The beetle dropships were highly advanced, comfortable, aesthetically pleasing craft. They moved quickly, compared to old earth standards at least, and could fit several hundred tons of cargo. There was one thing about them though that Ronin absolutely hated. There were no windows. The ride from the cavern’s edge through the underwater tunnel into the cube hangar was measured in minutes, yet, that whole time, Ronin couldn’t shake the feeling something would go wrong. He wanted to see where he was going, to observe with his own eyes they weren’t going to hit something. Not that he had any control over the ship’s actual movements, even if he could see outside. All he could do was wait, while he grew increasingly restless, until the landing jingle played throughout the ship compartment, and the ramp slowly opened.
“We made it, boss.” K3 said, from his place beside, and a little behind Ronin. “So, stop worrying so much will you? You’re gunna freak out the troops.” Turning his bulky suit to cast a glance at his bodyguard, Ronin knew he must be showing more of his anxiety than he realized, if the giant was commenting on it. Taking a deep breath, Ronin willed the feelings of unease to leave him, after a short pause, it did. A little bonus to having Owl Two messing around with his head, he could actually control his emotions now, if he was conscious of them, and was actively trying to suppress them. One of many perks to the new and improved brain matter he’d come to discover over the last month in his new body.
“Thanks, big guy,” Ronin said quietly, now under control again. He never had time to see the Doctor to get his empathy dialed back up, but this ability to ‘turn off’ unwanted emotions was incredibly convenient. Ronin didn’t think he would give this one back, even if he did dial the unnecessary compassion back up. “Come on all, let’s go to space.” He said in a much louder voice, punching the air as the ship’s ramp finished opening to reveal the inside of an unfamiliar room. Frowning, Ronin stepped outside and looked around.
“We’re inside one of Homecube’s hangars.” Elyria, who’d buzzed over to stand on his shoulder, said, indicating the room. “There are a few of these on every side of the ship. Though, we only managed to get three of them working, we still filled several others with raw materials, thanks to my efforts with the refugees.” Ronin, who’d expected her arrival, was a little shocked when she preened her clothes and fluttered her wings as she spoke. Clearly, she’d been as excited to see him as he now realized he’d been to see her. Taking his helmet off, Ronin grinned.
“All hail the mighty fairy queen, ruler of lazy refugees.” He felt a twinge from his conscience at the jab, but it was easy to ignore, he’d been joking anyway, mostly. Shaking the thought of the refugees away, he looked at her more deeply. There was no denying he’d missed her. For whatever reason, even the way she hounded him was endearing, and the way the ship’s lights illuminated her silver hair and pale skin gave him shivers. To say nothing of her blue eyes… forcibly pushing the emotions down, Ronin recentered himself, thinking about what she’d actually said. “Good, I’m glad they were able to help get us ready that much quicker, but a… what did you call the cube ship?”
“Homecube,” Elyria answered simply, shrugging her shoulders. “We got tired of calling it ‘the active cube,’ ‘the lizard ship,’ ‘the one we’re keeping’, there were others, but the point is, we were confused, so we talked about it, and everyone agreed with me Homecube was the perfect name.” Ronin doubted that very much, but Homecube was as good a name as any, so he just nodded.
“Very well then,” he said. “Now, we’re in a hurry, right? Let’s get these soldiers a drink, while we go see if Homecube will fly.” He got another round of cheers over that announcement, though admittedly, most of them came from the yokai teams humoring him. The Twilight Court didn’t dress in all black, and have their pale faces highlighted with black lipstick and tear tracks because of their cheerful natures. While Red and Blue, self-proclaimed ‘gamer bros,’ whatever that meant, and the clockwork couple and Ian’s SWAT teams were mourning the losses they’d suffered.
“We can do that,” Elyria answered, hopping off his shoulder and turning to a catgirl with pink ears and tail, in a waitress outfit, who’d been standing unobtrusively to the side. “Mei, would you take our soldiers to get cleaned up and then pour them a round at the café?”
“Yes meow’m,” Mei said, giving a deep curtsy as she beckoned for those who’d road the ship back with Ronin. He stared at her as she walked away, shaking his head in bewilderment.
“Catgirls and a café? I read a light novel once that had a maid café in it, it was kind of cute, the way the two leads were so awkward around each other in there. But who in their right mind would turn themselves into a cat girl maid?” Ronin asked, turning to Elyria after the catgirl had walked out of sight, to find her glaring at him. “What?” He asked, confused.
“Now you’ve put your eyes back in,” she said, tone frosty. “There are a few groups of them actually. Apparently, there was a group of...otaku? On earth when all this happened. The otaku themselves didn’t survive the lizard enforcer attack, but all the people they brought from their personal realms were tailor made to be café maids. They are really good at following instructions, like cleaning, cooking, and serving people, but that’s where their brain function stops.”
“Kinda like the red and blue soldiers, and the twilight court.” Ronin said, nodding in agreement. “They were amazing on the battlefield, but I wasn’t able to get much from the soldiers, beyond gamer terms I didn’t understand, or dark poetry from the twilight court. I don’t interact with the people from personal realms much, other than our world, so it caught me by surprise that they aren’t… complete, I guess?” He said, searching for the right words. “What I’ve actually been wondering about though, is how so many weirdos made it down here in the first place? I mean, you were at the party, same as me. It was a father son affair, invitation only. Yet there are married couples running around, LARPers, gamers, and every kind of weird thing in between. How did they get down here?”
“I asked Mycroft about that actually.” Elyria said, motioning him to walk with her as she spoke. “Come on, let’s talk on the way, we have several miles of corridors to walk before we get to the bridge… actually, why don’t you drop the suit before we go? I’m surprised that thing is still in one piece, with all the bullet holes and blood stains. Besides, we haven’t had time to reinforce all the floors yet, no point taking chances, right?”
“Right, just a sec.” Ronin said, as he went about the labor-intensive process of getting out of the suit. The process was further hindered by how dented and battered the thing had become after weeks of sustaining damage without repair. K3 and Elyria helped him pull the heavy plates off, since there was no way, he could do it alone, and as he peeled the body sleeve off, an awful odor spread from his body. Causing Elyria to cover her nose and fly straight back. Even K3, who showed remarkable tolerance to smells, snorted, and shook his head, thick lips slapping against his tusks.
“Ok, new plan, take a shower. There’s a stall right there. You too big guy, but make it quick, we’re on a time crunch.” Ronin wanted to argue the point, the Daoist’s out there covering them would die quickly, but he’d been inside that body hugging sleeve for a month and the smell was making him sick.
“Fine, but then we need to go.” Ronin said, giving in without protest. She pointed him to the crate, which turned out to be a shower unit, similar to the one they’d first used upon waking up in their human bodies, and he climbed into the closest one, K3 taking the one next door. They scrubbed in silence, getting the filth off themselves. Ronin experienced a moment of awkwardness, as he retracted his crotch plates for the first time to clean, but he got over it quickly, distracted by the realization he hadn’t had to use the bathroom in a long time… it didn’t take long for him to come up with the answer though. His body was grown, actually tailor made to feed off a particular type of food. Since that food was also biologically manufactured to serve the purpose, there was essentially no waste created. At least none that couldn’t be expunged through his body’s pores. The waste didn’t smell very good, especially after a month of being trapped against his body.
“All set,” he said only a few minutes later, feeling clean and refreshed for the first time in ages.
“Great, now you only smell as bad as you normally do, but it’s a start.” Elyria said, grabbing his elbow and leading him to a hatch K3 had to manually open. So much for futuristic sci-fi door sensers. “Don’t worry,” Elyria said, seeing his expression. “Some of the more heavily trafficked hatches got automatic openers, we just don’t have the resources to waste on them for every room. Especially one that leads into open space, should the hangar bay door be opened outside.”
They walked down the perfectly square corridors for nearly ten minutes in silence, following a fresh green line that had been painted on the floor. The place wasn’t as filthy as Ronin remembered, but it was far from pristine. Getting bored with the constant squareness, Ronin turned to Elyria, who saved him the trouble of finding a topic, by speaking first.
“So anyway,” she said, walking at his side, instead of flying. The corridor was big enough for her to spread her wings, but the air was completely still. Flying would likely exhaust her quickly and kick up a dust storm while she was at it. “I talked to Mycroft about why she was invited to the father son party.” That was right, Ronin had forgotten they’d been talking about that before they got sidetracked by his stench.
“She wasn’t invited at all. Ninety percent of the people who are down here weren’t either. Apparently, there were several parties that day. Each put on by people in different social circles, with different ranks in the ship’s hierarchy. They served as fronts to get the well to do people, like Fabius and Amaris, in the loop about the lizards. But even those at the parties weren’t the only ones invited. The main difference being most of those who didn’t get the secret invitation didn’t get free bodies, and they didn’t get their own ships. They had to either already have a body or be willing to fork over spare personal realms for them. Then, they were all corralled into a handful of dropships and let down in groups.” Ronin frowned, thinking through the implications of what she’d said. If that was true, then he’d been working under a flawed understanding for months. He smirked dryly, since it wouldn’t be the first, or the last time that happened, when a thought hit him.
“Wait a minute,” Ronin said confused. “Why would they ask for spare pocket worlds instead of credits?”
“Don’t feel bad for being so ignorant, White Flame,” Elyria said with a smirk. “Me, the Doc, and Leo have been talking about this for weeks, while you were out killing. Trying to get a full picture of events, between what Xerox knows, what the Priest picked up, and what we gathered from the refugees. We haven’t filled in all the blanks yet, but we think we’ve come close.” Ronin listened with annoyance, as she gloated. Wondering how Leo was holding up, having to stay out of the action for so long. He was an incredible hand to hand fighter, but his paws weren’t designed with holding a rifle in mind. They could have made him a custom, but since he didn’t want to wear armor, he’d opted to stay at the ship and play police officer to the refugees after the teleporter incident… Ronin was also pretty sure he’d made that choice so he could avoid talking to Ronin about his parents, but either way, it was a task that needed doing, and he’d volunteered.
“Well, are you planning to keep me in suspense or are you going to tell me?” He asked, after she dragged out the silence for another half minute.
“Ok, ok,” she said, giving in with a laugh after she riled him up. “It all comes down to space travel.” Elyria said, her voice now more serious. “It came as a shock to me since my kind have been using hyperspace all along. But beetles, lizards, and humans, don’t have faster than light travel. So, since they couldn’t make the beetle AI, Owl Two it turns out, do anything, the government had to find another way to pass the time in space. Now, stasis stones, as the beetles call them, aren’t very powerful. In fact, they’re very limited, but we ran a few test models, and if you string enough of them together, their processing speed will improve enough to make them viable.”
“How many stasis stones would that take?” Ronin asked, trying to do math in his head without any understanding of what a standard pocket world was even like.
“A lot,” Elyria said. “A whole lot. Thousands upon thousands of them. They’d have to string a mountain of them together in order to come close to the amount of processing power needed to run a ship and maintain a crystalline, digital, world for the people on that ship to pass the millennia in while the ship crawled across the stars.”
Ronin’s mind was spinning now, his thoughts pulling at the random pieces of knowledge he’d gathered. It wasn’t easy, since he was working with half gained knowledge and half guesses. He’d already found in his time in the real world he didn’t have a good grasp of the whole picture. Like how he thought the lizards would terraform earth, or how he assumed all pocket worlds were like his. He’d made assumptions, a lot of which were wrong, but the math still wasn’t adding up for him.
“I’m trying to make that math work in my head,” he said finally. “But I just can’t get the numbers to jive. There are hundreds of refugees here, maybe over a thousand?” He cocked his head, hoping she’d fill in the blanks.
“Something like 1,200, yea. But that’s after what we lost in the lizard attack, and the ones who managed to teleport away.” She answered, right on cue.
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“Ok, that’s more than I expected honestly. But even so, that means, depending on how many extras were brought in from pocket worlds, there are only maybe three hundred actual crystalized humans. Even if each of them had two spare stasis stones to trade, something I didn’t even know was possible, that’s not thousands. So, how did they come up with the remainder?” He was starting to get an idea, but it was too twisted for him to consider fully, at least until he learned more.
“Trading pocket worlds or stasis stones is possible.” Elyria said, as they walked at a near jog down the corridor. “There were events the ship hosted every once in a while, with a stone as a reward. There are always people who are willing to risk their lives in gambling ventures, and, despite the immortality the stones grant your kind, if you’re killed, or get tired of living, those stones also become available.” She listed several ways that made since, but they weren’t what Ronin was waiting to hear. “And there are also the honor duels…” she said, casting a sidelong glance at him as she spoke. There it was. The words he’d expected and the reaction to go with them.
“I see,” Ronin said. “Something like that couldn’t have happened over night, they’d have had to have been working on gathering those stones for years in order to leave as quickly as they did. They must have had someone to gather stones for them. Someone who was well known for killing those newly crystallized in honor duels…” He’d quickened his pace as he spoke to the point where he was almost running, and Elyria had to drag on his arm to get him to slow.
“That was our conclusion too,” she said with sympathy in her deep blue eyes. “Someone like Stanly and his gang, who were secretly on the government payroll. Leo said he was responsible for thousands of newly crystallized people’s murders over the years, but somehow, he always found loopholes in the system to avoid accepting duels from people like Leo, who could have torn him apart in the ring… it would explain a lot, if he was the one who’d provided them to the government. It also explains why we never saw him on the planet.”
“Because he never came here,” Ronin said with a sigh. “He went straight to the ship with the other elites who made the cut, while they sent all of us down here to serve as distractions for the lizards while they ran away… son of a…” Ronin cursed silently as all the possibilities played out in his mind, each one a little darker than the last, and rage filled him.
“It’s not worth dwelling on boss,” K3 said from behind him, resting a huge hand on his shoulder. “The government dogs had clearly been planning this for longer than you’ve been alive. There was no reason you should have known any of it, and no one who’s expecting you to do anything about it. All that matters right now is we get off this planet. Can’t very well go after Stanly if we waste time here talking until the lizards bury us in bodies now, can we?” The giant gave his shoulder a squeeze, the pressure creaking his chitin armor, and helping Ronin focus again.
“You’re right,” he said, taking a deep breath and pushing the emotions down. “You’re right,” repeated as he moved forward once more. “Let’s get this ship moving then, we can’t accomplish anything else by staying here.” Decision made; the trio resumed their walk.
“Good, you made it.” Xerox said a short time later, as they walked through a hatch guarded by an entire yokai team. Ronin wondered about that, considering how dead the rest of the ship had been along that corridor, but now that he was inside, it made since.
“Is that what I think it is?” Ronin asked, pointing towards the shipping container sized, multicolored crystal that sat in the middle of the room.
“Yes,” Xerox said, moving over to join him beside the giant crystal. “That is the artificial intelligence, @!^$#*, who was put into command of its vessel, long before the fall of the elder race. Known to you as Owl Two, and the source of my own coding.” The non-android was clearly pleased to show off the giant ship’s core, and for good reason. It was beautiful. The crystal was multifaceted and reflected the light in strange patterns against the walls of the large chamber.
“I kinda figured,” Ronin said, impressed, but doing his best to suppress it, thanks to the anger he felt towards the AI for his many crimes. “So, what are those then?” He asked next, swiveling around to point at the stack of crystals that were all in the shape of perfect cubes, each labeled with a white number, freshly painted on each side. Ronin counted nine of them in total, their perfect symmetry, and shining surfaces the color of lacquered midnight containing a beauty all their own, if not as traditionally striking as Owl Two’s core with its natural crystal shape.
“Those, are the intact AI cores, from all the lizard ships.” Xerox said, voice clearly disdainful this time. Ronin smirked at the biological copy of a mechanical being. He still hadn’t learned how to keep the emotion from his voice, making him much easier to read than Owl Two ever was.
“Again, I kinda figured,” Ronin said. “But why did you collect them all and bring them here?” Knowing Xerox might not pick up on subtle hints, he asked directly. “I thought we were going to connect Owl Two’s core with, this, ship’s AI core, so we could gain control over it. What value do the other eight serve?”
“Oh, I see.” Xerox said, nodding his helmet, which resembled a goat’s face. “That is true,” he said, gesturing to the cube with the number one on it. “We are going to connect my original’s core to this ship’s, then you and your people will go in and help conquer the AI. Then, we’ll hopefully have full access to this ship’s systems. At least the ones that are still operable.”
“And the other eight?” Ronin asked again when it became clear Xerox had finished talking.
“Oh, yes.” He said with a chuckle that came across as fake and flat. “Well, after you’ve conquered the combined AI core, gaining control over the ship, we’ll hook up another one and repeat the steps. It will be a time-consuming process, but once my original’s core has assimilated all nine of the enemy cores, its processing power will have reached a level that the world you inhabit inside will be indistinguishable from reality.”
Ronin turned away from the glossy black cubes, each the size of Owl Two’s core, and stared at Xerox. He knew full well the copy was trying to pull a fast one on him, and he didn’t even need the enhanced cognitive abilities he’d gained to realize it.
“Xerox,” he said slowly. “The world inside Owl Two’s AI core is already indistinguishable from reality. In fact, I forgot I wasn’t in the real world several times during my stay there. The people who live inside are so real I personally don’t consider them any less real than myself. They’re just people who were born in a different place than me, no different from you, or Jade… So, tell me, please, why that conniving, manipulative, scheming, devious, and supposedly dead, Owl two wants us to boost his processing power by tenfold?”
“I, don’t know what you mean, my lord.” Xerox said, dashing his hand at his helmet as if to wipe away sweat. “The world you lived in was only boosted on the continent you resided upon. Further out, including the second planet now orbiting your sun, it was no different than anyone else’s world. I am talking about a world so real you could leave earth’s solar system and still feel like you were in the real world.” Ronin frowned, wondering why that would even matter to a dead AI, opening his mouth to speak again, he was stopped by a raised hand from Elyria.
“Let it go, White Flame.” Elyria, who’d shifted and fluttered her wings when he’d said they were as real as he was, not that she’d ever admit it said. “We’ve been working on him for weeks. He either doesn’t know more or has been ordered not to tell us. In either case, we need to at least merge these two cores to gain control of the ship. So, let’s do that first. We can worry about what kind of stunt the crafty machine is trying to pull when we have control.” She had a solid point, and Ronin couldn’t argue with it. That didn’t mean he’d forget about this, however. Owl Two had been completely beyond his ability to understand or control their entire acquaintance. In fact, with the benefit of hindsight, Ronin had been dancing in the palm of his hand from the beginning. There was no way he’d allow that machine ten times as much computing power until he had a good reason to do so.
“Fine,” he said at last, taking in the cores one more time, before turning back and asking. “So, what do I have to do in order to let Sam get us off this rock?”
“Right this way, my lord. “Xerox said, jumping on the opportunity to change the subject. He led Ronin around to the other side of the colorful crystal, and pointed at a much smaller crystal, small enough to fit in a wheel barrel, resting on a platform with a large, tangled mass of cables in differing sizes connecting to its every surface, several of which went up and disappeared into the ceiling. There was also a small pad right in front of the crystal, with the shape of a human hand imbedded into its surface.
“Just press your hand into the imprint to give your permission, then, we can go up to the bridge. Where you can observe Samantha flying us away from this planet… assuming everything works of course,” he added. Ronin looked at the clearly cobbled together crystal, and exchanged glances with his two closest friends, before shrugging and pressing his hand down on the print. He jumped in surprise, when a strap snapped over his hand, locking it in place on the pad. Next, he jumped in pain, when several large needles stabbed halfway through his palm.
“Identity confirmed,” Owl Two’s disembodied voice said from a small speaker near Ronin’s hand. It still hadn’t let go of his wrist, however, and Ronin resisted the urge to yank it away, lest he trigger some sort of trap that would take his whole arm off. “Captain Ronin, do you give your permission, free of outside influence or compulsion to allow Samantha, former kaldarr slave, and current pilot of Homecube, access to the flight controls?”
“Um, yes?” Ronin said, half asking the words. “I mean, yes. I give my permission.” He repeated a moment later when nothing happened.
“Permission granted and accepted. Good luck, Captain.” With that, the spikes were withdrawn from his hand and the strap loosened. Ronin snatched his hand away, as the entire ship trembled slightly. It was subtle, but everyone in the compartment was well aware of their surroundings and noticed it instantly.
“It worked,” Xerox said, sounding more surprised than Ronin felt comfortable with. “Of course, it did, my original came up with the plans after all. Now, if you would follow me to the bridge?” He beckoned to the others, who followed him over to a ladder leading upwards to a hatch in the ceiling, some thirty feet above them. Shaking his head at the copy, who wasn’t doing a very good job of playing at being Owl two, he followed him up the ladder.
“This is more like it,” Ronin said, as he climbed from the hatch and took in the room. It was, to no one’s surprise at this point, in the shape of a perfect cube. A small cube shaped platform rose in the center of the room, Samantha was standing in the center, with cables running to her head from the platform, likely connecting her to the temporary core. Her eyes were closed, and she didn’t seem to be aware of their presence at all. Ronin ground his teeth together in rage at what had been done to the woman. She’d been loyal to him, when so few others had been. Why hadn’t the android captured Eric, that backstabbing low life, if he’d needed a pilot to experiment on?
Of course, Ronin knew the answer. Back then, he wouldn’t have let him torture anyone, even an enemy like Eric. Neither would he have taken Eric along from his pocket world into reality. Ronin had been too focused on those close to him, those he trusted. It was likely the only way Owl Two could accomplish what needed to be done. Ronin narrowed his eyes as his mind rationalized the decision.
“Knock it off, or I’ll put her out of her misery and take my chances flying this thing myself.” He said, not knowing why, but having the impulse to reprimand himself, nonetheless. It almost didn’t surprise him, when the thoughts rationalizing Owl Two’s actions, his own thoughts, quieted down instantly.
“What was that my lord?” Xerox asked, clearly not understanding what had just happened. That was good, at least the copy didn’t seem to know about this. A good thing, because Ronin had left anger behind at the realization that something was in his mind, feeding him thoughts. He didn’t know if he would have left the copy of Owl Two alive if he’d known what was happening to him. Not that he even knew what was going on… It was probably best to just forget about it for now, right? After all, they were on the clock. There would be plenty of time to deal with whatever it was later. Nodding to himself, Ronin forgot about the thoughts that weren’t his thoughts, and refocused on the task at hand.
“Nothing,” he said, not sure what the copy was talking about. “Let’s get started, shall we?” He asked, as his eyes continued to rove around the square chamber. It was fifty feet on a side, a perfect cube. There were several tables dotting the room, bolted to the floor, with three to five chairs around each one. None of them were cubes, however, so Ronin assumed they were installed after the fact. There was a nutrient fluid dispenser, along with a few other additions he couldn’t place right away. As he looked around, K3 and Elyria climbed into the chamber behind him. Xerox, then slid a nearby table over the hatch, locking it in place with a soft click.
“There,” he said making sure the hatch into the core room was concealed. “Now, I’ve taken the liberty of inviting a few of the more prominent passengers to the bridge to watch the take off with us, if that is alright with you, my lord?” Ronin, still a little confused for some reason, only nodded and took the seat Xerox indicated. Surprisingly enough, it wasn’t the one covering the secret hatch, but three tables over.
“We came up with that to hide the core room,” Elyria said, settling into the chair beside Ronin’s and looking at him with concern for some reason. “The path we took to get there has been cleared of green paint, and the yokai team glued a panel over the hatch. The only way down there now is under that table… don’t know that I agree the secrecy is necessary, but the thought of what someone could do if they hooked one of those cores up to the ship is frightening. We’re over here so no one thinks there’s anything special about that table. If anything, they will be looking at this one, if given the chance.” Ronin thought about the ship, falling back into lizard control and shuddered. Their road to freedom would end instantly if that happened.
“Lord Ronin, Lady Elyria, Exalted K3.” Xerox said, projecting his voice across the large empty room. “Your guests have arrived.” As he spoke, Xerox ushered in a group of people, far larger than Ronin expected. There was Bartholomew and Genevieve, each followed by a clockwork guardian, but neither of them was armed. Next, Orpheus and Amaris entered the room, Orpheus with his arm up, palm raised, Amaris had her hand resting lightly in his. The pair looked like a renaissance couple, entering a ballroom. Ronin also noted they’d all cleaned up and changed at some point. Since their clothes were as fresh as his armor. The only clothing Ronin ever wore was his goat hide cloak, and there was always a clean one available whenever he needed it.
Behind the Twilight court’s leaders, Sergeant major Red and Blue entered, the Cortexas on their arms. Staff sergeant Ian Hill entered, not wearing his suit for the first time in Ronin’s memory, his dark skin only a few shades lighter than the white Flame armor he now wore. One of his sergeants, a blonde woman Ronin hadn’t caught the name of yet entered with him. They were followed by the blustery dwarf, the long-eared elf who’d nearly bled out bending down to rest her hand on the top of his head. Ronin had to hold back a snort at the sight of them. Leo and Doctor Mycroft entered arm in arm, Locke, Mycroft’s shifty, rat faced nephew/lab assistant entered on their heels, scurried in alone, hunched down, as if trying to avoid notice.
The procession continued, with well over one hundred people filing into the room, including Aurex, and Fabius. Each with a woman Ronin didn’t recognize clinging to them, though he noted that both women were well muscled and looked more like bodyguards than dates. Eventually, all the guests had entered, and were in their seats, then it was time for Ronin’s people to enter.
The Chief technologist and his six underlings entered, followed by Whisper and Stone with their PCP .50’s. Then Karr and Jaya entered, each wearing an armored suit, and holding a large PCP 1.0. They were the only members of the team that had followed Ronin from the time he left his pocket world present, and he wondered if they all should have been there, but figured there would be a good reason for their absence. Last to enter, was a jade green beetle, no larger than a German shepherd. It danced around, waving at everyone, did a lap around Ronin’s table three times, before coming to a halt beside Xerox.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Xerox began, gathering the attention of the masses.