12
The misty, echoing nothing of transit swirled all around them, full of hurrying shadows, weird eddies and temporal ghosts. None of these noticed the colossal battle mech facing off against a giant draug construct. No reason they should, for their gates had not been disrupted. V47 and Pilot could process on multiple levels at once. Critical, because there was so very much going on.
First, one of those seething draugr was 2.718 times larger than its fellow dissidents and plated in shimmering gold. Clearly worth having a closer look at. V47 Pilot had lost the borrowed energy-blade along with that flickering comm-line to “Miche” and “Val”. But he’d seen, and he knew.
Plunged the Titan’s right arm elbow-deep into skittering, roiling bugs to seize and half-crush their golden superior. Draug regulars swarmed onto that prisoning arm as Pilot jerked their struggling leader out of the hive construct.
“Try me,” he sent/ flashed/ pulsed, meaning it. “I will crush firefly, here, into quark-dust, and leave you to spawn another. Now, back off, disassemble, or watch as your leader is slain.”
V47 boosted shielding, working madly to repair the Titan’s sparking and shredded right leg.
…Also recalibrated their gate-passage, while keeping Block-World and Long Spar from drifting away through the void. In the meantime, the AI was also fighting to scan and patch a long string of terribly fragile code.
Unfairly, all that Pilot had to do was be threatening (which he was good at, having many archived show-vid lines to fall back on). See, the draugr were null-space, dark matter beings, survivors of ancient treachery. Descendants of drow, assemblers and gnomes, cast from their ship on a hyperspace jump. The resulting strife was far too late for apology, and well past forgiveness, but at least the Two Hundred Worlds could forbid further hyper-verse travel, ending damage and death.
If the peace treaty worked.
If there weren’t more than a few rebel draugr.
If there was someone empowered to act for all of the assets and their Ais. Talking of which, V47 pinged him with the recalibrated gate coordinates to distant Titania.
“Right. Good. Make it happen,” he responded internally (and that was one down).
Block-World and Long Spar, meanwhile, were readying missiles, rockets and troops, believing themselves to be part of an apocalyptic war between good and evil; standing alongside the Great Messenger who’d come to pluck them from doom. Pilot did not correct them. Just replied to their targeting queries and let the small beings throw pebbles and sparks at the devil.
Alongside all of that, V47 worked furiously to scan and patch the degraded Hana-code. Pilot left his friend to it, having his own massive hands full with matters outside. At least the fires were out, and the cabin alarms had choked themselves silent. That was something.
“Your kind may only be trusted when dead,” sent the glittering draug-superior, caged by a giant neutronium fist. “You may succeed in stopping us here, flesh-sac, but our numbers are legion, and there will never be peace until every last biological dies.”
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“Right,” Pilot nodded, causing the Titan’s huge head to grind up and down in response. “So… I’m just a messenger. You might recall the void bomb I defused back at your headquarters, near Glimmr? Yes, well, it isn’t really defused. Just on a very long countdown. If V47 Pilot fails to reappear in normal space soon to stop it, the void bomb detonates, taking most of your fleet and command crew along with it. Again, try me.”
He meant what he said, but the draug-superior chittered its scorn, writhing and slashing at massive fingers.
“You are only one being connected across the realities,” sneered the creature. “We have been promised that killing you here will save our people and avenge what was done. That is the goal, fleshling, no matter the fate of one unit or many.”
Uh-huh.
“Boy, that’s… really too bad. Unfortunately, I’m all out of sympathy chips, dung-beetle. I’m also tired of holding you.” Pilot shifted his attention to V47 then, ordering, “Vee, I need a fey-pocket cage for this thing. It itches.”
‘Command Received. Processed. Accepted. Done,’ sent the AI, adding, ‘Pilot, there is no such thing as a sympathy chip.’
“Shut up. I know that. But they don’t.” (Besides which, it had sounded fierce when Ace said, back in episode twelve, season three.)
The scrabbling, squirming, pinching nightmare was gone from his fist all at once, shunted away to his inventory control system, where it would probably blow itself up. That was two down, as the remaining draugr simply dissolved, peeling off of their composite mech in great, buzzing sheets.
The whole structure vanished in transit; going from mechanized warrior to skittery lump to a spreading cloud of dark flies. Gone, but no less of a threat for coming apart. The draug were his folk’s doing. Their fault and their burden… But there had to be some way to fix what had happened. Some way to reach through the past and make everything right. Maybe those others could do it? Miche and Val, if he was able to find them again? It was a thought, but Pilot had to set the problem aside, as their transit came to a flickering end.
V47’s equation had yielded an answer, providing Titania’s shifted coordinates. A vast and shimmering portal appeared just ahead of them, through which a blurry landscape and figures were visible. Making certain of Block-World and Long Spar, the battle mech powered on through.
He materialized on the inner surface of a curving magnetar shell, where an army of robots, an embodied AI and one little human girl waited. V47 Pilot refocused his optics for increased radiation, then scanned the child.
She was surrounded by hovering screens and holding a bunch of glowing electronic flowers, he saw. Appeared young, though his knowledge of humans was slight (strictly need-to-know, and he hadn’t). Her expression seemed hopeful, apprehensive… searching. Just a brown-haired, round-eared, hazel-eyed girl. Raine. The only human being in all of the Two Hundred Worlds… and therefore, its master.
The Titan had trouble standing upright with Block-World and Long Spar to manage, along with the sparking stump of a leg. Had to keep firing right-side engines until TTN-iA raised a clatter of scaffolding out of her world’s metal surface. Gantries and struts crystallized around V47, holding the giant robot in place as repair-drones swooped in.
~You have returned seeming altered~ sent the ancient AI. Then gesturing down with a bio-mechanical hand, ~Here stands the decanted master, Pilot and V47~
He nodded.
“Understood, TTN-iA. Thank you. Yes, we have changed, and there is a great deal to tell you.”
V47 was occupied, still. Pilot sent his friend the electronic equivalent of day-brew, then triggered emergence. The shift from battle mech to small, armored creature felt unusually disorienting, this time… or else he was simply nervous.
A master. An actual, physical human. His doing, his burden and… dear-writers-of-code… let it not be his mistake.
V47 Pilot lay on his couch for a moment after the probes withdrew and the contact plates lifted. Found himself free to rise, but reluctant to do so. Stared upward, gathering courage. Stopped trying to consciously manage his heartrate and breathing. Didn’t have to. There were subroutines for all that… And he was stalling.
Right, so… Pilot got up at last. Keyed open the flight canopy, then went forth to meet his “daughter”.