21 - The Return of the Tarvana

Maya twisted the bolt holding the mechanism in place.She could feel it grinding and crunching within her gauntlets.The suit’s hearing protection kicked in, reducing the screeching of metal into a low noise.

“Dang,” she huffed.“This thing was on tight.”

“I would have gladly done it,” Tender said, his voice coming through her comm.Currently the rogue AI was sitting in his ‘special chair’ controlling the scores of ants picking over the hiveship.Most of the heavy lifting have been done in Ko Sumai and with Roci in charge there, things would be interesting.Tender had returned to the RSH, resuming his work of stripping the hiveship.

“Y’know, I can’t just be bringing humanity together, toppling dictators, and selling sweet goods to desperate people all the time. I gotta get back to my roots, back to the days where I was desperately salvaging and building. I need to get grounded, man.”

“Perhaps it is all the chocolates and coffee you have been consuming. I hear that, for humans, it is not an ideal diet.”

“Damn it, Nan,” Maya hissed. “Did she tell you?”

“Of course.”

Maya mumbled as she dug into the innards of the machine and pulled out a long tube that looked like a giant sized version of an old fashioned vacuum tube. She set it down gently and pulled three more out.

“Reminds me of the Peacock Turtle,” Maya said, holding the tube before her.The first rogue AI ‘boss’ she had fought.It had tiny spider drones that had badly injured her and she had repaid it in kind, but more-so.

“With those, we will be able to distribute power more evenly in black goo netting power generators,” Tender said.

“Rogue AI parts melding with system tech parts, the world we live in these days,” Maya said.

“Technically the only rouge AI parts are the power generation units. All technology uses mana.What the system tech uses is that therogue AIs use also.”

“Yeah, yeah, Professor Rogue AI,” Maya said.Maya inventoried the tubes and clanked down an empty corridor of darkness.She had no lights on, instead a new version of her old sensor box was generating an image for her on her HUD. The image was still wireframe, but with more detail, showing textures and colors, albeit a bit muted.

An ant skittered by, carrying a piece of machinery that was nearly twice its size.Maya watched it wander off into the darkness.

“Articulating servo assembly,” Tender said. “I believe we can use it to create more of the large death robots you like so much.”

“Cool, giant murder bots are always welcomed,” Maya said.

“I have plotted the course you’ll need to take to arrive at the assembly area,” Tender said.

Maya looked at her mini-map and saw a green line snaking through various tunnels, railings, and between machinery.She sighed.

“Only if I could use the Cage doors,” she said.“Curse becoming a hub of politics and planning and curse the fact that I can only open doors either in the RSH or the multiverse at large.”

“This is what you wanted,” Tender said.

“Oh, totally, but bitching and moaning about the things that inconvenience you in the most minor of ways is what being human is all about.”

“Noted.”

“But I can’t complain too much. The 6Scon is going well, people aren’t puling guns on one another anymore… well, usually.It brings some warmth to the cockles of my heart to see them working together so.Only six months back, my biggest goal in life was buying a new iPhone.Look at me, Tender. I’m bringing humanity together.”

“It is an exceptional achievement,” Tender replied.

“Right!”

“Although from my perspective, you are tying yourself to these settlements, which you have allowed to dictate how they will be establishing trade, cooperation, and laws, which you will be bound by also.”

“Meaning?”

“You have put forth the basis of this settlement alliance would be the ‘rule of law’.Therefore you and by association the 3S is bounded by these laws.What if the settlement alliance goes against what you wish?I have heard a saying, a person is smart, people are stupid.”

Maya paused, standing in the center of a dark corridor. “Shit, y’know what? I think you might be right. The eventual goal is to release my ownership of the settlement deeds, giving it back to the people. Perhaps not Ko Sumai, because we’re setting up so much of our industry there… then again, I don’t know. These are the decisions I don’t like to ponder, Tender. It’s politics, I dislike it. Give me an angry customer, I can deal with that, give me some person who’s playing 3D chess while I’m playing checkers, no bueno.”

“All SIL are political creatures,” Tender said. “That is a defining characteristic.”

“Maybe I should just retire to the RSH and let Yosi deal with everything.I mean, we’ve got the black goo mana network up and running, it’s not providing a hundred percent of the energy costs, but it’s still keeping us from being stripped of all the liquid mana we have left.As long as she has power to run the place, she can operate it at her own leisure.She’s got access to the thresholds and doors now, so…”

Maya shrugged, continuing to walk down the corridors.She watched as another ant skittered by, dragging long cables behind it.

“I thought you disliked the RSH?” Tender asked.

“Distance makes the heart grow fonder,” Maya said. “There is simplicity in just building things to survive and murder other rogue AIs. I’m not a good leader, if you’ve noticed.”

“I have.”

“Thanks.”

“But you still inspire others to do more.Your bravery, empathy, and intelligence has built all of this.Without you, humanity would not have access to quality weapons and gear.”

“Thanks. I wasn’t fishing for compliments, but thanks.” Maya grinned.

She skipped her way down the corridors and entered a large room where a dozen tubes the twice her size gaped open.Maya walked up to one and activated a light, shining it into the tunnel.

“Just toss material in and get something out?” Maya asked, looking for anything that seemed like it was an assembler.

“According to the records we have been able to pull from some of the specialized ants, this is a manufacturing assembly line.It made chassis and frames for the various different models of ants there were.”

“Can we make some assassin ants?” Maya asked.She pulled herself into the tube and shone the light around.There was nothing that suggested what it was, only smooth metal and small hand sized holes that were covered with metal plates.She pushed one experimentally and it gave slightly.

“Unfortunately, no.Those are leveled ants, possibly due to the liquid mana or from decades of the hiveship selectively upgrading them.”

“All those decades required to make them and only a few seconds to beat them to a bloody pulp.”

“The same would apply to SIL,” Tender responded.

“True, True,” Maya muttered.She pulled out a scanner and began moving the device around the tube.The machine pinged and began building a model of what lay behind the metal.It all appeared meaningless, but Maya knew what she was looking at.

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“Oh, dang. This is sweet,” Maya said. “This isn’t just cut and weld, it’s growing the entire structure from molecules.” She sent the information to Tender.

Maya scurried about the tube, finishing her scans and then entered the second tube.She grinned as she saw the same results.

An hour later she sat down on the deck of the room and sighed.

“We’ve got three high-grade manufacturers, three mid-grade, and six low-grade,” Maya said.She popped off her helmet and grimaced at the cold stale air.“It looks like the hiveship was skimping on the high-grade builds, using them only on key parts and then covering them with low-grade and mid-grade.Cheap builds, but also weak.If those assassin ants were all built using high-grade parts, I’d be deader than… well, something dead.”

“I have calculated the energy requirements to keep this hiveship afloat, they are astronomical.”

Maya looked at the figures and whistled appreciatively. “Actually its far cheaper than what we’re burning by the hour.With all that liquid mana, this hiveship would have probably been on a manufacturing spree, growing bigger and dominating everything around here.”

“I suppose it is a good thing it had a terrible fixation upon us,” Tender said.

“I suppose killing nearly a thousand of its ant drones while they lay dormant in the dirt was provocation enough.” Maya summoned a ration bar and began chewing on it.She paused, inventoried it, and summoned a large thermos filled with coffee instead.“Removing this is gonna be a tricky job.Did you see those energy conduit layouts? Who builds them like that? But once we get this bad boy out, it’ll outdo all of the manufacturers that Scotty has been using.We’ll be able to sextuple our output.”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Scotty said.

“Speak of the devil,” Maya said.

“I am reading individuals moving toward our location, seven kilometers out.”

“Individuals, not rogue AIs?” Maya got to her feet and clipped her helmet back on.

“Yes. I believe they are the Tarvana.”

“Oh, it it feeding time for the gobbolds?” Maya frowned as Tender automatically gave her an exit route to get to the exterior of the ship.

“There is currently five hundred of them marching this way,” Scotty said.

“You should have lead with that, pal,” Maya said, increasing her pace.

***

From a distance, it looked like an army.Upon magnification, it still looked like an army, but a battered and bloodied one.Maya sat down upon the hull of the hiveship and began scanning the army of Tarvana trudging toward the Hanganathorie.

Tender was on high alert, recalling all the ants and swapping them out for the battle ants.Scotty was securing the black goo factory and sealing up the tesseracts that he used to power himself.Maya hadn’t much to do, so she watched and scanned.

It took a long while to find Bad Blood.She was in the center of the army, laid out on a stretcher that was being carried by six hefty Tarvana.She was either injured or dead, Maya couldn’t get a read from this far out. Maya scanned the crowd, running a filter and finally coming across Ironwatcher.The [Engineer] was walking among the crowd of armed people, a downcast look upon her features.

“My guess is that they went back to Big Mama and she was still all about that murdering them business,” Maya said.

“Yet they seem to have returned with more of their kind,” Tender said as the battle ants clattered from the Hangy and began lining up.

“Could be the offspring. It’s been a couple of months.”

“Doubtful. Even with the Tarvana’s accelerated reproductive abilities, they cannot produce so many in such a short amount of time.”

“Yeah, I guess Bad Blood swayed some into following her into exile or whatever it was that Whiteclaw called them being kicked out of the Motherland.”

“What are your orders?” Scotty asked. “Shall I engage the defenses? A few mortar shots will dissuade their continued advanced.”

“Easy there, Trigger,” Maya said. “We generally try to talk before we start shooting.Generally.”

“Ah, I understand.”

“Alright, I’m gonna go greet our guests and see what they want.”

“Shall I accompany?” Tender asked.

“Negatory.Stay back a bit, these guys aren’t exactly welcoming of rogue AIs, y’know.”

“Yes. I shall be ready to lend you help.”

“Pfft, five hundred low leveled gobbolds vs a singular one hundred leveled me?It’s gonna be embarrassing the level differences between us.”

Maya walked to the edge of the hiveship and peered down. The scan box showed it was a fifteen meter drop.She opened her inventory and scanned through the countless items clogging it up, before selecting one.She hopped off the ship and landed lightly upon the dirt, kicking up a small cloud.

“Oh, dang. Izumi’s featherweight charm works,” she said.

“Your suit would have absorbed the impact, either way,” Tender replied.

“Oh, man. I need to get me a low-grade Tier 2 battle suit,” Maya said as she headed toward the oncoming army. “Just imagine all the bad ass things I could do.”

“Such things are abhorrently expensive,” Tender said. “Far more than you are able to gain from selling low-grade weapons to the entirety of Earth.”

“Yeah, that’s something that has to be done,” Maya groaned. “Find more markets, find more places to sell at, find a way to get all of Earth to hold hands and sing ‘We are the World’.”Maybe I can see if the Tarvana’s Big Mama wants to buy stuff.”

Maya didn’t know how the Tarvana were navigating, the RSH was still a pitch black wasteland, but this time cold and with a canned air stink.She walked toward them and about a hundred meters out, the army came to a standstill.They all peered at her, seeing her in the darkness.

“Damn good eyes, they have,” Maya muttered. “Better to see you with, dear.”She switched on an external speaker. “This is Maya Sullivan, you are entering a no-go zone.If y’all wanna move on out fine, but come any closer and we’re gonna have some issues. Got it?”

There was a long moment as the Tarvana stood there, but then Ironwatcher pushed her way out of the crowd.The [Engineer] was a lot skinnier and rougher looking than she had been, and that was after who knew how long they had been starving and eating their dead.Maya noted the lack of a tesseract backpack, Bad Blood’s group had left with a hefty amount.

“Mistress of Time!” Ironwatcher cried, staggering toward her.

“Ironwatcher,” Maya replied, cringing at the name she had given herself.“What seems to be the issue.”

“Sanctuary!” she cried. “We ask for sanctuary! The Mother is coming for us, to destroy and consume!”

***

“I do not like this,” Tender said.

“I’m in total agreement with you,” Maya replied.She sat on a chair she had summoned and watched the Tarvana make camp.It wasn’t much, a few flimsy shelters and some flesh of their brethren to ease their hunger pangs.

Tender was already moving some crates of food and water toward them, after Maya explained that they would be seeing rogue AIs and not to worry about it.

They were a ragged bunch, more ragged than they had been when Maya first met Whiteclaw’s little tribe of a few dozen. These people were beaten, bloodied, and starving.What kept them moving forward, what kept them alive, was Bad Blood’s promise of a place where they would live in peace and plenty.

Maya wasn’t sure how to think of what Ironwatcher had told her. The Flesh Mother, the high Tiered entity that was the forebearer of all the Tarvana, who used her own flesh to feed and birth the species, was on her way.An army had been formed and it was a crusade, a holy war, to cleanse the RSH of any who would try to stand against the Mother.What had caused this war to occur? The ration bars that Bad Blood had on her.

There was also a great deal of interest in the tesseracts, but that was secondary to the ration bars.It seemed like utter nonsense, but it seemed the Flesh Mother approved of cannibalism and scavenging anything biological that arrived from dimensional instabilities, but creating food from biomass was sacrilege.

Religion was a weird thing, Maya thought as she watched the drone ants begin marching toward her position. On their backs were Tarvana ration bars. Maya had been making a small amount with every batch of human ration bars, just for a moment like this. Not that she expected five hundred Tarvana to end up on her doorstep, but she figured Bad Blood would eventually return for more food.

“It’s unfortunate that we still have fifteen hours before Yosi checks in on us,” Tender said.

“We can hold off a small army, but Ironwatcher is right. We’ll be facing off against the entire Flesh Army.”

“I believe she said the Blood Harvester army.”

“Flesh Army sounds creepier.”

Maya sighed and looked up to the dark and empty sky.No rainbows up there.

“Will you defend these Tarvana?” Bell asked.

“What do you think?”

“You will.”

“Yeah.”

An ant approached Maya carrying a crate.Within was a medical diagnostic scanner from the Hab and some extra potions.Maya got to her feet and followed the ants into the Tarvana camp.

She noted the difference in these Tarvana compared to Whiteclaw/Bad Blood’s tribe.No two seemed to be completely the same, some were twisted figures with gangly arms, other were towering eight foot tall monstrosities in armor and carrying weapons, some were barely the size of a toddler, but fast and canny eyed.

The ability to change their own bodies was something Maya hadn’t really thought about.But as she walked among the Tarvana, she could see the differences everywhere.There was a sort of hierarchy and class system in place, each Tarvana conforming their bodies to the roles they were engaged in.It reminded Maya too much of the hive ship’s drones.

Ironwatcher was standing before a tent that held Bad Blood.Along side Ironwatcher stood a dozen heavily armed and armored warriors, they all seemed to be in line with the body type that Bad Blood had.She noted that a lot of the ‘upper’ Tarvana were more uniform in appearance.

“Maya Sullivan, reporting for duty,” Maya snapped off a salute to the guards.They looked at her and then at Ironwatcher.

“Please, come,” Ironwatcher said.

The guards didn’t move, only their eyes followed her as Ironwatcher lead her into the tent. The tent seemed more for show than a need.It was still cold as hell within it and the thin material only prevented people from looking in.In a normal RSH, there would have been a blue gloomy light suffusing everything, not it was just darkness. One that the Tarvana could easily see in.

“What’s her deal?” Maya asked, looking down at Bad Blood. She seemed bigger than she had been, more muscular and taller. She definitely had not been skipping any meals.

“She was wounded in battle,” Ironwatcher said. “A Harvester pierced her with a weapon.”

Maya set a medical scanner on the ground and had it scan the woman.Maya parsed the information and sighed.It all looked like gibberish to her.

“This is way too complicated for me,” she said. “I’ll give her a healing potion, low-grade, and see what happens.If she doesn’t get better, then I think we’re going to have to go see Nan.”

“Do what you can, Mistress of Time,” Ironwatcher said, bowing slightly.

“Yeah, stop doing that,” Maya summoned a potion and injected it into Bad Blood’s arm.The Tarvana twitched and moaned, but then lay still once more.“Now we wait.”

Maya handed Ironwatcher a ration bar, the woman accepted it and hungrily consumed it.

“Now, tell me what we’re gonna face in the coming days,” Maya said, summoning another chair and sitting down.