Tatterskin: +Holy shit, she’s still alive. We set off the entire goddamn hanger and she’s still moving down there. Godsdamned…+
Rip-Nail: +Fucking Regs are hard targets. Hit ‘er again. We don’t need an intact body. Memories will serve as proof of death enough. Cycling another salvo of hammers. We’ll get a close-up of her death in no–wait. Mem-lock lost. Where the hells is she–she just–OH FU–+
[SESSION LOST]
Skulldrag: +Rip? Rip? Rip! Tatter–do you have eyes on–+
Tatterskin: +His aeros going down… He’s snuffed! Session lost! Session lost! I got nothing. I got nothing–+
Skulldrag: +Stay zero and shift positions. Get eyes on that Reg. Fuck. Fuck. Hannel. Specters out. Get me an on-site scry–+
[Tatterskin screaming; sound of metal screeching followed by spilling wetness]
[SESSION LOST]
COG-CAP: 94%
Skulldrag: +FUCK!+
Hannel: +Skulldrag? What’s happening? Skulldrag?+Skulldrag: +The sow just got Tatter! Got him with her monowire from behind–+ [Vomiting] +I felt it. I felt him die. I saw her. She’s hurt. She’s messed up bad from the blast. We can do this. We can finish this. Hannel.+
Hannel: +I’m trying… whoever made her wards is…+
Jelene Draus [TARGET ONE]: Sorry consang. Ain’t gonna be so.
Skulldrag: +NO–+
[SESSION LOST]
Hannel: +Skulldrag? Skulldrag? Anyone? Anyone! …+
[Sessions linked]
Hannel: +All reserve assets: Team One is down. Target is mobile–do not have eyes. Repeat, do not have eyes on her. Move in and get paid. Fifty-gs extra if one of you shits gets what’s left of team one out of there. Standard rules apply. Their cuts and still-working kit go back to the families–loot and be nulled. Go hard and go loud. Looks like our Regular still has some fight left in her.+
-Transcript recovered of failed assassination op on Jelene Draus, former Guard-Captain of the Regulars [940,000,000 Imp bounty pending increase]
16-3
Inventory (II)
“‘M back,” Draus sniffed, limping past Avo and Denton as another piece of her bio-rig’s carapace broke free from her body. A map of shrapnel jutted out like studded piercings along the right hemisphere of her face. The remnants of her helmet protected the remainder of her skull from severe damage, but her flesh was worn thin enough that Avo could see the gleaming alloy laced into her bones.
The rest of her body was in a similar state. One of her scythe wings was missing, a frequency dagger was half-buried in her shoulder, and she held her lit hiflass with the only two fingers she had left on her right hand.
From her hip bounced twenty or so skulls, each neatly cut by monowire and sporting skeleton augmentations similar to hers.
“Had a nice night?” Avo asked. The question was entirely honest.
The Regular staggered to a pause and fixed him with her unmelted eye for moment. A beat passed. Her facade cracked and her face broke into a vicious grin. “Yeah. Reckon you could say that. Been a while since I got caught in a good ol’ fashioned double-cross.”
“Barge?”
“Yep. Half-strand rigged the damn thing to blow. Managed to spot that shit early, but I didn’t expect them wiring the entire hanger to go with it. Half-strands blew up a bunch of unaffiliates and even hired some squires to make sure about me dyin’.” She spat off a thick globule off to the side and Denton frowned distastefully at the splatter now marring the nice floor. “How about you? Them star-fuckers give you anything?”
{Ah. The illustrious Captain Draus observed returning from another day in the life.} A thin attitude of wit spilled over from Calvino while Avo’s avatar remained frozen within the Inventory. {It’s really not that often someone lives up to the stereotype of their people or organization, but rarer still when the individual exceeds the nature of their stereotype by far. Her heart rate is practically placid even for someone with all her cardiovascular modifications. Uncanny. No anxiety at all. The things Highflame does to their soldiers…}
“One’s in my mind right now. Sounds very impressed with you.”
{That was not praise, Avo.}
The ghoul neglected to mention this.
Draus snorted and part of her exposed cheek broke free off her face like a lump of charcoal. “Another voice in your head. Ain’t gonna be any way to tell if you’re goin’ schizo or just packin’ your skull with new consangs anytime soon. This one do anything, or are they squatters too?”
“Does something,” Avo said. “Very useful. Easy ally. Showing me what they have in their Inventory. Implants. Equipment. Lots of selection.” He clicked this teeth together and chuffed joyously. “Might just get you some new guns like you asked. Got accepted. Am a citizen now.”
The Regular froze mid-nod as she did a double take. “Say that shit again?”
“Got accepted. Operative of Aegis. Citizen of Voidwatch–”
His words were interrupted by an extremely uncharacteristic guffaw from Draus as she flung her head back and let her laughter loose. What tendons she still had left twitched as a mangled smile tightened into form. “You serious?”
Avo’s rictus never broke. “Yes.”
“Them half-strands must be some desperate bastards.”
“Must be,” Avo agreed.
Denton tried to interject through the dialogue. “You should finish with the ansible–”
“Hey! Half-strand. Faither! The rotlick’s got a job! And he’s voider-FATED now.”
Calvino’s cringe crinkled the static thoughtstuff spilling out from Avo’s mind. {Citizenship is quite different than the varying classifications of indenturement the Guilds seem to practice-}
The rapid pounding of footsteps drew Avo’s attention downstairs again and Chambers’ accretion accelerated closer in an instant. “Really? No shit? Wait, Avo, you get to sample any of their medias?”
[No, other-me, he didn’t,] template-Chambers sighed. [Because the ghoul’s a boring shit.]
[Avo, if you introduce Chambers to voider porn we will all literally devote every effort still left in our simulated egos to nulling ourselves somehow,] Abrel deadpanned. [Even the Silvers will help me on this.]
[Gotta back the Guilder on this,] Corner spat. [That one’s just wrong.]
Template-Chambers humphed indignantly. [You all have no taste.]
[We just don’t like eating filth…] Benhata muttered.
“No,” Avo said, killing Chambers’ hopes before he even ascended the stairs. The thoughtstuff of Cas followed not far behind–when did they get back? Was he even gone that long? Two more signatures appeared and Kae and Essus made their way over on his DeepNav, drawn to the commotion as well.
Sprinting up the steps, the ever-excitable Aedon Chambers opened his mouth say something to Avo, only to find his attention drifting over to Draus. “Jaus-fuck, Reg. Your face looks like that fusion burner scene where Dannis Steelhard had to make his own orifice in the giga-ghoul to save the city.”
“How is burning a hole into a large ghoul going to save the city?” Avo asked, curiosity overriding fated regret.
Chambers wiggled his eyebrows at both the ghoul and the Regular. “Easy. Repopulation.”
A lull of anti-imaginative warfare was waged in each of their minds as Avo forced his Conflagration to remove recent memories.
{We’ll generate a personal therapist for him too,} Calvino said, more sympathetic than judgmental. {You know half the reason he’s doing this is that it gets him your attention and that makes him feel secure in a community, right?]
+Yeah. Still degenerate.+
{I never said that he wasn’t.}
Still smirking as Cas and Kae came out from the doorway behind him, Chambers stared warily at Draus. “Huh. Usually, you either hurt or kill me by this point.”
“Moving my arms hurts somethin’ bad,” Draus replied, rolling her shoulders. “Might find a cell downstairs to off myself in instead of waiting for midnight.”
“Getting soft,” Avo muttered.
“You go stand in the middle of an explosion.”
“Why not burn your consciousness into one of your attackers?” Avo taunted.
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“Fuck you, rotlick.”
They were all of strange minds, and the Reg could count herself among bedfellows.
“Going to order nanosuites right now,” Avo said, updating everyone about present circumstances. “Implant delivery from Voidwatch. Going to see if I can get a few for all of us. Wormhole communications. Advanced coldtech. Lets us stay connected even with the Nether disrupted without my constructs.”
“Nova,” Chambers said, sounding giddy. “Are we all getting recruited by the voiders to be super-spooks?”
Avo directed the inquiry over to Calvino and the EGI responded thusly. {We’re considering them part of your cell for now. The Agnos is currently pending evaluation thanks to you extracting the Conflagration from her mind. We have other designs in mind for Captain Draus as any attempts to directly recruit her will fail due to veto.}
+What? Why?+
{Ask her about Stolen Liberty and the voidship she blew up while still under Highflame.+
Avo swept Draus with a look of surprise. Her past got more colorful each time he learned about it. A part of him ached to delve into her mind. His self-directing will pried the urge free from his being. Reflexively reaching for the beast again, the vacancy remained and he felt his apprehensions rise in the background of his mind.
SYSTEM ADMIN: Would you like to continue your select–
Avo’s mind snapped back over into his avatar like a rubberband. The distraction of Draus’ return had sidetracked him momentarily.
He paused. +Five?+
{Last one’s for Essus,} Calvino said. {It’s mainly so we can proceed with his therapy more easily. We’ll be taking care of him for now.}
+Plan to recruit him too?+
{Not for what you think.}
Confirming the request with a thought, a spike of data speared deep into Avo’s mind and he found his Neurodeck feeding information over into his cog-feed. A marker formed within his DeepNav pulsing beyond the boundaries of Idheim’s upper atmosphere. It would be twelve hours before it made its planetside descent on a produce carrier set to land in void-dock nine in the Loathing district.
{We smuggle lots of things in using our hydroponic produce shipments,} Calvino explained. {The Guilds pretend not to notice those. We pretend not to notice their spies. It’s a fun game. Now. Let’s talk about what else you might need to start things off.}
Tired of speaking to the EGI alone, Avo reached into the rising inferno that rounded his mind and sculpted phantoms twinned to the EGI now residing near the core of his mind.
+Oh. Hello.+ Calvino greeted the gathering cell with an undulating tendril. +Avo’s finally decided to practice some manners and introduce me. I’m–+
“Those tendrils matter or just holojector shit?” Chambers interrupted.
“They are–”
Draus’ arm whipped out as a cleaving blur without warning. Chambers’ face vanished in a puff of splattering gore and bloodied mist. Kae, just peeking out from the stairwell caught a faceful of red and squeaked before tumbling back down the stairs. “Shit. Sorry Kae.”
“It’s okay,” the Agnos cried, voice trailing but a moment after. The hitch between her words and the scream of her heart’s pace told otherwise.
The ex-enforcer’s body sank but Avo seized the welling blood and forced it back into the corpse before it could overflow. A scar between realities scabbed between the thinness of existence, and from Calvino came only a sigh. +I never liked looking at that. EGI’s phantasmal orb flickered as it turned its attention over to Draus. +I have to be honest: I expected these outbursts of violence more from you than her.+
The Regular remained stalwart in her reflexive murder of Chambers. “He was gonna ask you somethin’ uncouth ‘bout your feelers there or some shit. My annoyance beat out the discomfort.”
Avo grunted before picking the body up using an Echohead and sniffing at it. “He’ll be fine. Will resurrect. Probably enjoys getting killed by Draus on some level.”
A twitch of disgust ran along Draus’ lips.
+Well, if the spontaneous acts of violence are over, I think I have a few recommendations for you all to pursue. Avo. If you would please project what you’re seeing for everyone present.+
Doing as bidden, phantasmal flames sprouted wide and licked across the ceiling to form a burning screen into a place of virtuality from the perspective of Avo’s avatar. The cadre found themselves greeted with countless lines of item data. All the while did the paleness of the room clash with the more somber tones of the dormitory.
“Looks like a damn mess,” Draus muttered. “How’s anyone supposed to dig through this clutter.”
A feeling of wry amusement sparked out from Calvino. +Specificity helps. Which is what I want to go through with everyone. I understand that you’ll be making a house call for a certain Glaive in the near future. Or maybe a run to revert the damage dealt to the so-called Heaven of Love.+
A cleaned up Kae re-entered the fray at the perfect moment to arrive with a stumbling halt. Eyes darting to regard Avo, he instead kept his focus on the inventory, waiting for what his new cognitive advisor was going to say.
+Regardless of what you’re doing, you’ll need an edge. A big one. Officially, Voidwatch cannot avow your actions to avoid infringing the sovereignty and interests of the other “Guilds” and sparking a new war. Unofficially, Aegis will see you with material and mechanical superiority against any foe.+ Calvino paused. +Almost any foe. Make a note of if there is any Omnitech presence in the area.+
“So what you’re offerin’ voider-class guns and augs?” Draus asked. “Yeah. Hells. We can do with that.”
You’re thinking too limited, Captain Draus,+ Calvino replied. +Aegis is not an arms dealership–we’re a joint intelligence apparatus born from endless eons of espionage and counter-espionage conducted between our many polities.+
Draus cocked her head and sniffed. “Alright. Saw we was gonna try to snuff the leadership of a Syndicate all on the same day. Say we needed to do it hush and clean unless we wanted to spend the rest of our lives with eyes grafted into our shoulders for Guilder kill teams. What you got then?”
+Which Syndicate?+ Calvino asked, no pause separating his reply.
“Hundred-Eights. No-Dragon irregulars.”
+Oh. They’re a hard one. We have to avoid anything biological considering their influence across that sphere of reality, and the males among you might need a temporary neutering.+ A spike of information buried itself into Avo’s mind and list of items began to materialize. +You’ll need a booster to keep you from getting sick. Combat skin of mechanical make and layered sealing.+
Inputting the orders he got from Calvino, Avo fed the details over to the administrator and slotted walls surged through the featureless room, the equipment arriving in partitions between grafts, weapons, armors, and more.
Choked by the forest of choices generated before him, Avo found himself the second most enraptured person in the room as Draus took a few steps closer to stare at all the armor available.
+I highly recommend MarsSec’s Butler series. It might feel more like you’re piloting a golem than actually wearing any armor, but that’s to your advantage. You already have far too many masculine markers to avoid internal bleeding in the presence of one of the daughters. It’s better for you to have a degree of separation.”
Draus grunted. “Specs?”
Calvino laughed and turned its attention to Avo. +Don’t tell her, show her. Think “dry-run now” with any piece of equipment you want.+
Calling up the MarsSec Bulter XI, Avo found himself faced with a six-armed tetrapod that dwarfed him twice over and had a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree visual sensor module in place of a helmet. Jagged clamps around dark red metal indicated where the user would be positioned within the machine.
As he was focusing on its design, a tether of data shot out from his avatar and poured a snapshot of his mind into the armor itself. Suddenly, he found himself in a grey room with various geometries parting his surrounding environment into various spaces and verticalities.
The first thing that came to his attention was how the world looked to him now. Instead of seeing things in a field of sight or a cone of perspective, his new “eyes” wrapped the area all around him and had a HUD listing half a dozen functions he didn’t yet comprehend. Paired to his will, his submind did most of the active thinking, adapting to the machine’s movements as the four limbs scuttled in slashing blurs
More information arrived over from Calvino and Avo learned how to generate targets. He formed the general shape of a hapless street squire in the training room–the attributes and implants of the man generated based on statistical data gathered from the city.
A tall chrome-armed figure with armor made from a melted traffic sign popped into being and immediately began firing at Avo’s avatar. Gauss flechettes rattled and broke against the Bulter’s hardened carapace while faint blue impact markers indicated which way the hits where coming from.
+The best thing you’ll find about a lot of our material–even the primitive variants–is that we have them in their most optimal forms. The Bulter here isn’t something that most of our operatives wear, but we either have an active ego infused in via ansible.+
That gave both Avo and Draus pause.
“This thing’s a full-on sheathe?” Draus said.
+For citizens of the void,+ Calvino said. +Sadly, you both have your consciousnesses logged in the Nether. Avo has a way about transferring himself, but you, Captain, might have some difficulties…+
“Yeah, I know,” Draus said. “I’m used to using phylacteries. Highflame’s got some clue about how the Nether locks our egos. None of you leave ghosts, right?”
+That depends on where we die. And how. Avo here already has the ghost of a thinking machine inside him. It’s the entire reason why his Metamind and the Neurodeck can integrate. But it’s also why you’re all going to need Sprites to interface with any of our more sophisticated machines. Now, Avo, if you would just fire back–+
The Bulter’s system was unlike the Nightmantis, or any other rig Avo had faced in action. The integration between the user’s executive thoughts and the metal’s reactivity was nearly instant. In a second, the electric locus filtering decisive phantasmics and pseudo-sequences within the Bulter calculated a dozen variables, and one of his arms shifted into what was effectively a needle-thin emitter from the rod of metal it once was.
A lance of energy lashed out and the air came afire. The simulated target burst into flames first before the beam carved their skull in half.
Chambers, again, resurrected right back in the middle of things. “Whoa, shit, consangs. What we watching?”
Draus, however, had the look of childlike enchantment beneath her scabbing wounds. “What else it got?”
+It’s qualified to fabricate tactical-level weaponry within the confines of its arms. The durasteel sheathe layering the arms also prevents any high shifts in temperature from damaging the nanobots. The question isn’t “what gun does it have,” Captain Draus, but “what guns do I want within the yield of a tactical nuclear warhead,” and “how many nanites and units of energy this is going to consume.”+
To emphasize the EGI’s point, Avo noticed a percentage bar in the upper right corner of his vision dip and refill as he unmade his beam rifle. The available nanos all but vanished when he used them to fabricate over a hundred micro missiles, and a time expanded asking him to find new sources of carbons and plastics to fabricate additional nanos.
“Why the hells didn’t you ever give us this?” Draus said, nearly salivating.
+We’re trying to keep you all alive, Captain. Not see you all dead within a month.+
The Regular snorted and clapped Avo over the shoulder. “Got me my guns after all.” She turned and faced the voider. “Hey. Cold-God. You got anything with a bit more kick?”
+I will show you if you promise never to refer to me as a god.+
“Only if I like the yield of the explosion.”