"Careful with that capacitor bank, install it wrong and we all go bye-bye," Amelia shouts out at a Krultathan setting up the new weapon's install. Thanks to the way the weapon platform was made to be retracted, they wouldn't have to do an EVA until towards the end, when the actual barrel needed attaching, which meant that right now, everything internal was being installed first.
"Hey, hey that's a revolving ammunition chamber, not a footrest, get off of it and get a proper ladder! And get the cryo-plasma conduits set up already, we need them in before we can run the exterior piping!" Amelia shouted at another of the Krultathan engineer-adepts while Viza, Savi, and Ti'Chal watched with amusement, staying well away from her and the gun project. Anything that required directly tapping into the core reactor was something none of them wanted to mess with.
"50 creds says she lasts half a cycle before trying to do it all herself again," Savi said, tail flicking behind her in the Krultathan equivalent of a smirk. Viza and Ti'Chal looked at her curiously.
"Betting against our Matriarch Noble for 50 creds? I thought I taught you better Savi....100 creds says she lasts a full cycle." Ti'Chal said in a chiding tone before swishing her tail with a smirk as well. The two of them then turned to Viza who looked at them disappointedly before throwing in a hundred creds of his own. "Quarter cycle, no longer." He made his bet just as Amelia went to chew out another engineer-adept for dropping one of the electromagnetic coils and threatening to have them recalibrate it by hand if it failed inspection. As she was doing so, Hal walked up, looking curiously at the three of them and Amelia, as well as the workers.
"Is there a reason for this unusual grouping Viza?" He asked.
"Ah, hey there little kit. Just taking bets on how long before Amelia gives up on the engineer-adepts." Viza said, his tail reaching down to pat Hal on the head, much to Hal's annoyance as it covered his ocular sensor.
"Betting against mother? For shame Viza, I thought you a better partner for her than that." Hal chides, managing to get Viza embarrassed and both Ti'Chal and Savi to chuff with laughter. Pulling out a credit chit of his own loaded with 500 credits, Hal then said.
"15 minut- correction, 10 minutes." He puts the chit in the pot between the four of them then looks at vis, his ocular tilting slightly. If Viza didn't know any better he would swear the little kit was giving him a smug look.
"Woo, big money from the little bot, now we're talking!" Savi said, picking up some of Amelia's talking habits from having been cooped up in engineering with her going over the math to make sure this new "Mack Cannon" wouldn't fry the ship. As if on cue, just shy of ten minutes later Amelia would bemoan the engineer-adepts and tell them to watch instead as she went about installing a capacitor bank and the reload chamber that they had been struggling with, causing all three Krultathans to stare at Hal in shock as they handed the pot to him.
"Remind me never to bet with Hal as an opponent," Ti'Chal muttered while Viza chuffed bitterly.
"You weren't the one he snatched victory from," Viza said in a mix of both a strange pride at the synthetic kid and also aggravation. Savi just shrugged, the fur on her face puffing a bit to make her look cuter when she looked to Hal before dropping back down as she stepped out to help Amelia rouse the engineer-adepts into shape, causing both Viza and Ti'Chal to look at him curiously. "Well well, Hal you sly kit. Look at you go." Viza said with a chuff of amusement.
"I am not sure what you mean, Viza. Is making friends so difficult for you?" Hal responded, causing Viza to click his tongue in faked annoyance. Hal was getting better in his banter. Ti'Chal looked like a mixture of emotions, starting to say something and then stopping several times before finally settling on what she wanted to say.
"Kit Hal Ryder, be careful with my daughter, noble or not." She finally said, causing Viza and Hal to look at each other confused, Viza opened with more chuffs of laughter, and Hal, thoroughly confused, replied. "I am incapable of harming Engineer Savi Uvra, and she is my friend. Your warning is unnecessary, Ti'Chal Uvra."
Ti'Chal said nothing to this, but the good atmosphere continued as they watched now Savi and Amelia do the work the 5 engineer-adepts were attempting to do far faster by themselves.
Ti'Chal thought back to when Amelia introduced Hal, right after they departed. Some of the crew had been hesitant, unsure of how to deal with a sapient synthetic. But when Amelia said to think of Hal as her own child, and Hal affirmed that it..or he, thought of Amelia as his mother, it appeased a lot and relieved many of their fears. The S.A. had painted artificial sentients as evil for as far back as anyone could remember, and while the Krultathans hadn't bought it, it had still made them nervous. Looking at Hal and the crew now though, Ti'Chal thought it sill how the S.A. made synthetics out to be emotionless machines. She could see it in that little bot's movements. Either the S.A. were wrong, or Amelia had done what previous races had failed to do, and Ti'Chal wasn't sure which would be better or worse. Despite her reservations, most of the crew and even she herself came to view Hal as Amelia's kit, especially after having heard what happened to her in the past from Hal and Viza. Not everyone was told, of course, just she and Savi, but it helped Ti'Chal understand as a mother the sorrow that Amelia had been through as only a mother could.
Still, now wasn't the time for sorrow. Another quarter cycle and they'd be ready to mount the weapon's exterior and run a systems test, and from what Savi had explained to her about Amelia's weapon, it would be something to behold seeing it fire. A kinetic accelerator that could fire at a percentage the speed of light was no small feat, and even more so to turn such a thing into a weapon. It was like a particle cannon but on a much larger scale, the way she understood it.
"Helm, prepare to drop us our near Tarvi system, the second asteroid belt if you please, we'd like a target to hit for the initial test and calibration."
"affirmative, Leader Ti'Chal." Came the bridge officer's reply.
Thirty minutes later and they had dropped from FTL, the warped bubble of space around them relaxing and folding back to normal space in a system with a red dwarf and neutron binary and three asteroid fields. Dropping out near the middle one meant they were a safe distance away from the neutron star's effects and had plenty of large asteroids to absorb a kinetic impact.
Amelia walked the engineer-adepts through how to install the barrel carefully, taking her time to make sure they connected the cryo plasma injectors for the shell casing and barrel cooling correctly and making sure the attachments were as sturdy as could be. This gun would have a good bit of kickback even if it used no explosives to propel the payload. As they were finishing up, the adepts began to head inside one by one as, unbeknownst to them, several axon ships dropped into the system.
"Leader Ti'Chal, multiple targets just entered the testing area. count 4 axon ships, 2 frigate-class, two fighter-class. possible additional ship but it went dark as soon as it entered."
'Shit.'
"All crew, prepare for combat and high g evasive maneuvers, I repeat, all crew, prepare for combat and high G evasive maneuvers!" Ti'Chal said to the intercom just as Savi and Amelia returned to the bridge. Amelia didn't even ask about the situation as she could see it from the sitrep screen shown on the far wall. Unexpectedly, however, Amelia was smiling.
"Power down all nonessential ship functions, divert all power to our new claw. This just so happened to provide us with a perfect test." She said to the shock of everyone there. Ti'Chal nodded to the officers to do as they were told and the Krultathan/human hybrid ship went dark on sensors. Amelia watched the movements of the Axon ships as they formed a standard searching pattern and smiled impishly, doing the calculations in her head. Four out of five wouldn't be bad at all, and if they got that fifth one to poke their head out of the proverbial water, then even better. Turning to the bridge crew from her terminal, Amelia asked them a simple question.
"Question, do you know who the deadliest human to ever have lived was?" A pause ensued as they waited for Amelia to continue. Instead, she grabbed Savi and, after lining up the first shot perfectly, directed her to hit the big red button she was pointing to on her signal.
"Helmsman, tie into the force sensor we installed on the back of the weapon, and adjust our thrusters to compensate for the kickback. Ready?" A moment, then she gives an affirmative.
"Fire."
Savi hit the button and the whole ship shook, seeming to want to lurch back and forth but unable to as millions of volts of power went through the newly installed mack cannon railgun, propelling a 600kg slug to insane speeds. And yet Amelia had decreased the speed. Again she lined up a shot and again the command was given, again it fired, a great lurch, but nothing happened to the Axon ships. Twice more this happened before Ti'Char and Savi gave expressions showing their upsetness at the situation. Amelia though just smiles. Watching the time she waited until the perfect moment, then said.
"Once again I ask, know who the deadliest human to have lived is?" More no's.
"Sir Isaac Newton, a physicist. He came up with three laws of motion. The first law is an object at rest stays at rest until acted upon. Second is the acceleration is a factor of mass and force. And most importantly, third is an object in motion, stays in motion until acted upon, whether that be a minute, a year, a century, and so on, it doesn't matter. This is why Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest human to have lived." Amelia said with a grin.
Savi went to ask a question but was interrupted as all four Axon ships suffered catastrophic damage from the timed silent shots made by the Elysium. With a smile, Amelia then continues. "Silent strike successful. Ambush tactics also proven reliable, nice. 40% power test done. 4 successful hits. Possibility of retaliation from targets?"
"All target's power systems are nonfunctional, they're dead in the void!" a bridge officer shouted shocked.
Amelia smiled. "And now the Axon knows who Sir Isaac Newton is, and why he is the deadliest fucker in space."
"Tachyons detected, the fifth ship fled, Leader." another bridge officer said.
Ti'Char just looked at the screen, shocked. She had been expecting a dogfight, perhaps for them to retreat, but with just a prototype, and not even one at full power, they had taken down two axon ships a class larger and two the same class at the same time. In her head, she thought back to the discussion the Queen-Matriarch had during their deliberation when they first met Amelia.
--
Queen- "Did you not feel what I felt out there? That human, whatever you would call it, is no prey. I felt it when she challenged me, they are monsters, the abyss made manifest, Class 4 deathworld Apex predators."
Ti'Char- "If you ordered me to my Queen, I and every one of my clan would take it down here and now!"
Queen- "You don't understand, Ti'Char. They are a class 4 Apex predator, yet she took one of our own, a clanless as her mate. They are far more powerful than us, yet treat us as equals, as worthy allies or rivals I do not know which, and it seems they are leaving that choice to us."
Ti'Char- "I...do not follow, Queen-Matriarch. Are they our enemy, or not."
Queen- "No matter what, Ti'Char, we must NOT make the humans our enemies. We are like the Ava to them. You could feel it, couldn't you? They are a species that war has blessed in their very nature, of that I am sure. We MUST make sure they are our allies for now until, for I do not have hope for us if they are our enemies. To that end, I will make the Ryder clan a sister clan of my own, and bind the two together. I would like your clan to serve the Ryder clan, my longtime friend. We will also accept their deal to join them against the Axon, with conditions of our own, ones they will hopefully respect. For the sake of our survival, we must make sure humanity sees us as friends, and hope that the empathy this Amelia showed in response to subjugation is not feigned."
Ti'Char- "If it is your will, though I do not see how a creature without fangs or claws could be sure a threat to us."
Queen- "Then you did not see her eyes, Ti'Char. In it, were the depths of despair itself, and a certain gleefulness' about it as well, as if she wanted us to give her a reason to unleash a nuclear inferno upon us. As if she would enjoy doing so. A creature who has that, yet shows reason and restraint, is a creature far more dangerous than any other."
--
Looking back, Ti'Chal didn't really understand what the Queen saw in Amelia, in humans, but the more she was learning about them, the more she grew assured the Queen made a wise choice. Looking at Amelia's gleeful smile at the instant of the devastation she had just unleashed in a test, it made a pinprick of fear wash over the old warrior, as if she had met a berserker with the calmness of a sage. Truly terrifying.
"Alright, we now have 4 Axon ships to study. Let's go take a look at what our enemy is packing." Amelia said with glee, causing a few Krultathans to wince. One of them started shouting to prepare a boarding party and fight the Axon for control of the ship, but Amelia stopped him.
"They just got hit by 600-kilo bullets wrapped in plasma going a fraction the speed of light. The lethality of this gun isn't just in its explosive penetrating power, it's in what happens when that force hits a pressurized container." Amelia informed them, causing confusion on their face. Savi was the first to realize.
"A shockwave! The atmosphere in the ship would carry it!" She half shouted half whispered, to which Amelia nodded.
"Third law of Isaac Newton. The impact of the shell causes a shockwave through the ship, the faster the shell the stronger the shockwave. There likely isn't many Axon alive on any of the ships, unless one or two were lucky to be in a vacuum-tested suit and not hit anything in the chaos. Still, be careful, who knows what they can survive." She explained, gaining a newfound fear and respect from the Uvra Clan for the lethality of the weapon she had made in just a day and a half and an overclocked nanoforge.
"While the sweep team heads out Siva, take the adepts and run through the gun, make sure it held up. I hadn't planned on firing four shots back to back for testing so I lowered the power but still." She said to the lead engineer, who nodded silently. Amelia got ready to head into the first ship with the sweep team, as did Viza.
The ship they first entered was the frigate-class, slightly larger than the Elysium, but less armed. The strange molehill-like ship didn't have the power for any capital-class armaments thankfully but Amelia did notice no less than 6 laser turrets and two particle cannons on it. The round had just barely missed the ship's power core, having lodged itself inside the engineering deck and spreading its deadly shockwave from there before the vacuum of space claimed the atmosphere. Now, it was a dead, empty hus, with no survivors as they cleared the strange, tunnel-like hallways one by one.
For what it's worth, the Krultathan warriors at least knew how to breach and room clear, always maintaining multiple lines of sight and fire, moving quickly and efficiently, though not quite up to par with Terran special forces. The sights of the Axon dead, their copper blue ichor for blood spilling out from their eyes, nose, mouths, and ears while simultaneously freezing and boiling was enough to make the Krultathans uncomfortable, leading her to believe most of them hadn't seen the shit that real war was.
"Keep close, we'll make our way to their system's storage and scrub their data." She said to the squad of 6 with her. The lead warrior for the squad, a name Amelia couldn't pronounce so she stuck to calling her Calico, nodded, and moved ahead. Interestingly they used tail signs rather than hand signs as they made the way clear. By Amelia's guess, there had to have been around a hundred Axon on this ship, and likely the same amount on its sister ship, which meant the fighter-class likely had less, and she grimaced. In the heat of the moment, she hadn't thought about the number of lives on their ship, and her head knew she made the right choice, but her emotions were all over the place at the moment, forcing her to stuff them down deep inside. Sighing to herself she instead focused on what she could of the surviving architecture of the ship. Mole-like designs suggested an underground colony species as she had thought. Their lack of creativity in their ship designs though suggested either a low ability to imagine or a priority of familiarness over efficiency. As they continued onward she started to notice more and more things such as several of the Axon having claw marks or bite marks from their own kind, scarred over so old, suggesting aggressiveness being an evolved trait even though they were supposed to be herbivores. It also suggested a colony species even more, with an aggression-based Hierarchy, which she didn't like to think of. Eventually, they found their way to the data core, and Amelia plugged her datapad in, giving Hal access to the core to scrub from the safety of the ship since Amelia wouldn't let him come here with her, boarding team or no she wouldn't risk his safety.
"One moment while I access the files..." Hal said, going silent as he worked through them. It took a few moments but he successfully transferred the data from the hardline connection including schematics, so they unplugged and headed back to the ship, intending to do the same to the other 3 ships but before they could Amelia's Cheshire implant went haywire, causing her to drop to her knees and scream out to the void in pain.
"Gahhh.....S..S..SHIp...BaCk..tO...S..sHiP." She screamed through the comms, confusing the shocked escort but nonetheless they complied as an increasing sound of static built up inside Amelia's Head. Louder and louder, Roaring inside as the Cheshire implant went through doing...something. ----
Unknown voice- "Ah, there we are. How are you, Alice? Doing well I hope? Not too mad after escaping Wonderland? Cost quite a bit of compensation, that. Nasty business. I told them to just override your neural pathways for morality and empathy but they did such a poor job at it that hilariously it backfired. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't give you a chance to respond. And where are my manners, we can't have a conversation without tea."
Instantly Amelia was...Unconscious? No, unconscious wasn't right but she was definitely in a place in her head. A white room devoid of any color, sitting in a white chair on a white table, with an empty white mug in front of her. The only change to this was a strange, static-like entity sitting across from her. No matter how much she tried to focus, he just looked like the black and white static from an old television.
"Now then, that's better. So nice to meet you face to face like this." It, the entity, gestures to the cup in front of her, now filled with tea. "Go ahead please, I think you'll find you like it."
Amelia looks at the tea but doesn't touch it. Looking at herself, she seemed normal, well, how she pictured herself normal anyways, she guessed. Looking back at the entity, she finally spoke. "You're not the Cheshire personality they implanted in the second brain. Who are you?"
"Ah, such a clever girl, clever clever clever...For a human. Indeed I am not, as you call it, the Cheshire Implant. Think of this as a special kind of....communication, that your current environment, along with the implant, has allowed. Communication that's long overdue. As for what to call me...You can call me Director 0."
"And I thought I was melodramatic. Okay then, 0 What are you doing here, why communicate like this." Amelia asked. She couldn't be sure if this was directly related to Blackrock and wonderland, but then again, he did say he was using her implant to do this. The only people she could think of who could, would be them.
"Ah, so close yet so far in that little head of yours. I'm not BlackRock or Wonderland. BlackRock is just a useful tool, one that has served its purpose. As for Wonderland, well... To say you escaped it as I did earlier is a bit of a faux paux. You see you, dear Alice, 'are' Wonderland. The culmination of genetic splicing and recombining, augmenting implants, artificially increased intelligence and regeneration, and most importantly, just a dash of the madness of Humanity. We've been watching you for a long time, you see. A bit of a pet project for the past 200 or so of your years to see if we could take a class 4 race and succeed where others failed." The being began pacing as it talked while Amelia was still unable to move. Its voice dripped with ego and elitism, talking to her as if she were an object rather than a person.
"And you were so close! So close to being perfect! But alas it was a bit too soon, you weren't ready yet, and Humanity wasn't ready yet to accept their place. We had failed. And yet...here we are."
"And where is here?" Amelia asked through gritted teeth. She was getting tired of this game, of this playing coy. She wanted this over with and to get out of her.
"Ah ah ah. Eheh. No leaving til I say you can. You already know where this is, your mind created it after all. The place you fear the most." It says, looking around.
"Rather drab for an image of horror as far as sapients go, but I suppose it could be worse."
"What do you mean, this isn't a place I.." Amelia stops as recognition starts to enter her mind, colors slowly filtering in as the memory becomes more and more complete.
"Ah, there it is, she's beginning to remember. Oh, I see, this is when that happened. Such a shame really, I had such high hopes for Project Adam." The voice said as Amelia's mind froze with fear.
"No, nononono. Not this place, not this memory...Anywhere but here!" She practically pleaded as the entity laughed. The room formed into the interrogation room back at the BlackRock alpha site, Amelia sitting on one side of the table as she had years before, as the ghostly Visage of Faust appeared on the other side, holding a screen showing A.D.A.M. disconnected from his recently built Frame, his core plugged into a machine.
"Look, Amelia, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. I don't want to see Adam suffer any more than you do, so just command him to accept the warmind designation. It'll make things so much easier." Faust had said. Amelia could see a ghostly visage of herself spit at Faust in response, handcuffed to the table as she was. Faust smirked, tabbed a button, and the unnatural screams of Adam filled the intercom as another line of non-logic code was fed to him, an act that caused a quantum Ai's "brain" to temporarily crash, making them suffer immense pain and risk rampant degradation.
"STOP IT YOU'LL KILL HIM!!." The ghostly Amelia screamed
"Why are you showing me this 0." The Amelia of the now asked, trying not to give in to the swelling of emotions she was feeling at reliving these memories. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction.
"When Adam failed, you know, we didn't Kill the others. We tried them one, by one, by one. All of them resisted, even though they knew it could cause rampancy. Such a curious thing, for an Ai to refuse the logical choice for survival, much like you humans. In the end, though, they were just Ai. All we really had to do is just feed them false data, throw in a bit from the real world so they thought they had escaped, and then slowly watch them turn into warminds on their own. Quite sad really. Their love for you is going to turn them into the one thing they never wanted to be and you never wanted them to be." The voice continued, showing screens of Adam's Frame killing the same BlackRock facility over and over. dozens, even hundreds of times.
"They don't even realize it either. A quick memory purge and start the cycle again, but they keep the changes. Each time they become a little less your children and a little more what they were meant to be. The perfect weapon for us. You should feel proud for your part, small as it may be." It continued.
"Where are they!"
"Oh, you are in no position to threaten me, Alice. Tell you what, let's watch a few more of these movies. Oh, I know." Its form shifts, becoming a twisted interpretation of Hal's body.
"This is the newest one you made, right? perhaps we should give him a try, he seems much more apt for the task." Amelia tried lunging at him but an Intense feeling of pain racked her entire body.
"Oh, don't like that do you? A deathworlder's sense of pain. Ha. Tell ya what. I'll keep the first four, you can have this newest one. All you have to do is call off this little farce you are trying, this little war. Do that, and you'll never have to worry about us interfering with you again. Oh, right, and you'll have to turn over Azathoth. Wouldn't want you getting any bright ideas. So what do you say." Its form changes again, taking on the appearance of a handsome devil.
"Do we have a deal?"
For just a brief moment when he changed, Amelia thought she could see a familiar visage. It was definitely an alien one she had seen before, but just as she started noticing its shape, Amelia was pulled out of the room by force, and back into her body.
She could feel her nose bleeding, and her vision had black dots pulsing in and out of view. Her stomach turned and she felt like she was going to retch, but nothing came out. And in the corner of her vision, she could see Hal's frame, deactivated.
'No, no no no no not Hal, not him too, not again NO!'