24 - Honeypot Spy

Maya tossed the tablet across the room. It smashed against the far bulkhead and shattered into dozens of pieces. She sighed and the Cage absorbed the pieces, producing another one that she reached out and snagged from the air.

She looked back down at the tablet display and saw that the numbers hadn’t changed.

“We’re fucked,” Maya said. She looked around her empty room and sighed again.

Her terse words with Hanna, George, and Yosi had the expected consequences. No one wanted to be around her. Maya got to her feet and looked back at the tablet. She threw it across the room and it too smashed against the far bulkhead.

“I need a drink,” she muttered.

The door to her inner sanctum opened up, revealing another door with a foot of space between the two. This door was a simple red door with a brass knob. Maya gripped the knob and turned it. A few steps later, she was in Chiriya’s Diner.

As the Mistress of Time and Space, Maya had figured she could reduce all her walking if she manipulated the distance between areas she crossed. Instead of walking down a long corridor to the ‘Employees Only’ door in Chiriya’s Diner, she could just condense the space between the two locations and get there faster.

The place was crowded and Maya occupied a booth that was always reserved for her. She sat down and sighed. When she looked up, Chiriya was there, smiling down at her.

“Anything special today, Mistress Sullivan?”

“Gross, don’t call me mistress,” Maya said. “Give me something strong and cheap. I need to see if I can reduce my Mental Stats.”

Chiriya smiled again and vanished into her kitchen, rushing to fulfill the order. Maya leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes.

“Mind some company?” a voice asked.

“Yes. I totally mind,” Maya said.

She felt the booth shift as someone sat across from her. Maya sighed and opened her eyes. She saw the smiling face of a man that looked vaguely familiar.

“Fancy meeting you here,” the man said.

Maya blinked. “Who are you?” she asked.

The man startled, as if she had just slapped him. “We met before,” he said. “Actually we had lunch in this place. It’s me, Corporal Daniel Chu from Chicago.”

“Ah, yeah. Chicago Chu-Chu,” Maya muttered.

“Please, don’t call me that,” the man said.

“Sorry, pal. I ain’t in the entertaining company mood right now. So I would suggest you mosey on back to Chicago or wherever.” Maya paused. “Wait, what the heck are you doing here anyway? The Chicagoans left a long time ago.”

“I came in with the recruits for your mercenary force,” Chu said.

“You applied to be a mercenary?” Maya asked. “Serving the good ole USofA not your cup of tea anymore.”

“Nope, I’m still a Corporal of good standing in the US Army, but I was ordered here by the higher ups when they heard you were illegally luring in young impressional minds to be cannon fodder in your attempts at global domination.”

“What are you supposed to do?” Maya asked. “Kill me? Seduce me and strike a blow against the tyranny of the 3S corporation?”

Chu turned red. “Uh, no. I guess they heard that we had lunch and talked, so they figured I was an in with you.”

“Wow, they must be desperate,” Maya said.

Chiriya arrived with a bottle of her finest whiskey and set it down in front of Maya. She glared at Chu and looked to Maya.

“Is he bothering you, Maya? He’s been here for the last few days trying to see if you would show up.”

“Ah, and I thought it was kismet that brought us together once again,” Maya said.

Chu blushed a deeper shade of red.

“It’s fine, Chiriya. Thank you for the drink.”

“My pleasure, Maya,” the woman smiled at her and rushed off.

“I think she’s in love with you,” Chu said.

“Everyone is. I’m lovable,” Maya said off-handedly. Maya grabbed the pint glass and poured her drink out.

“It’s a shame,” Chu said watching as her, “that with all these levels we can’t enjoy a nice glass of fifteen year old Glenfiddich unless it’s in pint form.”

“Oh, you can still enjoy a glass, but it’s not going to do anything for you,” Maya said.

“So you’re desecrating a lovely bottle of whiskey to feel something?” Chu asked.

“Yup.”

“I feel I should object,” Chu said. “That’s the last of those bottles. The last whiskey that will ever be produced and you’re drinking it down like its water.”

“Alcohol will still exist even with Integration,” Maya said. “Just a bit different, is all.”

Chu twisted the bottle of beer he had in his hands, looking morose for a second.

“My dad loved Glenfiddich,” Chu said. “Loved it a bit too much, as my mom would often say. Led to liver failure when he was forty.”

“Sorry for your loss,” Maya said.

“Nah, he was a mean drunk,” Chu shrugged.

“Want some?”

“If you’re offering.”

“I just literally said, ‘want some’.”

“Yes. I want some.”

Maya summoned a pint glass from her Inventory and poured the rest of the bottle into it.

“Do you just carry around pint glasses?” Chu asked.

“Never know when you’ll need one,” Maya said.

“People say there are bags of holding in existence,” Chu said. “Where you can stuff all kinds of things into it and it won’t weigh you down.”

“Yeah, dimensional bags,” Maya said. “We haven’t gotten a source for them. They’re pretty high grade stuff, verging on Tier 2. The industrial version of them are fairly cheap and plentiful.”

“It’s crazy when you think about it,” Chu said. “We spent trillions and hundreds of years to build up our technology and in a second its all worthless. Entire parking lots where most vehicles are just junk, every military in the world just lost every tank, ship, jet, and anything with a computer chip in it.”

“Technically, the stuff will still work,” Maya said, “its just the high concentration of ambient mana that’s screwing it all up. Get rid of the mana and you can drive your Prius all you want.”

“I don’t drive a Prius!” Chu said.

“Did I hit a nerve?”

“Sorry. I was an MI Armor Crewman before all this shit happened,” Chu said. “I used to drive seventy two tons of pure American muscle.”

“You drove a tank?” Maya asked, surprised.

“Yup. Now, I’m a surly infantry grunt.”

“How the mighty have fallen,” Maya said.

“I wonder about that a lot,” Chu said.

“How the mighty have fallen? I wonder about it too. Where’s Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and all those rich billionaires.”

“No, I was talking about all the stuff we built up that’s now trash. You realize there are millions of vehicles just sitting out there in the world? Leaking gasoline, oil, coolant, and every other fluid that kept them running. Their batteries full of sulfuric acid and lead.”

“We managed to convert some vehicles in Chimbote,” Maya said. “Mana motors; don’t overheat, run on mana batteries, and can run damn near forever.”

“You have one for a tank?” Chu grinned.

“The mana motors we’ve obtained are for smaller vehicles, less than ten tons. Refurbishing military vehicles was something I’ve thought about, but with all the electronics and whatever inside a military vehicle it would be nigh impossible to get them fully operational again. It’s best to just build a system tech tank of our own.”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“You make it sound like its just that easy,” Chu said.

“There are plenty of designs out there, it’s just a big gun and a motor, right? We can slap on a heavy railgun and weld a few inches of armor onto a frame and add some mana shields to give it a longer battle life. But in the end, I think tanks are a dead end tech. I could probably crush one by looking at it angrily.”

Chu was silent at that remark, staring at his drink. “Yeah,” he said.

“Hey, buddy. One day you’ll be stronger than tank, if that’s any consolation,” Maya said. “That’s if we all survive this thing.”

“Big picture,” Chu said, “how is it going?”

Maya looked around the Diner, she could see some ears tilted her way and she was sure that a few of them probably had skills that could pick up every word she was saying.

“Wanna see?” Maya asked.

Chu looked surprised. “See?” he asked.

“Yeah, I can show you the world. But I cannot take back the loss of your innocence once you have seen what lies beyond.”

“Hey, I wasn’t all that innocent,” Chu grinned.

Maya looked at him. ‘That’s what they all say,” she said. She finished her drink and rose to her feet. The eyes of everyone in the Diner suddenly latched onto her. “Let’s roll, soldier.”

Chu hurriedly chugged his glass and scrambled after her as she marched toward the red door. Maya waved at Chiriya and paid her tab, before pulling the door open.

***

“Holy shit,” Chu said, his voice low. He stared at the screens before him, his eyes wide and unblinking.

“Yeah, it’s a clusterfuck,” Maya said, eyeing the satellite imagery. “We’re barely able to offer support to the settlements allied to us, but weapons, money, and skilled people are sorely lacking.”

“Can’t you, I don’t know, raise taxes?” Chu asked.

“I could theoretically impose taxes upon everything I own, including the settlements, but that’s something the Alliance needs to do themselves. They need to scrounge up the funds to pay for their own upgrades and defenses. As the sole provider of system tech weapons and munitions, I’d be double dipping if I was also taxing them.”

“But you need the money,” Chu said.

“I need suppliers more than I need money,” Maya said. “I’ve pretty much drained out Asoltolia’s supplies and her network of manufacturers won’t be able to supply me with anything useful for another standard week.”

“Who’s Assholetolia?” Chu asked.

Maya snorted. “High-grade alien lady, she’s sending us a thousand mercenaries in a few days.”

“I heard that on the IENN broadcast,” Chu said. “They didn’t say much about it, besides that Bellmoro fellow getting trounced by Vinida.”

“Yeah, she’s a tough cookie. Bell should have seen that the conversation would turn to politics and not the simple joys of hiring people to do killing for you.”

“Will that even be enough?” Chu asked, looking at the screens again. There were various cities being displayed and all of them were in ruins. Hundreds of years of growth and building, all reduced to skeletal rubble and blackened bricks.

Maya felt a twinge of guilt at letting him see the whole picture. The biggest takeaway from all these desperate battles across the world, was that everyone had a narrow focus upon their own neck of the woods. It was hard to see beyond your own burning cities and dying friends and that was the biggest hurdle she faced.

“Nope,” Maya said. “A thousand piddling low-grade mercenaries might manage to hold an area, say Nigeria or Chimbote, but they’re not gonna slow down the horror show that is southern China. We’re going to need a hundred thousand soldiers to even put down those mutations.”

“It’s the end of the world,” Chu said.

“Has been for a month,” Maya stated. She sighed and slapped a hand on his shoulder. “Maybe I shouldn’t have let you see this stuff.”

“No,” Chu said. “I-I just didn’t know how bad it was. I knew things were bad, but… not this bad.”

“It’s not one hundred precent screwed up,” Maya said, adjusting the screens. “The whole mana mutation distribution is weird, some places like China are being hit hard, others like the Chimbote area are relatively free of monsters.” Maya displayed an island. “Hawaii, it’s as close to paradise as you can get,” she said. “Then there are areas in western Canada, Alaska, South America, Australia, and the Philippines. They’ve survived the last month with little mana incursions, so their populations have been pretty stable.”

“Does the President know about Hawaii?” Chu asked, excitement brightening his features.

“Dunno. We just found out a bit ago. We would have been opening up communications and trade with them, but things are a bit hectic these days. Might be a while before we toss them a Sullivan Box.”

“There are over fifty thousand troops stationed in Hawaii,” Chu said. “Before Integration, a friend of mine, who was on the carrier Theodore Roosevelt, said they were in Hawaii for a stop.” Chu scanned the screens. “Can I get a picture of Hawaii?”

Maya acquiesced, bringing up the latest images of the Hawaiian Islands and then pulling in on Oahu. With some directions, Maya managed to pull in on a view above Pearl Harbor, displaying several dozen ships in dock.

“Look at that,” Chu said grinning.

“Several hundred tonnes of scrap metal,” Maya said. “Steel isn’t used all that much in the multiverse, marsani has replaced it. One of those Post-Integration changes.”

“You can make doors anywhere, right? Why not make a door there, gather up the troops and then bring them to the US where they’re needed,” Chu asked.

“Because the world isn’t just the United States. There’s no real need to send support to Hawaii as of yet are there are scores of others cities currently fending off mana mutations that need my help more.”

“If you focus all your energy on one area, things will get better there,” Chu said. “Then when they’re stabilized, they would be able to help you secure other places.”

“By focusing all my energy into one area, you’re talking about the US, right?”

“Yeah. We have the biggest military in the world, the most weapons, and tons of troops.”

“Had,” Maya said.

Chu blinked.

“The US had the biggest military in the world. Those,” Maya pointed to the ships, “are relics of the past. They have no value in this new world. They run off electronics that can’t work because of the ambient mana and they’re made of materials that are considered so cheap they’re not even low-grade.”

Chu stared at the screens for a long time.

“So what did your handlers want you to get out of me?” Maya asked.

“My handlers?”

“Yeah, the folks who tried to make you into a honeypot spy.”

“I’m not a honeypot!” Chu said.

Maya shrugged. “Everyone wants what you’re trying to get too. More guns, more armor, more tools, more supplies, more knowledge and training. They want system tech, they want crafting supplies, they want to be able to get out of a soft bed and walk to their local grocer and buy hot pastries and a strong cup of coffee.”

“That’s not in the books?” Chu asked.

“Not for a long time,” Maya said. “We’re being pulled thin.” Maya opened another screen. This one showing a dark world with computer generated figures marching besides massive piles of trash.

“What is this?” Chu asked.

“The Rainbow Sky Hellscape,” Maya said. “Well, the rainbow sky part is taking a break, but it’s still a hellscape.”

Chu touched the screen and it zoomed in one of the figures. A massive Tarvana with metal armor and carrying what looked like a cannon on their back. Hundreds of others were similarly armed and armored marching beside them.

“Sixty thousand Tarvana looking to snuff me out and take this Cage for themselves,” Maya said. “This is why we’ve shut down the Sullivan Boxes, this is why we’ve been a bit sketchy lately. The world where this Cage is rooted in, it’s about to come under attack.”

“Can’t you… send in those Brigade troops you have?” Chu asked.

“The joy of the RSH is that if you try to get there, you’ll die. There’s a one in a billion chance you’ll survive.”

“Then these creatures, they’re from there?”

“Yup. Born and raised. Fanatic cannibal death cultists, if you’re wondering.”

“Shit,” Chu said. “What are you going to do?”

“Still figuring that out. The good thing about a sixty thousand Tarvana army is that they’re slow. I thought we’d be hit sooner, but they’re twiddling their thumbs and slowed to a crawl. I think they’re waiting for more troops or something else. Either way, it’s given me more time to try and figure out a way to get them to go home.”

“You know where they are, you know how they’re deployed, why not just hit ‘em with some bombs or something?” Chu asked.

“We’re working on that, all the Suds are working on building more railguns. Heavy railguns, which’ll hopefully pound the shit out of them, but the simple fact is that between Russia, the other Settlements, and this attack, we’re stretched thin. Our manufacturing capabilities are maxed out, we’re running low on power, and we don’t have many people skilled in building the things we need. We’re drowning in a sea of enemies and sadly self preservation is appearing to be my only option left.”

“You’ll abandon the settlements?” Chu asked.

“Maybe Russia, probably fall back to the Alliance settlements. Pull the Sullivan Boxes from non-alliance places, evacuate everything out of China and hope for the best.”

“Why are you telling me this stuff?”

“You’re a spy, aren’t you? Just making your job easier,” Maya said.

“I’m not-“ Chu paused and shook his head. “I guess I was sent to spy and try to influence you.”

Chu stood there, swiping at the windows and flipping through scores of different camera feeds and images. They all showed the same thing, the Tarvana army. He kept moving through the feed and came to one of the interior of the Hanganathorie, the manufacturing room.

“I don’t envy you,” Chu said.

“The crown is totes heavy,” Maya said.

Scotty was building tesseracts, mixing refined black goo, liquid mana, and then stacking the finished product to the side. At the same time he was making refined black goo from the product taken from the hiveship. Another screen showed the creation of black goo netting, the long twisted braids of duracloth soaking in tubs of black goo and hardening.

Another screen showed Tender, sitting in his special chair and the views from dozens of ants as they picked the hive ship’s corpse of anything useful. A herd of the ants were removing the assembler from the hiveship, but Maya knew that it wouldn’t be ready in time. Even the most generous estimates put the assembler requiring at least another two weeks to get up and running. There was a lot of backend infrastructure that needed to be removed and rebuilt.

“That’s a lot of robots working for you,” Chu said.

“Efficient,” Maya said.

“Cheap?”

“Oh, hell no. Each one of those robots are chewing up twenty times more mana than they should be. Damn mana purge in the RSH. That’s why we’re bleeding mana with this Cage and the reason system tech isn’t working in the RSH.”

“There’s no mana to run them?”

“Yup. We can hook them up to tesseracts and that’ll work, but regular mana batteries and cores get sucked dry in a second. They go dormant and stop working.”

“So…” Chu fumbled for his words, staring at the screen. “This RSH is just like Earth before Integration?”

Maya chuckled. “I guess you could say that,” she said. “But it’s still sucking everything dry of mana too. I can handle it due to levels and having no mana channels and those Tarvana there are surviving off of mana stones. Any SIL who ends up there is in for a bad, bad time.”

“No mana, too much mana.” Chu paused, his forehead furrowed as he thought. “I saw that WatchFlix stuff being broadcast, how’d you all do that?’ Chu asked.

“Ah, the movie channel? Like I said, the technology isn’t destroyed, just the ambient mana screws it up. We just pushed out the ambient mana from some servers, computers, and other stuff and extracted the info.”

“You can remove ambient mana in the Cage?” Chu asked.

“Yeah, easy peasy. Inez claimed she was going to build an arcade of pinball and 80’s games before she was exiled to the Big Sig. I should check on her. Some of the Suds can probably take over for her now…”

Chu blinked. “If you can remove ambient mana here and use our old human technology, then why don’t you just bring in one of those,” Chu pointed to a ship in Pearl Harbor, “and launch all of its friggin’ missiles at these monsters?”

Maya laughed and then stopped. “What?” she asked.

“We’ve got tons of guided munitions that are just lying around. They can’t be used anymore and no one knows what to do with them. So we’ve just stacked them to the side and make sure they don’t explode on us. We can still use some guns and the like, but everything that has a computer chip in it is dead.”

“Because of mana,” Maya muttered. She slapped her forehead. “Ow.”

Maya hopped to her feet and grinned hugely at Chu. “George!” she shouted into her comm.

“Maya?” George’s hesitant voice asked.

“Find me every military ship that’s still afloat, every depot that’s got missiles and the like, and get me the President on the line!”

“Uh… what?”