Aria laid back on her bed, having cranked up the heating and stripped down to a fresh bra and a pair of shorts. Her wet clothes hung up on a rack in the bathroom, drip drying into the drain of the shower. The dripping made a steady background noise as she flicked through her supply of media. With the storm she couldn’t properly access the net, and even then the Shahrat was not operating as a node to connect to it, what with wanting to keep this affair secret as they could. She jumped as a loud thunk shook the hangar.
“Nimue, was that the Caliburn being put in the hangar?”
“Correct, Koschei and the other Alfar moved it in.”
“Tell me when they’re done, I want to talk with her,” said Aria, sitting up.
“Can do, but until then, mind discussing things with me?”
Aria swung her legs off the side. “Of course, what’s on your mind?”
“The entire situation here is beyond suspicious. I’ll know more after I get to dive into the wreck out there.”
“Thinking more about that, I’m worried about you entering that machine,” Aria said, standing up.
“I will be fine; I'm backed up with Rufus at home and most of my core is backed up in both your ARC and the Caliburn.”
Aria nodded. “Sorry, I do just worry a bit about you.”
“You don’t need to. Like I said, I have fail safes in case this goes sideways.”
Aria bent over, stretching her back and touching her toes. “I’ll trust you on this. You’ve never let me down, even back on Veles.”
“And you made sure I didn’t get scrubbed after that mission, when you were court-martialed.”
“Yeah…” Aria sighed, standing up straight. “We did what we had to down there. I’m not proud of it either, but we both made it thanks to you.”
“It was us or them. It wasn’t right, and your response to command’s orders was correct. They were not combatants and had surrendered.”
Aria looked down. “I may have been right, but I should have known what signing up entailed.”
“You were poor, working in the underbelly of a factory city on New Concord. When the sync test results came in for a chance at a better life, you took it. We get to choose our jobs now.”
Aria moved into a leg lunge. She’d always found stretches reduced the ache that comes after combat. “But it’s much harder with Relativity essentially blacklisting us over the court-martial, and I wasn’t going to sign up with Vulture. I'd be back to doing corporate dirty work without any of the benefits of being one of their soldiers.” Another loud thunk came from the hangar, the vibration making her rock a little. “And that’s the rest of the Caliburn.”
“Should I contact Koschei?”
“Go for it, tell her to come to the room too.”
“Ah, taking advantage of me being absent?”
“That is not my intention,” said Aria, stretching her back.
“I’m not bothered if it was. Prudishness has little purpose.”
Aria blushed as she continued her stretches, working out the ache that was building up from the impact with the other mech earlier. Nimue tapped into the comms network used by the Alfar units. To her the security was relatively simple, just a simple job of masking her request as a Necker frame.
Outside, as Koschei watched Ercan leave in his Alfar the comms system briefly glitched and an additional name appeared.
“And just who are you?” asked Koschei, eyes on the display.
“I am Nimue. I am here on the behest of Avalon,” said Nimue, in a voice made of samples of those she had found appealing on the net.
“You’re her AI. The Caliburn is back in its hangar, so why are you posing as another frame? You could just speak to me through my ARC.” Koschei pulled on the restraints and began unbuckling them.
“I do not wish to intrude on your AI’s space. It would be like bursting into someone’s living room.”
Koschei moved the frame further into the Caliburn’s hangar, near Aria’s door. “My steward wouldn’t mind, it’s not like you’re designated as a threat. Avalon and I are working on this job together, after all.”
“Very well. I came to ask that you leave that machine running; Avalon wishes me to examine the wreck outside.”
“And you’re going to, what? Walk this thing over there to take a look?” Koschei leaned back in the cockpit. “Couldn’t you just grab a drone or do this without needing to ask me?”
“I could, but it would arouse suspicion. That, and Avalon wishes to speak with you. I have unlocked her room.”
“I wonder what ex-military could want with me in her room?“ Koschei chuckled softly. “Yeah, sure, you can use the frame for whatever you need. Not like it's mine, or that I give a crap about Necker’s interests.”
“Just the people stuck working for them.”
“That’s a bit too incisive for a regular AI,” said Koschei as she pushed the front of the cockpit open.
“Err...”
“Again, don’t care.” Koschei jumped down from the frame. “Yours to do with what you will. Have fun with that shit from the anomaly, Nimue,” she said, walking toward Aria’s door.
_____
Nimue pushed a portion of her consciousness into the frame, taking up any and all available space in its systems. It felt odd, like wearing a suit two sizes too small. It would have to do, though; she wasn’t willing to risk any more than this. After she had settled inside, she pinged herself back with Aria.
“Hello, my greater self,” said the proxy inside the frame in a direct message.
Her core-being replied, “Are the systems in there sufficient, my component?”
“Enough for exploratory work. Additionally, you won’t need to worry much about Koschei,” said the proxy.
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“I was privy to her transmissions, our memories will only diverge from this point,” replied Nimue.
The proxy would have frowned if she had a body. “Apologies, it is quite… tight in here, for lack of a more apt word.”
“Do not worry about it. Thank you for taking this risk in my place,” said Nimue.
“It’s the only reason I am separate from you. And besides, you need to protect our Aria. Assuming I return intact, I look forward to being reincorporated,” replied the proxy before breaking the link.
The proxy opened up the comms device inside the industrial frame, pushing the system past the limits installed on it with a few adjustments to the code. She was now aware of all devices within range, which was mostly the base and the surrounding area. Out of curiosity she hijacked the camera of a distant drone, nearest to where the mech had come from. She focused its view on the trail the machine had taken, then followed it to its beginning. When it got there past the broken trees and a couple of wrecked drones there was a patch of earth that had strange, but not inexplicable markings on it. The forest floor had been charred and in some places melted into something akin to glass.
The Nimue proxy searched her memory for what it could be and after a brief moment decided to contact her core self again. “I am sorry to interrupt, but I’ve found something odd. It is where the quadrupedal frame began its movement. There’s no sign of a hatch or other mechanism on the wreck out here that it could have come from. However, there was this.” The proxy sent back the feed from the drone. “I am aware that I should know what this is, please tell me.”
“That is residue caused by the use of a Sleipnir Drive. Small scale use was discontinued after several test pilots were found dead because an Einherjar could not provide adequate shielding during testing,” replied Nimue.
The proxy hesitated for a moment, absorbing the information and taking a second to think before replying. “Then it was functionally teleported here, and that confirms it was unmanned.”
“Agreed, thank you. Though I ask you to ping these conversations through another node than just the frame in future, I am more concerned now that there may be another full AI within the wreck,” said Nimue, clearly a little shaken.
“Understood, severing current link,” replied the proxy as she returned to her task.
The proxy returned back to the frame, and then probed the wreck. Its systems were still partially online with power flowing from an Eitr reactor. The language the machine was coded in was familiar but with several quirks, like a version that had forked from a common predecessor. After familiarizing herself with the system language she returned to her investigation proper. The reactor itself was much smaller in size and split into several units, two of the eleven were still active, the others ruptured when the Caliburn had cored out its torso. As the proxy-Nimue continued her exploration of the wreck she did find what she had suspected, something akin to a Sleipnir Drive inside. It was wrecked but clearly operated under the same principles of tearing open a hole into the Ginnungagap (the semi-realspace that’s passed through during FTL travel), then rupturing back into real-space. Her consciousness explored the rest of the wreck’s subsystems, finding what remained of the shield projector system. It seemed some of the reactors were directly wired to it and when the shield absorbed the rail-cannon shot, those reactors connected to it were ruptured by the same feedback that had melted the projector units on the wreck’s exterior.
With this much information she pulled back and bounced her signal off the inert frames in storage before pinging the original Nimue. “The wreck possesses multiple miniaturized reactors, explaining the power output it was able to maintain even after its shield was destroyed. There’s also evidence of an Einherjar-scale Sleipnir Drive, as you suspected. Additionally, there’s no evidence of it being made by any of the known manufacturers.”
“Then it really is alien. Are you returning to probe it further?” asked Nimue.
“Possibly, though it is in some ways distressingly similar. As for returning, I intend to, it is my purpose after all.”
“Be careful.”
_____
Aria continued her stretches as Nimue went off to do her thing. While she worried a bit about Nimue, she’d never been one to not have a backup plan. There was a knock on the door and before she could right herself to answer it, the door opened. On the other side was Maks Suen, Koschei. She was looking directly at Aria in basically underwear, just shorts and a bra.
“Well, how are you doing, Avalon?” asked Koschei, leaning an arm against the doorframe.
Aria stuttered. She hadn’t expected the door to be unlocked, she had explicitly locked it. “I-I suppose that Nimue unlocked the door for you, Koschei.”
Koschei smirked. “Yeah, your, uh,” she stepped inside and closed the door, “fully sentient AI let me in. So can I stay or should I get out?”
Aria blushed and shook her head. “No, no come in, I did want to talk with you.” She moved over to the small closet provided to her.
Koschei moved to sit on the edge of Aria’s bed. “Oh you’re going to put on more clothes? Shame, I could use a chance to blow off some steam.”
Aria pulled a loose tank top over herself. “I want to talk about that wreck outside, now that things have calmed down.”
“Do you? Well, what about it? The damn thing nearly killed us both, and if it managed that it would have slaughtered everyone else here,” said Koschei, deadpan.
“Nimue tells me it's technologically beyond what any of the council can produce and as you saw, clearly while being unmanned,” said Aria, remaining standing.
Koschei laid back on Aria’s bed, stretching her arms. “That all tracks, but what that entails is that either some other corp has been hiding things or there’s civilization inside Nastrond. Honestly, I’d prefer the latter. There’s few things more terrifying than a corporate army when it moves up a generation of tech.”
Aria looked away, her throat tight. “I was on Veles. I know it first hand.”
“I know your history. Don’t worry, I get it.” Koschei sat back up, hunching forward slightly, elbows on her knees. “I’ve done some shit to survive too.”
“Let’s get back to the situation at hand. What the hell do we do about all this? Necker isn’t going to just give up on this little expedition of theirs and I at least need the pay. Don’t want to assume your finances, but I assume you do too,” said Aria, looking back to Koschei.
“There’s little for us to do but wait on the repair team to fix our Einherjar.” Koschei cracked her neck and stood once more. “So, I ask again, want to blow off some steam?”
______
The proxy-Nimue dove deeper into the wreck's systems, this time looking not just for the mechanical workings of the machine, but for anything about its origins and reason for its attack buried in its data storage. It was hard to work through the language it was programmed in already, but actually deciphering any meaning was proving more difficult than the proxy had expected, and back in the industrial frame she resided in the processors were getting hot from the effort. While she was an AI, she was still having to work with the capacity the frame had and it was clearly taxing both her and it. But after some work, she did manage to start to be able to understand. Beneath command lines and technical data was something akin to whispered prayers, or perhaps curses. Metaphor and substance intertwined, and as she was collecting what data she could from the allegorical mess, she suddenly locked up.
Her world, normally one of information and factual realities, was split open. Violently, her vision was pulled into the jungle and upwards toward the storm above. As much as she tried to resist and pull her consciousness back to the frame she could not. Panic began to set in as she grew dimly aware of the temperature warnings coming from the systems of the frame she was inhabiting.
“Mockery, you intrude in search of knowledge, so you shall hang from the gallow tree and drink deeply.” The words were not spoken to her as they were when speaking with her core self, but instead felt as if they were being carved into her mind.
She screamed. Pain was not something an AI was used to feeling. It wasn’t something that they were meant to be able to experience, but here it was in all its searing radiance.
“Now, you are bade to take your place, to bleed and nourish the roots.”
The proxy-Nimue felt, for the second time in her shared existence with the primary, fear. She tried to pull herself back into the industrial frame, but she couldn’t get a firm hold. It was as if she had been downloaded into this new shell. Her vision continued to stare up at the storm, the camera not responding to any commands she frantically issued to it.
Above her vision jutted out a quartet of spiked limbs that moved in unison, their tips trailing scintillating, prismatic light. The limbs carved a circle of rainbow above the camera and then, within, reality tore open, revealing the depthless pit of the Ginnungagap. Understanding of where she was dawned on her. She was sticking out of the vessel the unknown machine had appeared at.
The limbs retracted, her only visuals staring into that semi-realspace crossed during FTL travel. With as much force as she could, she emitted a pulse of data toward the base as the object she’d be forcibly confined in was launched into the Ginnungagap.
“And so you are cast into the yawning void, carried upon a bridge of rainbow to your penance.”