A moment later, the drone seemed to have satisfied itself and turned, leaving the train car. The doors closed immediately after.
Moments later, the maglev took off, streaking across the ring to the exclusion zone, and the CriEn Power Plant where they’d set up their bombs.
TOWER ASSAULT
STELLAR DATE: 10.24.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Uplink Tower 7-1, Airthan Ring
REGION: Huygens System, Transcend Interstellar Alliance
Fina settled back against the broad oak tree that her team had formed up around, her gaze sliding from Roxy to Jane.
“A bit of a pickle,” she said after a moment.
This close to the uplink tower and its security sensors, they didn’t risk using the Link, but as fortune would have it, a storm was blowing through, so speaking was safe enough beneath the rustling leaves and creaking boughs.
“That’s a new one on me,” Jane said. “Are we the pickle, or are they?” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder at the tower as she spoke.
“We are,” Roxy replied, a smirk settling on her azure lips. “Well, the saying is that we’re ‘in’ a pickle.”
“You sure about that?” Fina asked. “I would have expected us to be the pickle…stewing in vinegar and the like.”
Jane chuckled. “Carmen says you’re overthinking this pickle business. So what are we going to do about our objective?”
Fina glanced around the tree again, taking in the hundred meters of open space between them and the uplink tower. Their original plan had been to simply cross the space utilizing their stealth armor while leveraging nanoclouds to ensure the roving drones didn’t spot them—or to breach the machines if they did—but with leaves and other flying debris whipping across the space, stealth wasn’t an option.
“No two ways about it,” Fina said after a moment’s further consideration. “We’re going to have to go under.”
“Security’s tight in the passages below,” Roxy cautioned. “I mean…you know that, but I’m just saying. We’re going to have to breach more systems down below and hope that no one—such as an ascended AI who could squish us with a thought—notices.”
“Carmen says she loves how reassuring you are.”
“Carmen can talk through your armor,” Roxy quipped.
“Sure,” the AI said through the armor’s speakers, “but it’s fun making Jane say everything for me. It’s like she’s my little puppet.”
The woman let out a low groan. “You told me the armor couldn’t do that while stealthed.”
“Well yeah,” Carmen drew the words out. “Having stealth armor talk removes the whole stealth element. But we’re not really utilizing audible stealth right now. So there you go.”
Fina rose from her position and gestured to the other two. “Let’s move. There’s a subterranean access point a kilometer through the woods.”
“Just keep an eye out for patrols in here,” Roxy cautioned. “If I were running security, these trees would have eyes.”
“Creepy,” Fina muttered, but took the other woman’s meaning.
During the trek through the woods, the team spotted several surveillance drones—which were large, and capable of navigating through the inclement weather—and carefully skirted their patrol routes, reaching the subterranean access point fifteen minutes later.
Just as they reached the low arch that led into the ring substructure below the stretch of woods, the skies opened up and it began to rain.
“Close one,” Fina said as she gestured for Roxy to perform the breach while Jane kept an eye on the woods.
“You’d think the ISF’s stealth could handle rain,” Roxy said as she set a breach pad on the door’s console.
“It can…normally,” Fina replied. “And against any other enemy, I’d have no trouble trusting it to do so.”
Roxy didn’t respond, but her silence spoke volumes on her behalf.
A minute later, the door opened and the group slipped inside.
<OK,> Fina switched to the Link. <Weapons check and have your armor scrub any debris from the surface. We’re ghosts.>
<I’m clear,> Roxy said a moment later, followed by Jane’s pronouncement a few seconds later.
They checked over one another’s EM readings, and then deployed a light nanocloud around themselves to mask air movement.
Fina provided the route through the substructure passages that would lead them to the uplink tower. The corridor they were in did not lead directly to their target, so the team would have to take a circuitous, four-kilometer route before they were as close as they’d been while crouched beneath the oak tree twenty minutes prior.
After a kilometer’s travel, they came to a network node, and Fina tapped it directly, masquerading as a maintenance drone. Once on the network, she dropped a report for Sabrina in fragments across several low-security log aggregation systems.
Fina still anticipated completing their task in the uplink tower fast enough to reach their assigned CEPP in time, but if they met with further delays, they’d have to skip planting their explosives and go directly to the Airthan node they’d been assigned.
Only having bombs set up at five CEPPs would be enough, since the strike force’s plan was to bluff more than sabotage, anyway.
Worse come to worst, we can plant our charges here at the tower. Might make for an interesting distraction.
Ten minutes later, the trio reached a large chamber where several passages met. Almost directly across the ninety-meter-wide chamber was the entrance to the uplink tower.
Normally, it would have been protected by a pair of soldiers, with drones on perimeter patrols, but rather than live soldiers, only two automatons stood sentry.
Crap, those aren’t automatons—those are AI frames.
Fina reached out and touched Jane and Roxy, establishing a physical network to limit any EM that their stealth couldn’t mask.
<From what Kara told us, the AIs on the ring are fully under Airtha’s thrall. If we take those two, we’ll have to take them simultaneously so they can’t get any message out,> Fina said.
Roxy sent an affirmation. <Then we’ll need to hit them with a hefty breach dose.>
<What about freeing them?> Carmen asked. <They’re under Airtha’s thrall, but there’s no way they’d support her if liberated.>
<It’s too risky,> Fina said, wishing there was another answer. <There are plenty of AIs who are willingly on the wrong side, just like there are ascended AIs bent on killing us all.>
<OK,> Carmen replied. <I understand.>
Fina could tell that the AI wasn’t happy and hoped that she wouldn’t balk at any unsavory orders.
Stars, Finaeus, what did I do to deserve a team I can barely trust to follow orders?
Ironically, of all of them, she worried about Roxy the least. The half-woman, half-AI had lost much over the years. During the journey to Airtha, she’d confided in Fina that this mission was how she hoped to reclaim some part of her honor, at least in her own mind.
Collecting her thoughts, Fina gave the signal and led her team across the chamber to the sealed doors guarded by the AIs. A few drones flitted through the air, and an autonomous cargo hauler swept past at one point, forcing the group to dodge out of its way. Yet no alarms sounded, and the Airthan AIs gave no indication that they’d spotted anything.
A minute later, the team reached the doors, and Jane quickly deposited breach nano on both of the AIs, while Roxy and Fina drew shrouded weapons and trained them on the enemies.
Moment of truth, Fina thought, ready to send a special command that the AI council on Styx had given her, should Carmen fail to perform her duties.
It felt wrong to have the ability to shut down another sentient being, but for all intents and purposes, Carmen was on probation and under Fina’s command.
Had it been a human whose trustworthiness was in question, that person would have also faced dire consequences should they fail to perform their duties.
Sera better h
ave known what he was doing, suggesting they all came along.
Ten grueling seconds later, Carmen announced, <OK, they’re locked down. And…you were right. I really can’t tell if they’re under an aegis, or if they’re operating of their own free will.>
<OK, I’m on the door,> Roxy announced.
A minute later, the team stepped into the base of the uplink tower, sealing the door behind them as they moved forward.
<Target is the same,> Fina said. <Get to the main lift shaft, flush nano up, and climb. The node we have to tap is at the top of the tower.>
<Fun times,> Roxy said. <Good thing I don’t get tired.>
<Speak for yourself,> Jane said in mock weariness.
The uplink tower was used to provide high-bandwidth, line-of-sight communications to other towers around the ring. Given the twenty-five-million-kilometer circumference of Airtha, communications going around the structure could take several seconds longer than if they were broadcasted directly across empty space, beamed from tower to tower.
In addition to the comm web they provided, the towers also had direct connections to the military STCs and, through them, the jump interdiction grid.
With the grid down, Krissy’s fleets could jump to within half an AU of Airtha, bypassing the layers of defense that were built up around the star.
That was, once Fina’s team climbed to the top of the tower and breached the systems there.
<We’re behind,> Roxy said as they moved down the corridor. <And honestly, you two are going to be slow climbers. I can make it up the tower twice as fast on my own, plant the tap on the node, and be back down before you’d get five hundred meters.>
<It’s not like we’re stock,> Fina replied. <We can keep up.>
<Maybe you can,> Roxy told her privately. <But Jane can’t, and I don’t want to leave her alone.>
Fina resisted a groan. Roxy wasn’t entirely wrong, but she hated the idea of splitting the team. However, arguing about it would waste more time.
<OK, but we’re going to the lift shaft and waiting for you there.>
<Works for me…and, Fina?>
<What?> She grunted out the question.
A stealthed hand found her arm and gave a gentle squeeze.
<Thanks.>
ANOTHER WAY
STELLAR DATE: 10.24.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Airthan Ring
REGION: Huygens System, Transcend Interstellar Alliance
<OK, I’ve got a visual on seven AIs, a little over four hundred drones, and a nanocloud.>
Sabs sent the message back to the team as she retreated from her surveillance position, leaving behind her own nanocloud to observe the CEPP and its defenses.
<Wait, since when did Airtha get a nanocloud?> Misha asked, as Sabrina eased around the long conduit stack and saw the pings from her team indicating their presence, invisible in the overlapping EM fields coming off the stack.
<It’s just nano drifting in the air using brownian motion,> Erin explained. <Common enough in facilities like this, where they can control air currents to keep it where they want it.>
<Not common to have a cloud this dense, though,> Sabs said. <I’m not entirely sure how we’re going to get in there without being detected. This isn’t like breaching some sort Inner Stars facility in the backend of nowhere.>
No one offered any suggestions, and Sabs reviewed the feed from her own nanocloud again, scanning the ovoid, five-kilometer-wide chamber deep within the ring’s structure, looking for any inspiration.
The CEPP facility was a hundred-meter-wide sphere centered in the space, with lifts running up from the floor and encircled by gantries. If it hadn’t been for the enemy’s nanocloud, Sabs could have simply walked right up to the thing and planted their explosives on a few of the support struts without any trouble at all.
<This was supposed to be the easy part,> Usef muttered.
<Well, we can see the CEPP,> Misha said after a moment. <Do we have to go right up to it?>
<What’s brewing in that head of yours?> Usef asked.
<I just wonder if we can shoot something at it,> Misha explained.
<I might…> Erin began, then paused. <Yes! OK, I think I have an idea.>
Usef let out a soft grunt. <You think?>
<Stars, Usef, not now,> the engineer said, then directed a thought to Sabs and Misha. <Was he weird and surly on Sabrina too?>
<Yup.>
<Sure was.>
<I’m still right here. Enough stalling while you flesh out your idea, Erin. What is it?>
Sabs tried not to laugh as Erin sent the man a pair of glaring eyes over the Link, and then launched into her explanation.
<Well, I don’t know how efficacious it would be to ‘shoot’ something at the CEPP. However, we also don’t have to go there ourselves.> She paused, and a marker appeared on their HUDs noting two other locations on either side of the facility. <See these? This is where they pipe liquid nitrogen in to cool the energy interchange systems. CriEns on this scale generate a lot of heat from the transference of raw vacuum energy into usable electricity. They’re kinda forming electrons out of nothing, in a way—well, not ‘out of nothing’, but it would take a week or two to explain how the particles are reformed to make them. In short, like most big, powerful things, it gets hot.>
<They would have safeties, though,> Sabrina said. <If we cut the nitrogen supplies, I assume it would shut down and activate some sort of emergency cooling scenario.>
Usef sent a grating sound that Sabs realized was his way of clearing his throat over the Link. It sounded like boulders smashing their way through a glass factory.
<Our plan here is to make it seem like we’re going to blow the ring. Not to actually blow the ring.>
<It won’t blow the system,> Erin explained. <Or…it shouldn’t. The CEPP has hundreds of individual CriEn modules. From what Finaeus has explained, they work in a carefully modulated wave pattern so that they don’t draw too much energy from the foundations of spacetime. At any given point, only a fraction of them are in operation while the others are cooling. We’ll set up our sabotage to only blow ones that are not actively drawing power. That will limit their destructive force, but emergency shutdown and cooling will still take effect for the others, and all should be well.>
<Famous last words,> Misha muttered.
<I’ll pass the details on to me, so that I can share it with the other teams,> Sabs said.
<’I’ll pass it on to me?’ That’s not confusing at all,> Usef said with a soft laugh.
Erin joined in. <If there’s one thing I’ve learned on my short time aboard Sabrina, it’s that nothing is really as it seems…and yet that’s how you know everything is perfectly normal.>
<Stars,> the Marine muttered. <It’s like you’ve already been infected by them.>
<I’m not the one who installed glitter guns on the captain’s chair,> Erin shot back, sending along a wink over the Link.
<Oh…heard about that, did you?>
Sabs only half listened to the team’s banter as she logged into a series of sim games and created characters with specific backstories, hiding the intel within, along with a few jokes about her team for herself back on the ship to enjoy.
<OK, message is sent,> she said after a minute. <Should we get over to those nitrogen lines? I assume we’ll send in nano to effect the sabotage through the feed lines.>
<Let’s hold on just a few minutes longer,> Erin replied. <I’d like to see if Finaeus can confirm that this isn’t going to blow us all to subatomic particles if we do it wrong.>
<Oh…> Misha muttered. <You conveniently left that part out.>
<Well, its not like we’re playing with something nice and safe like a fusion reactor,> Erin replied. <These plants could rip spacetime to shreds if they go haywire.>
<So, what sort of minimum safe range are we talking about?> Usef asked. <You know, if th
ings go sideways.>
<Oh, I don’t know…> Erin’s voice trailed off. <If all six went up at once, probably a light year or so. That would be the non-instantaneously-lethal range. I think that beyond that, the cosmic rays would probably sterilize every star system for a hundred light years.>
<Great balls of star shit,> Misha muttered. <Yeah, I vote we wait for Finaeus’s confirmation.>
* * * * *
<So?> Seraphina asked Finaeus as he reviewed the message that had been relayed to them via Sabrina. <Will it work? Because if not, we need to split up and have a team hit the nodes while the other shoots their way in to bomb the CEPP.>
<I’m thinking it through. Carefully,> the engineer replied. <You pestering me won’t make it go any faster.>
<We’re on the clock, here,> Seraphina reminded her uncle. <If we need more time, we have to fall back to the secondary schedule for shard insertion.>
<Just. A. Minute,> Finaeus bit off each word.
<He can be a bit testy at times, can’t he,> Cheeky said privately to Seraphina and Nance. <Though this seems to have him worried more than normal.>
<Probably because if six of the CEPPs go up entirely, it’ll create something that will make a supernova look like a firecracker,> Nance replied. <It would probably outshine the entire galaxy by several orders of magnitude.>
<So…you’re saying we need to be careful,> Cheeky said with a laugh.
<I don’t think you’re taking this seriously enough,> Nance shot back.
<Nance, really. Sneaking right up to death’s door and ringing his bell and then running off is kinda our thing. We’ll figure it out and save the day. It’s what we do.>
<Just don’t die this time,> Nance’s voice was low and serious. <When we play ding and dash with death, not everyone gets away.>
Cheeky didn’t respond for a moment, and Seraphina was trying to think of something to say to break the silence, when Finaues spoke.
<Nice alliteration, Nance. And…yeah. I had to make an alteration to Erin’s proposal to ensure it was timed properly. What she had in mind was off juuuust a hair and would have probably killed us all.>