15
There was always a sideways path. Always another route. Just because he went in through your rigged-up trap of a door, didn’t mean that he had to accept where it took him. That he couldn’t adjust his arrival… with extra sauce.
V47 Pilot passed into that vast, glaring Draug portal and got right to work. He overclocked, first, making time all but grind to a halt while he altered his stolen Titan. And just like that, taking weird, gritty manna from the transport gate, specs from V47 and Rogue Flight, Pilot rebuilt the lumbering battle-mech.
It changed shape all around him with a tremendous rumble, clatter, hissssssss, and scream. Went in femto-ticks from huge, boxy lummox to a sleek, red-and-gold predator; fully armed and in warrior-mode. As for the massive null-bomb, that servant of death received a sly tweak of its own.
Maybe the Draugr had dealt in good faith. Just possibly, they wanted to talk, not to destroy him… But, as Ace would put it: Wish in one hand, pull a trigger with the other. See which one gets results. Call him naturally suspicious, but… Yeah. That.
It was the work of an instant to spoof the Draug transport signal and rewrite its destination code. He split the command, inserting another gate’s address, as well. One that he knew and trusted.
Next, the pilot made a simulacrum, coming slightly apart and away from V47. Gave himself orders, then passed through the bisected portal (making for both destinations). There was a flash of light and the combed-through feeling of transit. All the usual echoing voices and mists and bits of the past rose up. Just lost and left-over data, mostly; the shadows that sloughed off and remained, whenever somebody travelled by gate.
Then one of those flickers approached him. A blond, flesh and blood elf like the ones in Battle for Arda. Somehow, a free and self-willed actual person. Not an asset. Carried himself differently and dressed very strangely, for one thing. Seemed concerned, too… But… for him? V47 Pilot? Why?
There wasn’t much real conversation, as the contact kept timing out. A few words passed between them, and then his faerie pockets were raided; his energy blade switched for a bundle of botched, handmade clay oddments. Pilot would have taken his sword back, but he moved too late. The contact broke off for good, leaving him grasping at nothing. And then he was through. (As two selves.) In the first:
He found himself in a vast and simmering dark matter chamber. Its interior was almost too big to comprehend; its walls composed of trillions of interlocked Draug. They reacted in wild and rippling shock as what came out through their portal was nothing at all like what they’d let in. And the clock was now ticking.
Pilot had arrived by himself. Hung there at mid-chamber in full armor and helmet, alone. No mech, no drones, no backup. Just hovering free by a large and threatening weapon. Meant that… Right. That he wasn’t V47 Pilot at all, but only a messenger.
Taking a very deep breath, he called up his HUD. Scanned his surroundings for poisonous fumes, radiation or biological threats. Found none, besides the Draugr, themselves. No real sense of where he’d been taken, either, except that it was tightly shielded and far.
The massive null-bomb crackled and shuddered beside him, forming a platform and rail. He drifted down to its surface, looking around at a moon-sized chamber that seethed and clattered with large and quite sentient Draugr. Good.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
.005…
“Hello,” he said to them. “I will not last very long, and I bear an important message. You’re going to want to pay attention, because it will not repeat. I am a simulacrum.” (And, sure… Why not?) “You can call me Val.”
.0049…
All around him, individual Draug units were detaching in clouds from the chamber walls, racing to form an answering construct. Too slow and too late. In his overclocked state, they seemed to move like coils of dark and particulate smoke, or like blood swirling through water.
.0048…
Val Pilot ignored their activity, saying,
“My existence is tied to this null bomb. If I am slain, it detonates. If the bomb is transported, it blows itself up in mid-gate, destroying the network. Now… you told me to come. Here I am. Just a simulacrum, but I trust myself, and you have .00473 nano-ticks to say something convincing. Fire away, before I do.”
.0047…
His life up to this point had passed mostly in stasis, as ride-along meat for V47. It had spanned 2,756 galactic years of real time, of which forty-eight days had been spent awake. Forty-eight days punctuated by repeated deaths. By his being decanted anew, with gaps in his memory from save-point to messy end. And his real self… the actual Pilot… would not know what happened in here, if his simulacrum got killed.
Weird feeling, that. Sort of painful, knowing that he was only a few ticks old in reality, and that he had just .00465 left to live.
.0046…
The Draugr responded, slow as water dripping from the roof of a dark, giant cave. At his current perception rate, he could have experienced lifetimes, written whole libraries, between their ponderous, plodding words. Only, he wasn’t that patient. Compressed the sound file, getting,
.003…
‘We seek your masters. The ones who have set you to die, while they conceal themselves in Etherion.’
.0029…
Along with that statement came an image of negative space, of all the places between. Hyperspace itself, being torn into shreds by hurtling freighters and warships.
.0028…
‘We perish, Val-Construct. With each hyperspace jump, our realm is punctured, our units slain. Nor is this safe for your own kind, for the places between scaffold your worlds. Once our space is destroyed, yours will collapse. Is that not convincing enough?’
.001…
Yeah. Pretty much. Val Pilot hesitated, thinking hard. Drummed his fingers on the null bomb’s circuit-laced railing. Then,
.09…
“Suppose I go looking for the masters, and I find them first, with V47. What would you have us do?”
.08…
He compressed the sound file again, rather than waiting a glacial eternity for their response. All while trickling units strove to close ranks and lock up. While the great bomb that he stood upon hitched a bit closer to detonation.
.07…
‘As is your stated purpose, Val-Construct, we would have you bear them a message. Say: We are coming. You will be found. Your attacks on our realm will be answered in kind and in fury.’
Right.
.9…
The simulated pilot considered for almost a whole .001 femto-tick. At length he replied,
“I am only a combat asset. No, not even that. The shade of an asset. But I have been given authority to make decisions by the real me and by Cerulean-1. What I ask in return is a cease-fire, until I… or my progenitor… can find this Etherion and force the masters to listen.”
Didn't tell them that he knew just where and how to turf up the masters' location. That he could, in fact, find Etherion. 'Need to know' data, and they didn't qualify.
'Are you able to stop these hyperspace jumps, as you search?' asked the Draugr, at the volume and pace of a drifting continent. 'The cease-fire must bind both sides, Val-Construct.'
.6...
Fair enough.
"Yes," he promised. "Give me... us... five sidereal days. Allow me to get a message to my progenitor and to Cerulean-1. With OVR-Lord down, she can impose a flight ban." (Blame it on a virus, or something.)
.5...
.45…
He didn’t have very much longer, and the Draug took up most of that dwindling time.
‘Five sidereal days, Val-Construct,’ they said, as their units massed into a spiked giant head. ‘Find Etherion. Put an end to this heedless destruction, or we shall.’
.1…
Next, a hole appeared in their shielding. Very small, very brief, but enough to pass a message through. Just enough time to relate the situation, then defuse and weld that bomb… and to take a last sideways look at a very short life.
0
It didn’t hurt so much, turning back into nothing at all.