The machine realizes that it’s in trouble. Saturation Bombardment 2.0. Except, this time, it also opens another segment of its armour to reveal what looks like a heavy machine gun. Attempting to pin her down while carpet-bombing the entire area in case she dodged it with her illusions.
This is a fair strategy, one assuming that she has a limit to the simultaneous usage of her techniques. This is a perfectly reasonable assumption, as avoiding it would require her to not only create the initial Golden Bulwark to obfuscate its line of sight but also cover herself under Invisibility Cloak…
… all while using either Piercing Gaze to take down the missiles or cover herself in an omnidirectional Golden Bulwark. Both of that would undoubtedly result in her betraying her own position, allowing it to tear her to shreds with armour-piercing rounds.
The enemy was good. Sure, she was operating beneath her full capacity, but it cornered her expertly. When something like that happened, only total losers cried about environmental factors.
If the enemy engaged you in an unfavourable environment, that one was on you. Do you think that someone will care to listen to your complaints about this when it happens in actual combat? No, because you’ll probably be too dead to voice them.
She won’t make it through the door in time. There is only one option left.
The attacker realizes it the second she propels herself toward it with a flying hardlight platform that she normally uses to simulate flight. It opens fire, but just a moment before that, she splits herself into multiple versions of herself.
It was a gamble. But she bent the light before that happened. The attacker assumed that the copy close to her original position had to be the correct one. Completely unaware that she was actually elsewhere.
She gets close enough. Hammer of Dawn to the side, throwing it towards the wall. Then, while it tries to resume the saturation bombardment, she closes in again, shoving Spear of Twilight into one of the missile tubes.
Exploding the missiles inside of them would be pretty swell, but they weren’t armed yet. The discharge from the tip of the Spear was enough to shred the tube itself, but… not enough. Not quite enough.
Also, it was a trap.
It must have abandoned the plan for large-scale bombardment after the first clash, drawing her in and having her try to disable the missile launchers - all so that it could use yet another weapon system and slash her abdomen apart with blades somewhat reminiscent of those of a mantis.
They were sharp enough to carve through her armour. They weren’t sharp enough to go much deeper than that, although she can feel that she was injured. The enemy has now gauged the resistance level of her armour and will probably try to pierce her next time.
Whatever the hell it is, it’s good. Has a comparable amount of tools at their disposal to Virtue with her thirty-seven super moves, a lot of experience with using them and can think quickly to formulate new tactics.
With her mostly depowered state she’s only capable of fighting it on equal grounds because while she can more or less predict what it can do (missiles, guns, blades - she is familiar with those), this doesn’t work the same way for it.
She is using a power that no one in this world has. Something that is clearly ignoring the laws of science to a large degree. It has no idea what else to expect. But it’s learning and figuring her out.
It’s going to stomp her if she gives it too much time to analyze her power.
So early into her new life, and she’s already facing an SS-Rank opponent (even if near the lower end of the scale). Nice. Revenant better figures out how to produce alcohol, and fast, because she wants some expensive cocktail for having to deal with this bullshit.
It’s learning faster than she’s comfortable with. The solution? Overwhelming close-quarters violence. It always works best against the thinking & adapting types.
She leaps towards it again; the attacker charging back to meet her with blades of its own. She blocks them with a shield, before slicing one of them off with a Piercing Gaze. That’s when it blasts her with its flamethrowers.
Shield and her armour block most of that, but she can feel some of her wings catching fire. Alright, that’s it, she’s cutting them off and replacing them with hardlight constructs. She blames the Author for not doing the logical thing long ago.
She dodges to the side under Invisibility Cloak, leaving behind a decoy body. The attacker slices it in half, before unleashing another blast of flames at… an empty space? In the opposite direction than when she escaped to?
Crap. It predicted her attempt to escape the flames under a cloak. It was a gamble, a 50% chance to blast her while she was dodging. This time it missed, but…
“ARE YOU…” The machine surprises her by speaking instead of firing at her again. “... ONE OF THE PURE?”
She has no clue what it means. She is fairly certain that she’s pretty pure, even if she technically didn’t wash ever since her… birth? Second birth? It sounds odd while putting it that way.
Time to do the smart thing and buy some time.
“Who knows?” She replies, standing there confidently. Or, to be honest, her decoy body says confidently. She is standing a bit to the side, under her cloak. “You expect me to answer questions from someone who attacked me without even introducing themselves?”
“TEZAR CU-75.” The attacker surprises her with… wait, is that its name? “THIS FIGHT IS OVER. WE’LL MEET AGAIN, PURE.”
It then heads toward the hole in the floor it made to enter the hall. Virtue is confused. Should she try to stop it? If she had a reasonable plan to kill it, she’d use it, but with her firepower being limited because of the relatively low level of light around her…
… it’s not as if I was kind enough to slap her with a laser or a flashbang grenade. That would end the fight pretty quickly, but not in the way the machine expected.
But if it retreats successfully, it will probably warn whatever group it works for of their location. Then again, whatever the Pure were, it’s clearly not hostile against them, so strengthening that misconception might be a good idea.
She is way too out of her depth when faced with such a dilemma so early into landing in this world.
In the end, she doesn’t re-engage. Instead, she let the machine crawl down the hole and vanish from sight.
Shit. She can only hope she didn’t mess anything up.
She checks her injuries (it’s going to hurt in the morning). A few moments later, the relief force arrives.
***
The farm is a mess.
Bullet holes, explosion marks, a massive hole in the floor, scattered containers that were supposed to hold their food and some of Thorn’s plants completely torn to shreds. In short, once more in his life, Revenant can witness the ruin of his life plans.
At least he didn’t waste that much time on that.
Virtue somehow still looks fabulous, even despite some nasty gash on the abdomen and a broken wing.
“You’re late.” She says, glaring at him. “Missed one hell of a fight.”
That he can see.
“I assume that the enemy retreated…” He replies while approaching the hole. Phew, it seems to go down for at least a few levels. Why would someone dig a hole like that? “... unless their corpse vanished or something?”
“You know my individuality’s weakness.” She replies. “With only so much light, I could only hold it back. Not enough firepower to punch through that armour. It was damaged, but to be honest, it was learning my skillset way too fast for my liking. I’d be in trouble if it didn’t retreat and you didn’t show up for a few more minutes.”
That’s… not good. Virtue is a powerhouse. Sure, she had metaphorical flu in this fight (namely, limited light), but to think that there was something in the far future that could solo her even in that state?
He has gotten a bit too optimistic with results of their two clashes with Vermillion Gamma, hasn’t he?
And let’s not start on Humility’s odd quietness ever since it heard the description of the attacker. That was suspicious.
“Did it…” Speak of the devil, Revenant thinks, as Humility suddenly starts talking. “... speak to you?”
“A cringe taunt at the beginning about being my death.” She replies. Yeah, that’s very cringe. Even most villains had more tact and were more original about their taunts. “Then, near the end of the fight, it suddenly backed down and asked me if I’m one of the ‘Pure’, whatever it meant. I said that I don’t see a reason to answer questions of something that tried to kill me without even introducing itself. So it introduced itself, I think, as ‘Tezar CU-75’, before saying that this fight is over and that we’ll meet again. Then it tailed it out of the room.”
Revenant glances at Humility. In the background, Onslaught groans at the lack of action before collapsing. Thankfully, Decay’s right there to catch her in Revenant’s stead.
“We’re fucked.” Humility eventually announces its verdict. Clockmaker glances at it, clearly surprised by the AI swearing all of a sudden.
Exactly what Revenant wanted to hear.
“Elaborate?” He then replies with a question. Because the Informatic Scourge decided to not do it on their own.
“That was a BANDIT/BLUE GAMMA.” Humility replies. “Remnants of the armed forces of the Mechanist Hierocracy, one of the key members of the long-defunct Transhuman Alliance.”
“Trans…” Virtue somehow speaks first. She barely repeats half of the word before it hits her. “Wait, that thing was a human?” Someone clearly expected it to be another murderous AI robot. Then again, so did Revenant after hearing the description.
They met a lot of murderous AI robots. The future seemed to be crawling with them.
“No.” Humility replies. “By legal definition of the term, no. There isn’t an ethnopolity out there that considers them human. There isn’t an ethnopolity out there that doesn’t consider them to be kill-on-sight targets. Even in the most egalitarian, peaceful and xenophilic of them, you can expect to be summarily executed, often with your family, if you react to witnessing them in any other way than an immediate attempt at murder. In the most extreme of cases, if an entire country was proven to have struck any sort of deal with them, you can expect the country itself to be struck out of the maps in retaliation, sometimes with its entire population.”
Silence in the room. That was… much more than any of them expected. He can see Virtue staring at Humility in complete shock. He is only slightly less shocked by how much the situation just escalated.
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“... what does one have to do to warrant such a treatment?” Revenant eventually asks. Because, to be honest, he can scarcely imagine any crime that could lead to such a punishment.
“They were allowed to establish their own enclaves, pretty much autonomous countries within Human Space.” Humility replies. “Something unique, something that no one else was allowed back then. They were seen as a natural next stage of the process of human technological self-improvement, one that was eventually going to become the new standard once some time passes, once the success of their enclaves would persuade everyone else to upgrade.” It stays silent for a moment before speaking again. “They repaid for all of that by launching a war of extermination against Mankind as a whole, slaughtering close to half of non-transhumans in perhaps the worst and most brutal wars in human history, one that ended the period that could as well be considered the Golden Age of Mankind.”
… Oh. Well, that would do that.
“Regretfully, you can only see so many recordings of, for example, mechanist warforms like our friend Tezar waltzing through, say, a kindergarten in a captured city while calmly comparing the artistic value and efficiency of their kills before deciding that they are the closest thing this world has to demons.” Humility then makes it even worse. “But they really miscalculated and did it while the baseline humans still had a massive numerical superiority. Despite the complete success of their initial decapitation strike and their swift blitz through the Human Space, the Solar Commonwealth ended up winning the war. Exterminating 99.9% of the Transhuman Alliance citizens in retaliation. We’ve just had a run-in with one of the remaining 0.01% or one of their descendants.”
“It called me a ‘Pure’.” Virtue is clearly regretting not trying to fight it to death, but still asks.
“Dominion of the Pure was one of the Transhuman Alliance member states.” Humility replies. “The Pure were a transhuman Line focused on radical genetic improvements to create what was basically a massively superior form of human. I say ‘were’ because they were wiped out to the last during the war.” It stays quiet for a moment. “A logical mistake on the transhuman side. They were all designed to look extremely beautiful, not to mention having massively improved reflexes, strength and so on… all while having more personalized genetic modifications made alongside their own sense of aesthetics. Virtue, if you identify her wings as a part of said ‘personalized genetic modifications’, fits the bill perfectly.”
On one hand, it makes sense. Metahumans (the people carrying the individualities) were less… restricted by their biology than normal humans. You might have an individuality of only narrow usefulness, but you could still train your body beyond human limits.
Revenant’s Mastery was that very mechanism, just squared. Because when a ‘normal’ metahuman approached the limits of their growth, his individuality gave him a full-body update, allowing him to grow further.
Virtue, her individuality aside, moved and reacted faster while being way stronger than humans should be. Especially as she, like most of the really scary people in their world, not only had powerful and versatile individualities but also bodies trained to absolute perfection.
He remembers Black Knight slamming a car into Valiant, despite the man not having an individuality that could boost his physical strength. Sure, it was a compact car, but…
Of course, it also doesn’t make sense due to the ‘wiped to the last’ part. Except, now that Revenant thinks about it…
“That implies that Visitor must have gathered his collection for a while.” He says. He gets some questioning looks. “Blue Gamma must have encountered another group that was a fish out of temporal water, ‘stolen’ by the Visitor a long time ago. This explains why Tezar assumed Virtue to be a Pure that Visitor swallowed before they all went extinct.”
“Makes sense.” Humility nods. “The thing is, Tezar couldn’t be sure that Virtue was stolen from the times of the war, or from before it started. The Pure he met might have been still at least nominally loyal to the Solar Commonwealth, despite it no longer existing. So, it probably retreated to inform its superiors of the encounter to let them figure out what to do.”
And that brings them back to ‘we’re fucked’. Because this implies that they are going to get visited by more enemies like that one. And since Virtue, the strongest combatant they had, only managed to hold one at bay…
“Should we pursue it?” He asks. It shouldn’t have gone far.
“No.” Humility shakes its head. “It probably left a lot of traps on its way back. You don’t survive so long while being an object of public genocidal hatred without being thorough and careful. I’m afraid that we’re going to have to relocate. And fast.”
Shit.
“What about the resurrection chamber?” He asks. “If we lose it, it’s…”
“... not necessarily a game over.” Humility replies. “I have an idea, one that we’ll have to test in a hurry. The bad news is that it drew Virtue’s blood, meaning that they have a biological sample to test. So, they are going to realize that you’re not Pure by the time they show up again to investigate. ”
“I should have killed it.” Virtue grumbles. She is furious. Really showing that ‘I’m not a villain, I’m a hero!’ vibe. “Even if it would cost me my life. It would be a cheap price to pay for—”
It’s time to address that issue. Because Revenant begins to see the downsides of bringing along the (theoretical) heroes.
“Okay, first of all, we’re all villains now.” Revenant reminds everyone in the room of that fact. “Villains. No, I don’t care how you refer to yourself in your head. You’re villains. Heroic sacrifices are absolutely forbidden until I give you explicit permission.” It would be the second time in a row for Virtue. This means that it begins to shape into a pattern. He doesn’t like it. He needs them all. “Second of all…”
“Wait, wait!” Clockmaker interrupts him. Revenant restrains himself internally from killing someone. “Transhumanism is now banned? On pain of death?! But… I’m basically a cyborg myself! Does that mean I’m going to be hunted for sport by everyone outside of this planet?!”
… now that she mentions it, it sounds like something that could happen and would really make things complicated. Except, Humility shakes its head.
“You don’t make the cut.” The AI replies. “Today, especially since the extinction of almost all genetic Lines, ‘transhuman’ means someone that attempts to transcend human limitations while completely discarding humanity. That’s why Tezar resembled a secret love child of a giant centipede and a tiger. Because staying humanoid is basically forbidden among the Blue Gamma. You fall squarely into the cybernetic branch of transformationism, which is basically cyborgization but without the stigma and while sticking to looking as human as possible, if only outwardly.”
Clockmaker sighs with relief. Yeah, it looks like transhumanist concepts still live, just largely restrained. Which makes sense, because Revenant cannot imagine humans completely shunning the concept of improving themselves with technology. Especially when it offered results.
The difference between transhumanism and transformationism appeared to be best summarized with one word - ‘than’. There was a crucial difference between wanting to be better humans and wanting to be better than humans.
“Alternatively, you can just drop by one of the remaining transhuman enclaves in the Human Space.” Humility then surprises them all. “Transhuman ethnopolities are treated with extreme suspicion by pretty much everyone but are allowed to continue existing. They are all descendants of the transhuman minority that sided with the Solar Commonwealth back then, during the war.”
Surprisingly nice of Mankind to let them live. Even after the total bullshit that this war had to be. Revenant isn’t sure himself if he wouldn’t suspect them of being a long-term survival strategy of the Transhuman Alliance in case of losing the war.
He only has one more question to ask.
“Humility.” He says while glancing at the AI. “Didn’t you say that your current container is a sleeve-bot from some transhuman branch?”
“Yes.” Humility replies. “I took it from a group of BANDIT/BLUE BETA, stranded on this planet like everyone else. If it was from the loyalist enclave, you wouldn’t be able to tell I wasn’t an organic being without seeing what was under the skin. As for the Blue Betas… well, let’s just say that they won’t need it anymore. I made sure of that.”
What else can Revenant say about it? If a rogue AI with a death toll in the billions considers murdering you to be a form of public service, you should probably find Jesus and reconsider your life choices.
***
“So…” Revenant asks Humility once they are alone in the resurrection chamber. “... what’s your plan?”
“This whole thing, this whole place…” Humility replies while playing around with one of the tubes. It’s not the one they were using thus far, but one of those that looked relatively undamaged. “... is bullshit.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” Revenant replies. The others are busy packing whatever can be of use, mostly from the barracks. “What are you referring to…”
Humility pulls the tube by the metallic railing. With a loud metallic plop, it disconnects from the rest of the equipment. The AI then pulls it off and carefully carries it over before putting it on the floor nearby.
Despite being clearly disconnected from all possible power sources, the lights still continue to blink on it. Truly, this whole place was bullshit.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Revenant announces at the spectacle. He could barely believe what he was seeing. “You want us to grab the resurrection tubes and move those that can still work elsewhere? Before Blue Gamma shows up.”
“Well, I most certainly don’t want the Transhuman Alliance remnants to get access to something that can give them access to reality-defying superpowers.” Humility replies. “However, I get the feeling that I’d have a mutiny on deck if I tried to destroy this place. Since you have way too many people to bring back.”
That was… probably correct. They were all way too invested in getting their friends (and more) back. Onslaught alone would rather battle the transhuman army with a 0.1% chance of victory than accept never seeing Hypothermia and her father again.
“For now, judging from where I believe the positions of the Blue Gamma main forces are, we have at least enough time to bring one more person back.” Humility continues. “Anyone you know that can help carry those tubes? There are at least several hundred kilograms each, and I don’t think that anyone besides me and Virtue can carry those consistently during a long-distance trek.”
Yeah, he knows just the perfect person. Except… there is a bit of a problem involved. A big one, actually. Of moral nature. And Revenant rarely has problems of moral nature, unless the situation is really nasty.
“If, theoretically, someone I knew was brainwashed through some rather varied means…” He replies. “... is modern technology capable of reversing the process?”
“I can’t say yes with full certainty if individualities were involved.” Humility replies with a surprising degree of honesty. “But if it was done with technology, then regardless of how advanced or expansive it was, the answer is yes. That branch of technology improved massively, and if it’s for some reason beyond it, there are certainly exotechs that can do the trick.”
Is he ready to risk it?
Fuck it. He is.
“Bring back Singularity.” He says. The AI nods, completely unaware of the degree of self-loathing if not straight hatred for himself that those three words brought in Revenant.
“I’ll do that on one of the other tubes, not the one that we’ve been using so far,” AI adds. “And after moving it to another room. We need to make sure that the ‘effect’ is centred on the tubes, not the room, or the entire process will be for nought. Then, once we get Singularity, we need to move as fast as possible. And not just because of Blue Gamma.”
Great, sounds like more problems.
“I know that I’ll hate the answer, but I’ll still ask.” Revenant replies. “What’s going on?” The robot continues hauling the tube for a short while before answering.
“I mentioned earlier that Vermillion Gamma is under attack from a combined force of BANDIT/BLUE GAMMA and BANDIT/BLACK ALPHA.” The robot eventually says. Revenant remembers that. “This makes next to no sense because Black Alpha and Blue Gamma hate each other with passion. And Vermillion Gamma simply isn’t strong enough to force them to cooperate.”
Oh.
“They aren’t attacking Vermillion Gamma.” Revenant realizes it immediately.” They are being pushed by something onto its territory.”
“And whatever it is, is bad news.” Humility confirms his worries. “Monumentally bad news. I can only think of several groups capable of forcing the Mechanist Hierocracy and the Silent Sorrow into an alliance, and none of them is something we want to be close to in our current state.”
Things just keep fucking up constantly, aren’t they?
***
“TALK TO ME, RESEARCHER.” Tezar CU-75 asks a few hours later, after returning to the base and while undergoing repairs after the fight. “WHAT WERE THE TEST RESULTS?”
What he found was… impossible, and despite his present state, his emotional processor cannot help but report gnawing worry that he made a mistake. It impacts his behaviour only because he consciously and rationally decided to go along with it.
Yndria RB-12, one of the few Researchers/Biologists they had among them when they woke up on this planet, twists her snake-like mechanical body a few times before answering.
“The tests were inconclusive.” She replies. Her voice is… human. Way too human. There is some distortion to it, some inhuman flex, but… too little for Tezar’s taste. She is a young one, a newer recruit. Still with some attachments. “I’ve detected 64% of the genetic markers associated with the Pure genome in the sample you’ve brought. However, the remaining 36% are missing, replaced with what I identify as a mixture of the baseline human genome with several genes that I’ve never seen before.”
The biggest mystery to her was the 4% of the genes she mapped. She found a match in the oldest biogenetic data she had access to, the one covering the human genome from before the initial genetic uplift program. The one that coincided with the development of the first mode of the FTL drive. So, from the times when Mankind was still restrained to the Solar System.
Having it coexist in a single individual with Pure Line genes was akin to trying to build a starship from a combination of advanced synthetic materials… and wood. Illogical. Insane. But…
“NOT SO PURE, THEN.” Tezar comments. “STILL THE CLOSEST THING WE’VE MET TO OUR LOST COUSINS IN A WHILE. LOST PROTOTYPES? SOMEONE’S ATTEMPT TO RECREATE THEM?” The researcher sends back the electronic equivalent of a shrug. It’s not her job to figure that out. Besides, they’d need a less contaminated sample to say more.
Tezar receives the order to gather up a proper investigation group and return to the location of the mysterious encounter thirty minutes later. Together with a note from their commanding officer to do it quickly, before their ‘allies’ notice what was happening.
Who would have thought that the mission to look for a way to flank the Vermillion Gamma would lead to something like this?