuddered, indicating that the first of the missiles had struck the shields and been atomized, or perhaps that the ship had encountered a random hydrogen atom while traveling at relativistic velocities. It's hard to tell with those things. Jelan was actually grateful for the restraints as it meant he wasn't shifted around randomly. "How soon to the jump?"

Ruby's image flickered for a minute -- she was busy -- and when her voice came, her mouth didn't move in sync with it. "Soon. I'm getting in position."

"Good," Jelan said, and grabbed the intercom with his uninjured hand. "All hands, we are jumping! Make sure you haven't left anything behind in the system!"

He set it down again, and something stirred in his brain. He glanced at Ruby again, but before he could speak, was thrown around by two further impacts. Then something exploded distantly, perhaps part of the hull collapsing under the strain, and alarm klaxons started to wail, so that Jelan had to yell to make himself heard.

"Ruby! The Marines!" he yelled. "We left the Marines behi--"

Tenacity jumped.

There was a visual effect best described as "pop". It didn't make a "pop" sound, because there is no sound in space; it was just there one moment and gone the next, which tends to make people think of "pop". At least human people. For arthropods it's probably "click". A missile had just exploded right on the failing shields of the immense freighter in the midst of the jump, but its results were unknown; even the Vojvodina-Nihonians didn't know whether explosions could travel through a jump point the way ships (and missiles displaced by them, of course) could.

And then the space around Gastin's World seemed a little emptier. But it was probably psychological, as with hundreds of ships around, there was certainly artificial matter to spare in the system.

* * *

Vanderaa sat up and looked around at his limbs. "Hmmm. I appear to be in one piece, and so is the ship. That's a good sign." He looked around. "Now that the exciting part of the day is over, are we going to be kept here or someplace else? I mean, I know we'll be expected to provide information, but that won't take very long, and I suspect we're being kept here 'indefinitely.'"

* * *

The other Marines had not simply been sitting there silently as their commander hobnobbed casually with a giant bug. They were indeed seated quietly, but they conversed among themselves in low voices, speculating on whether the room was bugged, teasing the youngest private about his girlfriend, discussing music and video games, and using more swear words than is safe for me to put in writing on this forum. In short, they were being soldiers; but they were also taking their minds off the fact that they were in the bowels of a ship crewed by highly aggressive and militaristic bugs a head taller than a man.

If any of these bugs attempted to communicate with them, they received distrustful glances and perhaps overheard a few mutterings too quiet to understand, although that wouldn't put off everybody. What would put them off was them being prisoners of war, or whatever designation the hive had decided to slap upon the Marines for the time being.

* * *

As for Ruby's finger in the "apparatus": it did nothing. This was because all of Ruby's energy was currently contained in making sure her ship didn't fall apart. It lay, nearly inert but still conscious of the energy, a matrix spread across anything conductive it could find; oblivious of Trader or of the other RUBiCoN unit that now occupied a carefully protected cell inside it. Unless you knew how to look, you probably wouldn't know it was there.

Then again, when AIs with god complexes become a potentially biosphere-threatening issue, you learn how to look pretty damn quick.

* The moon, in Santorini system.