TO hadn’t even considered the possibility of stopping an attack by the synths. Even now, as Flit mentioned, TO could only look at them in disbelief. Stop an attack from a whole fleet of synths? Maybe they could stop one or two, and they might even manage against a small, specialized team? But an entire fleet with multiple armed ships?TO would have been less perplexed if Flit said they were going to find a way to stop breathing. Stopping the synths–Stopping King Decon–was impossible. They were a small group of insurgents hiding underground on Arkane, working with a single admittedly great hacker, reclaimed tech, bug meat, and hope. King Decon had all the resources of the galaxy at his fingertips, and all the time in the cosmos.
They might delay Him for a while, but stopping Him was impossible.
Despite the absolute insanity of Flit and Snout even considering some plan to stop an attack, TO thought of Fengari, who provided them shelter at the Cottage Core put They thought of the children they saw in the Outer Ring, and of the other civilians in the indebetted center who they wanted to help, but couldn’t.
Because of that, the first word out of their mouth was “how?”
Snout gave a heavy sigh, “We don’t exactly know yet.” They said, “We’ve discussed a few plans but none of them will work.”
“We had been thinking about this for a while.” Flit said. They flinched and hissed in pain as DH swapped some particularly strong-smelling antibacterial onto Flit’s sores, and took a moment to compose themself before continuing. The smell alone threatened to throw TO back into the memories of blood and bones. They were lucky that Flit’s sore leg was oozing a clear fluid, and not bright blue blood. Focusing on their food, on the smell, the taste and texture, kept them from slipping into dangerous memories and spiraling into a panic.
“Sorry.” DH said, their tone clipped even as they continued working without pause, “ I have to make sure this doesn’t get infected.”
“As Flit said, we had a few early ideas.” Snout said, taking over from Flit’s line of conversation. “Primarily, we thought to shut down the portal-”
TO’s ears perked up, “Oh! like you did when we were trying to get here.” They said,
“Yes.” Snout said, their ears dipping, “That didn’t go as smoothly as we planned, both in terms of loss of civilian life and… well, the overall failure of the attempt.” They shrugged and gave TO a wry grin, their ears twitching, “We didn’t account for your increased cleverness.”
Despite the situation, TO felt their ears burn and they put renewed attention on their food.
“The problem with that,” Snout continued, “Is that even if we shut down the portal, that’s only a temporary solution as it can be fixed. Even if we managed to utterly destroy that portal, there’s other portals which would bring ships relatively close to us-”
‘Relatively.” Flit said, not recovered from their moment of pain. “The nearest one would bring a ship… What, twenty years away from us?” They shook their head. “They’d still get here. The only difference is we’d have had twenty years of time to prepare, not a week, and doing that would ensure that King Decon chose to eradicate life here.
“Right.” Snout said, “And besides that, there's too many other issues with entirely shutting down the portal. There’s other planets around which aren’t in lockdown, and many which rely on food and medicine from outside this star cluster. Isolating this area would cause famine here, and the loss of life from starvation and lack of medical services would be….”
“It would be greater than the loss of life resulting from King Decon deciding to simply blow up the planet.” Flit said. “The death of the entire population of Arkane, and its moons would be inconsequential in comparison to the slow death we’d inflict by destroying the portal altogether.
“Right.” Snout said, “And while shutting it down temporarily would buy us more time, it would take necessary resources that we need to help the people with us, and prepare for escape. If we failed or if our timing was off then not only would we still be here when the armada arrived, but if the attempt were discovered it would increase the chances of King Decon just killing everyone here.”
“And even if you changed your mind, it’s too late for that.” TO said, frowning as they picked at their food. “They’ve already passed through the portal. They’re two days away from us.”
“Exactly.” Snout said. “You’ve all been preoccupied, you’ve all been busy doing other, very important things.” They sighed, “We don’t even know if we can do this. It’s a hope. A fantasy. It didn’t seem right to take you away from everything else. Even now…” They glanced at Flit, “I don’t know if it’s worth trying.”
“If we’re not going to tell everyone on the planet, then I at least want to do this.” Flit said as their eyes narrowed. “If we do nothing, if we don’t even try, then in part all the deaths are our fault.”
Snout scoffed and looked away, “I’d rather blame King Decon and the synths who initiated the attack. But… so long as it doesn’t slow down the guaranteed good we can do to get some people safe, then sure.” They pursued their lips, their ears flicking down. “We’re helping who we can. I’d like to help as many people as possible, but we have to be realistic.”
“I want to help.” TO said. Logically, it made no sense to even try, and they agreed with Snout to some extent. Logically, they should focus all their attention on what they knew they could do. They should make sure not to strain themself too hard physically or mentally, and throw all their efforts into coordination, and solving the myriad of problems they were already dealing with.
Logically, it also made sense to repurpose–to euthanize–a juvenile synth with tumors in their posterior lung. TO told themself that from the time it had happened, from the day they watched the poor thing twitch and die. It was logical. It made sense. It was the best option. After joining the insurgents, they did all they could to not think about that awful day at all. When the memory floated to their mind, all they could tell themself was that there was nothing they could have done. It didn’t stop the occasional nightmares, or the assault on their senses when they saw blood.
They didn’t know if they could take more deaths staining their heart. If they tried and failed, so be it. At least this time they would have tried to do something.
There was another reason, one that floated in the background of their mind. The extra work would help them get to that lovely level of exhaustion where they would collapse on the bed at the end of the day, curl up into DH’s arms, and instantly fall asleep.
“I’ll help too.” DH said, not looking away from their work as they carefully wrapped bandages around Flit’s shortened limb, slipping two fingers around the edge to check how tight it was.
“Good.” Snout nodded at DH, then glanced at Avery, “What about you?”
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“…I don’t know why you’d need me.” They said, looking down at their food, “I’m average at best-“
“We need whatever help we can get.” Flit said. “And you’re not average, I promise you.”
Avery shrugged, “Alright.” They said, “If that’s what DH and TO are doing… I’ll help too.”
If that’s what DH and TO were doing. It was as though Avery didn’t have any concerns other than that. They wondered if they were doing it just to help their ‘family’ or if they, like TO, were only hoping to distract themself from pain.
“Good.” Flit said. They moved as though they were about to get up, then looked at their leg and settled back against the stack of pillows which had been carefully arranged behind them.
“Try not to move too much.” DH said, “Or at least, not to the point where you need your prosthetic.”
Flit huffed, sighed, and turned away for a second before glancing back at DH. The older Chilacian looked them over as though they were surprised at who they were. DH ignored their intense stare as they packed up their things but once they were done and Flit was still looking at them, they finally said, “What?”
“... I forgot for a moment that you aren’t medical officer.” Flit said, “That’s all.”
“I don’t know if that’s a compliment.” Snout said. “Not overall, anyway.”
“MO6 wasn’t bad.” Flit said with a shrug, “Anyway…” They looked towards the table. “If you’re going to help, the first thing we have to do is brainstorm.” They nodded to Snout who, to TO’s surprise, pulled out a strange tablet. It was larger than a communicator, or even the clipboard sized tablets that most civilians used if working away from their computers. They set the tablet in the center of the table, and as they pressed at the corner of the device it powered up and displayed a large keyboard covering half the screen.
“What’s this?” DH asked as they sat at the table, picking up the last container of food.
“It’s a study tablet.” Snout said, “Designed for small children just learning their letters. It has no data capabilities, but we can use it to save writings and ideas without worrying about anyone else having access to the information we keep on it.
“Found it ages ago.” Flit said, “Got tossed out and ended up in the harbor. It’s a relatively simple device, so I was able to fix it.”
As Flit spoke, Snout started typing. They were slower at typing using the much larger keyboard rather than the tiny one on their communicator screens and computers, and of course typing on anything couldn’t compare to the subvocalization speech-to-text capabilities of their own chips, but it got the job done. In big, kid friendly letters on the top of the screen Snout wrote: Ways to Stop the Synths from Killing Everyone.
“Now. Brainstorming.” Flit said. “No stupid ideas. Say whatever comes to mind.”
“I’m pretty sure there are stupid ideas…” TO said, their ears dipping down, “like, if I said we put a large bubble around Arkane, that would be-” They stopped as Snout typed in the idea, feeling their ears warm as they saw such a moronic notion set to writing.
“No stupid ideas.” Flit repeated. “Or at least, get the stupid ideas out now. Don’t think too hard. Just talk.”
All three were silent, TO and DH exchanging looks of pure confusion as their ears drooped. No bad ideas? Even the really stupid and obvious ones? Did Snout really expect them to talk without thinking?”
“... We could shoot them down?” Avery offered once the silence grew heavy. Snout typed it under TO’s awful, silly idea.
“Good.” Flit said, “Keep going.”
======
They only had a half hour to eat and brainstorm. Within minutes, what should have been a very serious conversation about devising ways to stop an entire synth armada, and in fact King Decon himself, turned into a game where each one tried to come up with ideas more and more ridiculous than the other. DH’s silliest idea was to simply move the planet to another location. Though, this did inspire DH’s favorite idea which was to hack into the synth databases and change the very location of Arkane in the automatic mapping, effectively hiding Arkane from the synths. While TO’s original idea of covering the planet in a large bubble was among the worst ones they later on they came up with the brilliant idea of using a theoretical means of interstellar travel they had read about once where they would convert entire solar system into an interstellar bioship, thus making it possible to flee the coming armada. Avery’s idea, while far more simple, was no less insane. The idea of creating some kind of fake news broadcast to convince the armada, and King Decon, that everyone on the planet was already dead and thus there was no reason to launch an attack.
Those were the fun ones. Less fun were the ideas of surrendering to the synths, presenting themselves as a sacrifice for the lives of everyone else on the planet.
“I’m not shutting down any ideas right now.” Flit said as Snout silently typed that idea after TO said it, “But I want to point out that even if we did that there’s still an excellent chance that Decon might have life on the planet destroyed just to be safe. After all, he supposedly already killed off the leadership of the insurgency, and yet we remain. I doubt he’d be interested in taking more chances.
Begging for mercy, negotiating, and pretending that they had been captured by the insurgents in hopes that the synths would be forced to trade the lives of Arkane had all been suggested even though they knew that it would never work. A real synth wouldn’t be swayed by tears and pleading for their lives. Negotiation would be met with force, since King Decon’s army did not negotiate.Synths as hostages wouldn’t work either. The synths would let synth captives die without any thought. Tools could be replaced, even very good ones.
In the end they had a long list of ideas ranging from doable to impossible and while none of them seemed particularly effective Snout and Flit still seemed pleased when they were done.
“Come back tonight when you’re all done.” Snout said as the three left to get to work. “We’ll go over them.”
Once they left the room, DH shook their head, “I don’t know what the point of that was.” They muttered, “None of those ideas were any good.”
“Better awful ideas over no ideas.” Avery muttered. “Who knows. Maybe something will come of those.”
“Maybe.” TO said. They were still trying to come up with ideas, but now their thoughts slowed. At least that brainstorming had done a couple things for them: It took their mind off everything else, and it dragged all the bad ideas from their head. “Maybe I’ll get to think on it more though the day-” They pulled up all the information that Flit sent, and their ears dipped. “Or maybe not.”
There were dozens of things to do on the list. Some of them seemed simple, like following up on food supplies and medical status. Others involved planning, packing, people management, medical management, and basic hygiene issues.
“Well, you have a busy day.” DH said as they glanced over the information. “But look, I think a bunch of that involves the civilians we got from the underground. Why not come with me there? I’m heading there not to meet up with Goretta. Besides, don’t you need to check on that kid?” DH tilted their head at TO. “You got her father out of the indebted center, right?”
“Constance, yes.” TO said. They also got Marissa’s Brother out, and TO wanted to check on them both, they also hadn’t seen Lendulin and Petra in a while either. Checking on their friends wasn’t necessarily part of their tasks for the day, but it was important to them.
“You guys go on.” Avery said as the hallway split, “The kitchens are down this way. I’ll go on, and meet you later-”
“You want us to walk you there?” TO asked, Suddenly stopping mid-stride and turning around. Shatter-sickness, that’s what that file had called it when an Ankyra is too depressed after a break up of the family. TO hardly considered Kei a part of their family, but Avery had been around them and only them for a long time during travel, and they had become rather protective of the other synth over time. Even if Kei was incapable of forming that bond, was it possible that it formed for Avery, at least a little bit?
Would Avery get sick? They didn’t have Chilacian healers here, and TO doubted that any of them knew how to treat “shatter sickness’
“It’s a three minute walk, and then I’m in the kitchens, “ Avery said, but even so their ears relaxed ,”but… thanks. You guys go on. We’ll meet for lunch?”
TO nodded, “Yeah, Lunch.”
Avery smiled, though it was still a little dour, a little sad, and walked down the hallway. TO and DH watched them until they turned a corner and went out of sight.
“... What’s wrong?” DH finally asked, watching TO carefully. TO panicked, but before they could worry and panic about having to tell DH about GiDi, their mate continued, “You’ve been watching Avery all morning, like they’re glass. What’s happened?”
Oh. well, that was something they could tell DH, and if they knew that was something TO was worried about maybe they wouldn’t bother asking again if TO seemed concerned later that day.
“... Right, so, I couldn’t sleep last night.” TO said as they took DH’s hand and led them down the hallway, “So I read that file Snout sent us… and I have some concerns.”