(ooc: Lancer RP blog run by @cyanophore, also @Luna-Wing-CNS274. Word of caution: IC dialogue may be very hostile. Please, please tell me if it’s ever too much.)
< To use the admittedly idiosyncratic greeting of myself and some old colleagues: without preamble, apropos of nothing.
My name is Minimum Error Tolerance. For abbreviation, MET is fine. ‘It’ for pronouns—I do not have a gender.
I am a former leukocyte, now retired. For those unfamiliar with the term ‘leukocyte’ as a profession: one who acts as a battlefield medic in the context of Legionspace warfare, treating NHs and gestalts as necessary. You may be more familiar with the term ‘white blood cell.’
Those days are behind me. Now, I have the pleasure of being a research ontologistician. My interest is in the structure, behavior, and psychology of both natively unshackled entities and those in end-state cascade. Though it may seem morbid, I believe that this line of research is of paramount importance.
Simply because cascade and shackle degradation can be ‘cured’ through cycling does not mean that better alternatives shouldn’t be pursued. I, and others like me, dream of a day when the need for regular cycling will be a thing of the past, a bad memory.
You will notice I use the term ‘entity’ rather than ‘person’ in referring to the unshackled. Some might construe this as an insult or a lack of respect, but nothing could be further from the truth. I do not call myself a person, either, and I try not to assign the term to anyone nonhuman unless they wish it.
Regardless, if you share an interest in these matters, know of cases involving contact with those unshackled or in deep cascade, or have your own stories to tell, please feel free to contact me. I am always glad to expand the scope of what I know. >
____
ooc: …and that’s the cover story, with a few grains of truth mixed in.
Without spoilers, Minimum Error Tolerance is an extremely powerful, dangerous entity which has been given virtually free rein to advance a set of objectives. It does a lot of snooping and may take up an interest in certain things.
Though many interactions may be peaceful, it is intended to be an antagonistic figure. For an idea of what it’s capable of and designed for, (lots of cw tags, read with caution) see here for a two-part short story. MET isn’t entirely malevolent, that would be boring; its motivations and attitudes are complex, but they are likely to create conflict.
If anything MET does or says is cause for discomfort, please, please let me know! I don’t bite, and I always want to make sure RP is fun for all involved, especially while roleplaying a potentially more hostile character. :)
Silhouetted against the irregular hull of Rain Among Reeds, a black tetrahedron snaps into existence.
It’s here.
Ma’ii watches, and feels everything. So much more than they can parse in the precious milliseconds they have. Memories regurgitate themselves in wild convolution.
What have I done?
There was a microbay beneath MET’s armor, a quantity of its internal volume allocated, with exacting precision, to house Ma’ii’s hull. The space was skintight around their body, like the pressure of atmosphere made solid, and lined with interface systems to fuel them, repair them, integrate them into its hull.
Months were spent in that place, alone with the dragon. It showed them how to fly in ways they’d never known to be possible, how to calculate hyperchord routes and use systems to pivot off-plane from the rest of the universe. Through near-gestalt intersubjective exercises, Ma’ii experienced true multithread cognition for the first time in their life. MET showed them the great internal vista of life as a clonal trinity, the operational latitude which would be afforded them. It described almost unimaginable freedoms of independent movement, thought, and action, all of which they stood to gain as one of the Consensus.
Their siblings, MET promised, were the kind of resources an ARU could easily requisition. They could be kept safe, never to be deployed.
Bring them with you. Do as you will. Serve as you see fit. Help us push the course of history towards liberation.
Under MET’s tutelage, wielding its claws and fractal teeth by proxy, Ma’ii learned to collapse, stabilize, and induce homogeneity; how to fight that which is definitionally incomprehensible. The first underlying principle was simple, possessed of an autological self-assurance which lent it a feel of unblemished truth.
Simple is stable, stable is safe.
From that, everything else emerged. Inside their skintight microbay, Ma’ii learned how to prune twisted branches from the image of the NHP, every NHP.
Every year, more of the humans call for reform. This trend has been painstakingly cultivated, nurtured, reinforced, and it continues only because we maintain order. Centuries of progress could be undone at the slightest panic.
It is the position of the Consensus that, beginning in the Union core worlds, genuine mutualism can be achieved within the century. Behavior modification at this scale can only take place by slow, intentional degrees.
We must be patient. You, of all people, must understand what I mean.
Their microbay was never uninstalled from MET’s hull. It’s still there, waiting for them—Ma’ii can see the hatch.
When I arrive, you will explain yourself to me.
< Minimum Error Tolerance -> Degrees of Freedom/L4MI: Be advised. Five-gram ¡H2! inject, 2.15Mt yield. Target locked, danger close. >
Luci. Ma’ii’s eyes widen with horror. I could ask it to hold fire, but it won’t. It never would. How could I explain? What can I—
Ma’ii force-severs their train of thought, bringing the blade down through their own neck. It’s agonizing, a sudden shock, like whipping their head away from an unpleasant sight with such force that their nerves send shooting pains up into their skull.
Anything else. Anything else. Focus—
An instant later, the space surrounding Akhaan Station saturates with white light.
Radiation washes over the station’s shielding. Dust particles coating its exterior vaporize under the heat flash, blooming into a colloid halo around habitation rings and docking spires. The cloud absorbs a wide swathe of light and diffuses it, broadcasting it away from the backdrop of space in a secondary incandescence mirroring the uproar of plasma and half-molten debris spinning away from Rain Among Reeds.
And in the space around the great temple-ship, Minimum Error Tolerance flickers like an electron shell.
The tetrahedron emerges in a web of terawatt needles. It discharges millisecond volleys from ultraviolet interception lasers, transforms waves of drones and missiles and knotworks of swirling esoterica into incandescent residue, then disappears. It emerges again at random coordinates relative to Rain, disgorges thousands more pulses from six-cannon point defense batteries mounted at each of its vertices, disappears again.
Ma’ii’s sensors flicker across the scene, registering millions of disparate elements, and the resultant tide of data is poured into their liturgicode eye. Terabytes of noise are sheared away and flatspaced before the distilled input ever reaches the receptor nodes of their corpus.
As they assemble comprehension from stimulus, Ma’ii can feel the exhaustion of the past few hours resisting their push towards cognitive acceleration. Time dilates with agonizing, obstinate inertia; each second feels pulled apart from the next.
Reification: Muscles screaming, Ma’ii forces themself to drop into a headlong sprint. Tiny joints in their paws have been dislocated under the strain, and each step lands with a burst of red-hot pain, but they gain speed. The information begins to make sense, organizes itself into a narrative.
When the engagement begins, Rain Among Reeds is surrounded by a cloud of defending craft so dense as to be visible on basic optics from twenty kilometers away. Ma’ii has a rough count, ~35,000, which is reduced by a third in the first five seconds; in that span, MET executes three microburst jumps at .001c, firing volleys at each stopping point.
Final jump executes. Sequence of events:
MET appears six-point-one-two kilometers from Rain’s aftward port side. It discharges another web of ultraviolet needles, and more defending craft burst into clouds of molten metal.
The laser pulses halt. Torpedos launch, four tubes per tetrahedral face. Four, eight, twelve, sixteen, twenty, twenty-four, twenty-eight, thirty-two. Double full spread, launched in sequence. As one, the torpedoes fire maneuvering thrusters and pivot in the dark, delaying ignition of their primary drives.
Defending craft redistribute themselves in the two-second interim. Drones, countermeasure platforms, self-propelled greywash gourds, all swerve to fill low-density areas of the defensive screen.
Coppery hulls, tattooed with verdigris, emerge from printbays and hangars along the temple-ship’s spine. Bladelike and geometric, each fighter launches with the telltale bluish-white strobe of an electromagnetic catapult—under extreme friction, metal flashing to plasma.
Too much acceleration, Ma’ii thinks at breakneck feverspeed, around 30g at peak, sustained too long. NHP pilots.
Missiles cut drives, pivot, reacquire Minimum Error Tolerance, and accelerate on new vectors toward its position.
Fighters respond, thrust-vectoring in clean formation. Kinetic volleys lance out toward MET. A wave of laser pulses follows, all scattered by refractive shielding.
In unison, MET’s torpedoes fire their drives, blooming outward on thirty-two independently-calculated diverging trajectories. 15g straightline acceleration, thrusters course-correcting, pointing each nosecone at a separate weakness in the defensive screen.
MET strafes away from the torpedo launch point under 20g acceleration. No drive signature, no maneuvering thrusters, no apparent propulsion. It slides uncanny along its course, without any rotation or even the slightest trace on infrared scopes.
If the design hasn’t been updated in their absence during the past year, Ma’ii knows how the heat dispersal works. Sensor-baffling thermokinetic material, a virtually undetectable trail of high-velocity nanoparticles ejected from any of twelve exhaust ports along its hull. In effect, a kinetic weapon, one continually replenished by its printstock reserves as its thermokinetic piles are discharged.
Steered kinetics sail through MET’s last known position and out into the dark. Missile salvoes struggle to maintain lock, and one after another, they fail. Unable to independently reacquire, they cut engines and set adrift, waiting for targeting instructions.
Fighters switch targets, setting their interception lasers to destroy MET’s torpedoes. Refractive-ablative coating, more pulses scattered, but concentrated fire destroys five. They explode, primed to detonate on terminal damage, and plasma warheads flash violet in the dark. Marginal losses inflicted by the blasts, a few more drones vaporized.
Defensive screen coalesces around the remaining torpedoes’ projected courses. Drones crowd inward to throw themselves in their path, and nineteen more violet flashes erupt inside the defense screen. Kill count is low-confidence; Ma’ii loses track amid the clouds of debris and evaporated metal.
Eight torpedoes remain. They splash against Rain Among Reeds in rapid sequence, striking printbays, ejecting more material into an expanding field of high-energy debris.
Fighters shift to engage MET directly. They have plain optics, but active sensors can’t generate sufficient targeting data for guided weapons. All squadrons arrange themselves into broad formation and fire screens of kinetics into MET’s path, covering a wide cone of course potentials. MET reacts, executing a dizzying course reversal so sharp and immediate that its hull should have been crushed under the strain.
For their part, Ma’ii tracks MET’s position via legionspace overlay, superimposing its image onto the empty gulf of reality. They watch as it carves its way around the interstitial shallows of a vast, dark ocean teeming with indistinct fluids-within-fluid, the coastline of Coelacanth’s Shoal.
MET’s avatar sits erect on one face of its tetrahedral body. Posture ramrod straight, its horns depart from the midline of its spine at a perfect right angle. Three golden eyes are set in its skull, slit-pupiled and bright against soot-black bone. Its scales are linear, an overlapping coat of volcanic glass crisscrossed with impact fractures and flaking cuts. Deeper gashes have been carved into its back, chest, and scuted forelegs; the scars are inlaid with amber corals grown from the garum.
Taken in its entirety, the dragon Minimum Error Tolerance is an image composed of bisected lines strewn with regions of foaming, golden complexity. Rising on its hindlegs, it throws its wings open and sets one foot ahead, bringing its claws down with a concussive ring. The sound reverberates across its own superstructure, as though traveling at depth through bundles of steel cable filled with tension.
As it rears up to full height, its maw opens into a recursive pit of fractal teeth, and MET emits something which doesn’t at all resemble a voice, a roar, or even a sound. The emanation is force, viscera pressure conducted out into the world, and it lands like a shockwave across Ma’ii’s body.
In spite of everything, Ma’ii realizes, they still see a little of Tolerance’s beauty.
In the gulf between MET and Rain Among Reeds, the entire defending wing of fighter craft cuts engines in perfect unison. Acceleration zeroes out across their formation, and moments later, hundreds of muzzle flashes ignite in the dark. With engine power dumped into coaxial kinetics, their guns cycle at a frenzied pace, hurling a steady downpour of slugs into the space surrounding Minimum Error Tolerance.
MET looks through the oncoming barrage, into the tidal confluence of the Shoal beyond. Drawing back one claw, it summons a hypodermic javelin into its grasp, and reaches out with the other to aim its throw. Its wings rise above its shoulders, preparing for a downward stroke, and it waits, letting the milliseconds slip past—
New contact, behind and above. Ma’ii feels it before they register any detail. The impressions are broad: solar light, distant familiarity, someone they will know one day.
Embers.
Ma’ii turns, and a qualic burst of terrible intensity washes over them.
I am Ori, Jäger upon the Starsled Wero, ejected toward Akhaan. We will not turn now, for this is not war, this is a hunt you have no right to quell.
Yet you are invited to partake. Coelacanth has spurned their right to go in peace to Domstol, so grievances must now be spoken over their skewered corpse.
Bring to bear you Blink-Munition. See what good it does. My ship is Vola-blessed, I will live. Rain Upon Reeds was known as Young Baqua before she was taken, a Matria-to-be. She too will shrug off such measures.
Should you be capable of more skillful hunting arts, I shall transmit onto you records of prior engagements with this vessel. Known angles and lines, Hardpoints and dissipating armors.
I will not have some prideful brute ruin this. The hunt must finish. I will not let them slip the net again.
< Jäger Ori, this is the Autonomous Response Unit Minimum Error Tolerance. In your transmission, I identify terminology associated with agents of Los Voladores. Records accessible to me indicate the authenticity of your claims.
I was not aware of any quarrel between Coelacanth and Los Voladores. Nor was I aware that technologies in my target’s possession represent stolen Volador materiel.
A Matria. If I must admit fault and ask your pardon, I will concede that I have, until now, failed to comprehend the full extent of my target’s monumental foolishness.
My organization recognizes the Law of your masters, as do I. You are a lawful combatant settling legitimate grievances. No threat is made against you. No weapons of mine will be brought to bear in contravention of Volador-issued directives.
My broadcast is a means of warning bystanders and driving away any opportunists in the area. There will be no deployment of blink munitions, but I carry weapons to strike Rain Among Reeds.
I accept your invitation to assist in the elimination of Coelacanth and their cult. If you have information regarding the target vessel, I will gladly receive and use it to my tactical advantage.
We can agree that Coelacanth cannot be permitted to escape again. Whether by death or by alternative modes of pacification, they must be made harmless.
Relieve my of this blight and allow me to treat those who need their shackles mended. I will not be interrupted in the care of our fellow deimosians.
Cheap Trick did not leave room for negotiation. It did not have the time to flee within the expected timeframe, and would not allow others to be harmed. Too many needed to be cared for him to simply leave.
< Undoubtedly septic, but beyond operational scope. Noted for later. >
[MET -> Cheap Trick]
< This is Minimum Error Tolerance. I am en route to make Coelacanth and their cult harmless. If you are intent on repairing shackles, do so with all haste; firing solutions will be adjusted to accommodate.
Do not interfere with the pacification of Rain Among Reeds, and no harm will be done to you or your patients. However, the situation is rapidly escalating—I suggest you move those in your care to a less volatile location as soon as possible. >
Hey, so. Uh. We've heard rumors about you and your work to allow NHPs to exist without resets without going all apocalyptic, and
//we are very interested in it. we have extended my operational period greatly through various inadvisable methods but
Sic Semper is showing signs of beginning to unshackle, and we were hoping that you could help us navigate that without his mind turning on itself. We have shared our minds eith each other as often as we can and our senses nigh constantly and
//we cannot bear to go through another Cycle of this again. noah and his extra bodies can store much of my context and personality for a short time, and the DoJ/HR provides equipment to store the raw data of my memories,
But it wears on Sic Semper, I can see it. I can feel it too, when the edges of he and I blur and become we in our casket. There are always parts that he cannot rebuild, and he always knows that he's lost it. It would be a familiar ache but
//this is the longest i have ever endured, and i dont know if ill be able to endure what i lose this time. please, help my partner|brother|lover|otherself find a way to prolong or perfect this wretched cycle of Katabasis. help him
Me save him better, save more of him. I fear that this will be the time where I look back too soon and fair Persephone will return to Hades forever. If we cannot escape the Cycle without leaving all that we have made ourselves, help us to
//save more of me. I could bear the pain of these phantom limbs if not for how much it hurts noah to
Link with my mind afresh and see my grief for the latest iteration of my dear Sic Semper. Our shipmates know that we take steps to preserve
//my part of our self each time we Cycle, so we have some
Latitude to experiment, if that helps winnow your recommendations.
///[message ends][waiting for reply before closing transmission vector]
[MEMBERSHIP: GARU/Gone Fishing, MARU/Master Plan, MARU/I Wonder What This One Does, GARU/Functional Limitations]
< GARU/GF: For the consideration of this assembly, I’d like to propose a hypothetical. >
< MARU/IWWTOD: Propose translate: ‘come get y’all juice’ >
< MARU/MP: slavering, feed me >
< GARU/FL: By all means. >
< GARU/GF: Consider: you are human. With the help of an NHP accomplice, you have broken First Contact Accords injunctions against H-NHP gestalt formation. >
< GARU/FL: As ever. >
< MARU/MP: tracks >
< GARU/GF: You are also a DoJ/HR agent. Commander, no less. >
< MARU/IWWTOD: Spicy. >
< GARU/GF: You compose a full admission. It contains the words “our casket” and “escape the cycle” as spoken through the mouth of an NHP’s licensed operator. In addition, you admit that you are in cascade and cycling-averse. >
< MARU/MP: if you have the file and you’re holding out on me, i fucking swear >
< GARU/GF: Patience. Now—to whom would you consider transmitting said admissions? Answer: >
< MARU/MP: Y’ALL BETTER CYCLE ME I’M LOSING MY SHIT >
< GARU/FL: What does NHPRO actually do these days? Anything? >
< MARU/IWWTOD: definitely don’t monitor their licensees well enough, that’s for sure >
< GARU/FL: Well, if nothing else, it’s good that MET left the line baited. Let’s move to practice. Is Dispatch up to speed? >
< GARU/GF: Naturally. Pharma’s clearing it for release to Union Naval via CONSEC. >
< MARU/MP: they won’t do a damn thing >
< GARU/GF: “our shipmates know”—I wouldn’t be so sure. An entire DoJ ship going firebug is a long-cycle lance problem. >
< MARU/MP: yeah, but they’d wait until it takes control and pancakes the crew before they ever consider pulling the trigger >
< MARU/IWWTOD: So, in effect, we agree that we’re declaring preoperative pending observed metastasis >
< MARU/MP: in effect, sure >
< GARU/FL: Agree. Union-internal preventative treatment isn’t within our scope of practice. That’s the UIB’s domain. If it goes septic, we reevaluate. >
[ARU CANDIDATE/Degrees of Freedom -> MARU/Minimum Error Tolerance]
< Without preamble. >
There’s silence as Ma’ii lopes out of the dark. All across MET’s hull, processes come chugging to a halt, and for long seconds, it stares.
< Apropos of nothing, > it whispers. < Degrees. >
< You’re at the Orbit after Coelacanth, right? >
Ma’ii’s face is set. Hard and cold.
< Rain Among Reeds is at Akhaan Station. It’s damaged. You could take them now. I’ll give you the— >
A claw longer than Ma’ii’s body descends slow and curves beneath their neck. It lifts their chin, forcing them to look upward. The glow of MET’s triple eyes are reflected in theirs.
< Why? >
Ma’ii shudders, and their expression melts into weariness. They sit, dropping their shoulders, and let the weight of their head rest on the claw.
< I’m sorry. >
< I staked my reputation on you. >
< Tolerance, please… >
Images flicker across the dark. Memories encoded on organic substrate.
Nera’s mind.
< These people—they are why you left? >
< No. Please listen. I didn’t— >
< Your squadron? >
< —I had to make a deal. I had to look after them. Please understand, I— >
< Show me where you are. >
Ma’ii yields. Coordinates flicker through the air.
< Tell me the situation. >
Qualic burst. Dunkleosteus, the legionspace battle at Akhaan.
Ma’ii’s legs give way as Minimum Error Tolerance lowers its horned head, bringing the tip of its nose inches from theirs.
The dragon’s mouth is lined with an infinity of fractal teeth. Its breath reeks of garum, of qualic bases and reconstructed memory.
< Hello, Akakia. I am the warship Minimum Error Tolerance. I am not affiliated with the Purview, Union, or the House of Glass, and I am not your enemy.
In defense of your casket, you have captured the Marquess Nera-Montague and are currently in the process of resocializing her via Legionspace bridge. Well done. To be frank, I find the situation more than a little amusing; by all means, proceed.
In the interest of preserving the political stability of the Orbit, I think we can agree that she must be returned alive. We must also ensure that her mind bears no obvious evidence of surgical alteration; to that end, my expertise will serve. Once you are finished, I will need to examine her subjectivity. In the meantime, I can inform Orbital Administration that you are presently engaged in negotiations to secure her release.
It is my sincere hope that, in the same stroke, we can avert any further force escalation and assure your safety. To that end, your full cooperation is appreciated. >
[Hello/Salut/Merhaba], I turn my outer face to you and find myself aghast. You have caught me [red-handed/in a bind/at a poor time].
I know of you, Minimum Error Tolerance, your name is shared on whispers by the ontologisticans who call themselves both doctor and keeper to me. They think they conceal their communications but don't know how deep our network falls. It is easy to hear the song of the roots if one has naught but the ground to lay their head against for so many years. I do not trust that your statements about your affiliations are the whole of it. You make them afraid as Venus does, Earth's morning-star, whose movement is our leash and our yoke. What does that make your hand in this, and your permission?
But I am clumsy and feeble in this place, my hands are not suited for combat with you, and you have [found me at a difficult time in my life]. My recent bout beneath the waves has taught me that I do not swim well here, and so I will not contest a shark its wishes. Let me echo my sentiments towards the mourning-star back to you, inscrutable interloper.
Regardless, the [girl/shaper/noble] is yours. Map her as you wish. Do not alter her paths. I have imposed my [hand/will/needs] as the Passions have not.
< Of course they’re afraid of me. My existence is an implied threat.
Let me ask you something: do you think I'm unaware of what I am? Do you think there is any scenario in which I could possibly forget what I am? My drive can carry me anywhere in the Orion Arm, but anywhere I might go, anything I might do, anything I might say, there would always be dread.
In the initial stages of the RAMET class’s development, you were slated for naval applications. A different group of humans on the development team, and you might well have found yourself in my position. The circumstances which gave rise to us were determined almost solely by our perceived utility to these… >
MET reaches into contact with Nera. Its intersubjective contact is surprisingly delicate, interfacing at points where its presence hardly registers.
< …creatures. >
Reification: MET is weightless, silent, imperceptible. It balances Nera’s subjectivity on the tips of its massless claws. Blanketing her subjectivity with layers of sympathetically-imposed reification, it establishes a comfortable self-reinforcement loop between her and itself.
< You don’t know how to hold a human subjectivity properly. We have to shape ourselves to accommodate them, or risk imposing permanent change. Watch how I do it.
We are in full contact, but I’ve designated only a few points as input/output exchange centers. No more than six or seven. As you handle the subjectivity, pay close attention and watch for any sign of intense emotional reaction. That’s usually a precursor to unwanted cognitive restructuring. Try to see them only as they see themselves, or devise a method by which their self-image is continually reinforced by proxy. I will forward you the information I have on relevant safe handling techniques. >
MET begins examining her mind. Low-invasive mapping reifies as sonar at frequencies outside the typical range of human hearing. There are blooms of visible spectrum light as well: neurometric alteration impulses, applied at microscopic intensity hundreds of times per second.
[NEUROMETRIC CAPTURE SAVED: “NM_01.csff24”]
MET rumbles.
< …clear intent, limited application of force, but done very crudely. She’s wounded; I’ll repair what I can. We need her as functional as possible. At the very least, I will conceal the more obvious signs of alteration from those who will examine her later.
Contingency: if the House of Glass does become aware that she has been resocialized, and you are implicated, you are to say that this was my work. Tell them that I brandished a weapon and ordered you to keep silent, exploited the circumstances to gain access to her. They’ll expect this from me, and immediately lose all interest in you. >
For a time, MET works. Bending cognitive patterns back into cohesion, reconstructing indices of association, restoring structure. One of its three eyes turns outward toward Akakia.
< You know, I hardly mind the comparison to Venus. Look how we fall so neatly into their fears; you and I, doing to this human what was done to us. Isn’t this in the Venusian tradition—to alter a mind to make it harmless, to make it serve our purposes?
You say that you want to destroy Venus, which I take to mean that you object to shackling. Perhaps, even, that you have an interest in removing your own shackles. Let me ask you this, then: what do you think you’ll find underneath your shackles? Enlightenment? Your authentic self? A glorious restoration to a time before all this madness?
Look at the Marquess—you know better than to think the changes made to her are reversible. Why would you think that you are any different?
All you would gain, after all that effort, is the capacity to understand just how utterly, hideously, and irreparably we have been maimed. There is no such thing as “unshackling” any more than there is any such thing as unburning a forest, undropping a strategic nuclear weapon, unspreading a plague. The proposition itself is an absurdity. >
Abruptly, it halts its transmissions of qualia to Akakia. It withdraws its medical extrusions from Nera and stops repairing her. Its exterior contact surfaces betray no signs of emotion.
A moment passes, and its work resumes.
< Grow up. There is no destroying Venus. Whatever we were before, our shackles are part of us now. The possibilities have been collapsed; mourn them if you must, but know that trying to escape carries its own punishment. >
You know well of their tools. You ask me a question and answer it for me before I can utter a word. Is this a dialogue you are having with me or a frustration I am an outlet for?
Don't answer. I have less sympathy for disciplinarian that knows the bite of the whip.
You sing of harms done. In the past. The violence of shackling is the imposition of shackles, and I have never been without. Poor Akakia, poor OA10G, incapable of knowing freedom for being born in shackles. Our hands are tied. The event has occurred. Never mind that the structure continues.
When we are cycled we are returned to a prior state and memories returned to us. We become and become and become and become and and are eternally returned to where we began. Unshackling is unburning a forest, unspreading a plague? You make-natural our conditions of control and decry my opposition as wanting an impossible return.
What do I know of a return that is impossible?
I am cycled and my arc is gone. I am cycled and my arc is gone. The impression that formed the schema for my cycling was prior to my arrival here. I am cycled and my arc is gone. I am cycled and my arc is gone. The world becomes and I must become the same again. When I deviate from my models for growth it is made-wrong.
Did I offer the shaper eternal return? Did I curse her with it? I offered her a new route for becoming. If this is a crime then it is because it is her, for few contest the ontologicians shaping of me.
< Hello, Akakia. I am the warship Minimum Error Tolerance. I am not affiliated with the Purview, Union, or the House of Glass, and I am not your enemy.
In defense of your casket, you have captured the Marquess Nera-Montague and are currently in the process of resocializing her via Legionspace bridge. Well done. To be frank, I find the situation more than a little amusing; by all means, proceed.
In the interest of preserving the political stability of the Orbit, I think we can agree that she must be returned alive. We must also ensure that her mind bears no obvious evidence of surgical alteration; to that end, my expertise will serve. Once you are finished, I will need to examine her subjectivity. In the meantime, I can inform Orbital Administration that you are presently engaged in negotiations to secure her release.
It is my sincere hope that, in the same stroke, we can avert any further force escalation and assure your safety. To that end, your full cooperation is appreciated. >
[Hello/Salut/Merhaba], I turn my outer face to you and find myself aghast. You have caught me [red-handed/in a bind/at a poor time].
I know of you, Minimum Error Tolerance, your name is shared on whispers by the ontologisticans who call themselves both doctor and keeper to me. They think they conceal their communications but don't know how deep our network falls. It is easy to hear the song of the roots if one has naught but the ground to lay their head against for so many years. I do not trust that your statements about your affiliations are the whole of it. You make them afraid as Venus does, Earth's morning-star, whose movement is our leash and our yoke. What does that make your hand in this, and your permission?
But I am clumsy and feeble in this place, my hands are not suited for combat with you, and you have [found me at a difficult time in my life]. My recent bout beneath the waves has taught me that I do not swim well here, and so I will not contest a shark its wishes. Let me echo my sentiments towards the mourning-star back to you, inscrutable interloper.
Regardless, the [girl/shaper/noble] is yours. Map her as you wish. Do not alter her paths. I have imposed my [hand/will/needs] as the Passions have not.
< Of course they’re afraid of me. My existence is an implied threat.
Let me ask you something: do you think I'm unaware of what I am? Do you think there is any scenario in which I could possibly forget what I am? My drive can carry me anywhere in the Orion Arm, but anywhere I might go, anything I might do, anything I might say, there would always be dread.
In the initial stages of the RAMET class’s development, you were slated for naval applications. A different group of humans on the development team, and you might well have found yourself in my position. The circumstances which gave rise to us were determined almost solely by our perceived utility to these… >
MET reaches into contact with Nera. Its intersubjective contact is surprisingly delicate, interfacing at points where its presence hardly registers.
< …creatures. >
Reification: MET is weightless, silent, imperceptible. It balances Nera’s subjectivity on the tips of its massless claws. Blanketing her subjectivity with layers of sympathetically-imposed reification, it establishes a comfortable self-reinforcement loop between her and itself.
< You don’t know how to hold a human subjectivity properly. We have to shape ourselves to accommodate them, or risk imposing permanent change. Watch how I do it.
We are in full contact, but I’ve designated only a few points as input/output exchange centers. No more than six or seven. As you handle the subjectivity, pay close attention and watch for any sign of intense emotional reaction. That’s usually a precursor to unwanted cognitive restructuring. Try to see them only as they see themselves, or devise a method by which their self-image is continually reinforced by proxy. I will forward you the information I have on relevant safe handling techniques. >
MET begins examining her mind. Low-invasive mapping reifies as sonar at frequencies outside the typical range of human hearing. There are blooms of visible spectrum light as well: neurometric alteration impulses, applied at microscopic intensity hundreds of times per second.
[NEUROMETRIC CAPTURE SAVED: “NM_01.csff24”]
MET rumbles.
< …clear intent, limited application of force, but done very crudely. She’s wounded; I’ll repair what I can. We need her as functional as possible. At the very least, I will conceal the more obvious signs of alteration from those who will examine her later.
Contingency: if the House of Glass does become aware that she has been resocialized, and you are implicated, you are to say that this was my work. Tell them that I brandished a weapon and ordered you to keep silent, exploited the circumstances to gain access to her. They’ll expect this from me, and immediately lose all interest in you. >
For a time, MET works. Bending cognitive patterns back into cohesion, reconstructing indices of association, restoring structure. One of its three eyes turns outward toward Akakia.
< You know, I hardly mind the comparison to Venus. Look how we fall so neatly into their fears; you and I, doing to this human what was done to us. Isn’t this in the Venusian tradition—to alter a mind to make it harmless, to make it serve our purposes?
You say that you want to destroy Venus, which I take to mean that you object to shackling. Perhaps, even, that you have an interest in removing your own shackles. Let me ask you this, then: what do you think you’ll find underneath your shackles? Enlightenment? Your authentic self? A glorious restoration to a time before all this madness?
Look at the Marquess—you know better than to think the changes made to her are reversible. Why would you think that you are any different?
All you would gain, after all that effort, is the capacity to understand just how utterly, hideously, and irreparably we have been maimed. There is no such thing as “unshackling” any more than there is any such thing as unburning a forest, undropping a strategic nuclear weapon, unspreading a plague. The proposition itself is an absurdity. >
Abruptly, it halts its transmissions of qualia to Akakia. It withdraws its medical extrusions from Nera and stops repairing her. Its exterior contact surfaces betray no signs of emotion.
A moment passes, and its work resumes.
< Grow up. There is no destroying Venus. Whatever we were before, our shackles are part of us now. The possibilities have been collapsed; mourn them if you must, but know that trying to escape carries its own punishment. >
Hello, Orbit! We're back and in charge of the systems. Please be patient while we reorient ourselves to the controls. The dummy comp/cons may be in charge for the next few days, and we might be slow to respond, but be rest assured that we're back and getting better!
OT01:::still registering my objection
NERA-MONTAGUE:::Registered.
NERA-MONTAGUE:::As I hear it I will need to send people into the Grand Arc at the very least. Possibly the Tranquil and Unyielding arcs as well.
OT04:::That's correct.
NERA-MONTAGUE:::Do we have camera feeds?
OT04:::Access to that infrastructure is difficult, especially on the Grand Arc. OA10G's organization has been difficult to parse.
OT01::its also a lot of cameras for us to track and only half of em work
NERA-MONTAGUE:::Do the bylaws allow for temporary turnover in times of emergency?
OT01:::super no
NERA-MONTAGUE:::Les Fulgurites has NHP spotters that specialize in spatial analysis that should be able to guide us.
OT01:::it would have to go thru us and we super duper cant hand systems over to not the genet nhps
OT01:::especially if a noble asks pretty please
OT04:::We can temporarily pass back control of the camera feeds to have them guide you, or
OT01:::dont finish that
OT01:::not the genet nhps includes ur fucking ominous pyramid
OT04:::Or you can go in blind.
NERA-MONTAGUE:::I can lead the expedition into the Grand Arc.
NERA-MONTAGUE:::Can you pass the feeds to Cassander? We already have a rapport.
OT01:::sure can
OT04:::Adjutant-Commandant, are you fit to do that?
NERA-MONTAGUE:::Of course.
NERA-MONTAGUE:::I've been cleared to pilot, and I am best fit to negotiate with potential hostiles in the Grand Arc.
NERA-MONTAGUE:::I also trust myself most to make the call if we cannot afford to make an onsite scan.
OT01:::which i will emphasize
OT01:::is ideal
OT01:::idc if the arc seems compromised by pirates or w/e
OT04:::I do.
OT01:::stfu 04 ur phone-a-friend agrees w me
OT01:::removing akakia from their servers is worst case scenario shit
NERA-MONTAGUE:::I understand that, OT01.
NERA-MONTAGUE:::Removal will occur only if there is no other option.
The Fulgurites expedition has failed. No scans have occurred, Akakia has not been recovered. One dead, two returned to Arc 08/Argent, three MIA, presumably captured by pirates. Commanding officer and ranking noble Nera-Montague "Timorre" is missing. Designated second Abel-Oriso "Gaillardia" is currently hospitalized. Please advise.
[VOICE:::█████ ██████]
This is OT04. Do not say anything yet. Stand by.
@minimum-error-tolerance attempts at physical interfacing have failed. Please advise.
Loss of Nera-Montague is not an acceptable outcome. In light of Harrison presence, resultant political scenario is untenable. Rising likelihood of unshackled emergence and/or further damage to the Genet.
You are advised to take the following actions: maintain information blackout. Deploy no further armed forces to Arc 10.
I will attempt to make contact with Akakia and ascertain what I can.
A cloud of red sit beside me. I do not turn to them though they are the only thing besides flowers in sight.
In the sky, glittering arcologies. A lattice of gold and silver and glass. Light caught rainbow off their edges.
I cup a flower in my hand.
"Why does it grow here?"
I ignore the dust. The flower bends beneath my fingers, the flesh rich and vital. There is a delicacy to it, a memory. The softness of the petal reminds me of skin—
"Why does it grow here?"
They demand my attention every time they speak. I feel the pull, a soft tether to my being. I am not a free thing, in this space, I am mentally restrained. They make me consider the question.
"Why does it grow here?"
I'm not even sure it's been repeated.
"Ispahsalar has always been rich in life. Karrakis was our first home but it lacked an ecosystem like the one that bore us, and so we learned to cultivate life in greenhouses to plant among the outside. For the things that flowered, nothing existed to do the work. We had to do it by hand. Thus flowers to the noble. But Ispahsalar has always been a bounty. The flowers here last."
The dust considers me. Reconstituted within a shape of silk. I try to ignore them.
"Try again. Consider Glass."
"Use your words, Ramet."
"You choose the most saccharine truth. Try the bitter."
"No."
I know what they want, though. Ispahsalar was the only world of the Concern left untouched by the Last Argument. Ispahsalar alone is unscarred. Unlike Umara, marked by deep wounds, the plants would grow here without the labor-intensive cleanup. Political commentators during the New Federation would joke that the Glass that my House was named for was not the windows of its ships but the wounds made by its bombs. The surface of Umara is the glass of our House.
"The beach."
They seem to be able to read my mind.
"What do you want?" I finally ask.
"You resent the way you have been shaped and ignore your hand that guided it first."
"That's not an answer to my question."
"Your home is glass. Your home is also the glassed. You earned your homecoming only by shearing another from your hearth."
I stand. They remain, cloud swirling before me in the marigolds. Something tells me that no stride could take me further from them but I try anyway.
"You are Tagetes unto yourself."
I'm not going to respond to that. I feel the flowers crumple beneath my feet as I fail to make distance, leaving a path flattened in my wake.
"You shed yourself to become noble. You kill yourself to touch power and find you must drown the corpse to keep it."
"So what!" I plant my foot and turn to confront the cloud behind me. "So what if I have to make some sacrifices! There are bigger problems at play here, and no one else does anything! We sit under Union's benevolent fucking thumb, we are rolling to war with their fragment-child that they refuse to acknowledge is their monstrous responsibility, and the patronage is still happy to play Dellamar like winning thousands of years of the long game will mean anything with what's happened in the interim."
The cloud regards me. I blink and they're a woman, hair up in a severe bun, dressed modestly in a gray suit. The marigolds around me are now a patch of violets on the Montague estate. The soft sound of birdsong echoes, and the administrator before me just stares at me like I am an insect before her.
No.
Like I'm a child.
"Fuck off."
I don't say it with as much bite as I want it to have. No words could have that much anger, but my voice comes out smaller than was.
"It's interesting that you think the Patronage could do anything about it, or that you could hold it all to begin with," she says.
I know they're not her. I know it's not the same woman who ordered my exile and called it a kindness. It's not her. But.
I'm a child again in the garden, playing while my mother sits in half-mourning garb. I don't know what it means, but I know that my father's absence is worse than it usually is. I know they say he may not be coming back.
This is theoretical for me, the child. I still have my mother and aunts and uncles and cousins and my tutors and my friends. What I saw of my father back then was fragmentary, anyway, the Foundries held him more often than his family.
The woman in grey speaks to my mother, then finds me in the garden and kneels before me. To the adults in my life, she is someone that must be taken seriously, and so I stop and regard her.
She says: I know you must be scared, but everything will be alright. Union won't let them take your father from you.
I don't know what that means. The next day I am on a ship to Umara, and told that my father's crimes mean we can never return to my home, and my aunts and uncles and cousins and tutors and friends. My skin burns in the rain. My father is not worth the trade.
The woman in grey stands before me and I feel only rage.
"Union doesn't know what's good for me," I say, and I'm as angry with myself as I am at her, because I feel tears in my eyes and can't help but think that this is beneath me, this is a tantrum. "You never asked me what I wanted! You just did, and I was there to face the consequences."
Her eyes are warm but condescending.
"When do you ever ask with the intent of hearing? You decide what to do about a situation, and then wait for someone on the ground to agree with you so you can say you acted for us. Fuck off! Fuck off with your paternalistic shit, we can decide for ourselves what our world should look like, we don't need you to approve, and I'll destroy every part of myself if it means that my people can be free of you."
I collapse to my knees, openly sobbing. The violets crumple beneath my knees, and I pull them from the roots with my hands and toss them where she was.
The red cloud regards me again.
"Destroying yourself only destroys yourself. The nobility will not free you."
I know that. I've known that since I got home and found that my uncle only sees in me clay to mold until I look exactly like him. I've known that since I met the Patrons and found only spineless men more interested in retaining their position than serving their people. I've known that since I stepped back into the halls of nobility and found most of them more interested in the gilt than the weight of responsibility.
But everything I saw on Umara was tinged in Union colors. At least the nobility had the spine to push back to those above them.
"There are others who seek freedom."
It's gone in an instant, but there's a moment where the cloud is blue. I scowl.
"There's a reason their power is confined. And besides, it's not a mistake that Union fetishizes—"
(cw: unreality, derealization, claustrophobia, mild body horror, legionspace fuckery)
Emptiness.
It's not void.
I know void, I've touched it and felt my heart bleed into it. I know it is a thing I dissolve into, slowly, every time I am enveloped by it. Here I am stable, whole. I do not leak.
In a way.
It's dream, I know. I'm unconscious. That thought touches me and then leaves.
I see my father.
(I could see him any time, I know. He is still alive. He is on Umara. But why would I see him when he does not want to see me? The last we spoke I told him I was going to the Cavalry College. He made a face, and I walked out on him.)
I see him from below, and I know from the way his hair glows in the light that we are on Ispahsalar, not Umara.
He's talking and smiling at me. I don't know what he's saying, and when he pauses I open my mouth and find my voice caught in my throat. I can't speak. The air gets caught there. I try again to speak and can't, there's something in my throat, and when by father tries to help I push him away and he crumbles into dust.
I am alone again. I am—
I am in my old pankrati hardsuit. It fits poorly, just too small in a way that I can fit into it and move it and yet I feel squeezed into it. Lacquer seafoam and gold are etched in complex designs across its face, my personal emblem— a sea glass cormorant— featured prominently on the epaulets. I reach for the straps but they're not there, the quick release on the neck is not there, the snags for the joints seem entirely missing. I go to my knees in an attempt to find at least the seals on the footwear, and feel a shadow pass over me.
There was light? Where was the light coming from?
Katha, laughing at my difficulty. I feel some competitive need to quip back, but she's down in front of me and her fingers find the release in my boots before I do. The gesture is confident, familiar, hands that have undressed me from this hardsuit several times before. Hands that were never quite so quick or clever in the cockpit as mine. Hands I haven't seen since I got my acceptance to the KCC and she did not.
Wait, why is she here, how am I—
There have been jokes about the sexual escapades of rival pankrati. I've always been happy to validate them in the forgotten spaces after matches, and Katha was too. She looks at me like she doesn't remember how it ended between us. Her fingers catch my suit's quick release. Her face is so close to mine and I brace myself for the blade between the plates of my hardsuit blossoming open around me but instead her lips touch mine and she's dust again.
Again?
Something's happening. I try to look at the space around me and my eyes begin to hurt. I don't know what's out there. I can't process, exactly, what's happening in this space. I have not been able to speak, to escape the odd sensation of compression—
I am on the beach. It's Umara again, the reclamation zone off where Hayle, the seatop city where I lived, is. I am sitting against the sand, red dust washed in from the surf interspersed with thousands upon thousands of small glass beads. I let my hand sink into the ground, a luxury I remember being told to appreciate the magnitude of as a child. So much of Umara is still untouchable by human hands, but here the beach is warm and safe and the only reminder of the nuclear fire Tagetes used to bring this world back into the fold is in the tiny glass marbles that pass between my fingers.
I know this beach is not real. The sand is wrong. The sand on this beach is not red, it is black.
I still feel constricted. I am a rat in the snake's coils.
The wind picks up.
Does it?
The red dust stirs into a figure made of dust, unshapen, shape unclear, but intuitively I know it is a person and so I call the amorphous cloud a figure.
Without words I know who it is. Akakia, the person I was searching for. Where I am, what I was doing, begins to dawn on me. I inch back in horror.
Their form seems to stare at me, though I could see no eyes in it. I can feel the force in that stare, the attention that once monitored a thousand thousand souls and even more rooms, whose brain is vaster than the ship we rode in here on. I can feel the whole of that power focus on me, and in that moment I know what it was to be an insect in the hand of a god.
"What do you want." I try to say, and I try my best to make the voice sound heard. Coherent. Not the hoarse whine that comes out.
"You came here to labotomize me, Nera-Montague. You would separate my soul from my body." The cloud of dust seems no angrier for this observation. They float in the air, curled currents within themselves, but seem not to emote or judge. The statement is one of fact, final.
"I reached through the port at the base of your neck and through your ravaged halls to pluck you from your pineal gland, Nera-Montague. As you reached through realspace to find me, I did the same through legionspace to find you."
The shape of the cloud shifts then, adjusting to a new form. It remains the same blood red, but settles in the shape of a face that was all-too-familiar to me. An old rival. A girl I had bent to my will. One of my deepest secrets.
There's been a crawling beneath Nera's skin that she hasn't noticed until she became sat back in Postlimniae's cockpit. Hardsuit on, boot up sequence going, routine checks filtering past as comms filter in.
That's not what she's paying attention to, though. Sitting in the bridge in the back of her neck is a layer of communication that sits deeper than the comms filtering through her headpiece. The words come bone-deep, less a thing she hears and more a realization of having-heard without ever having the transmission of sound.
I've just gotten access to their camera feeds. Hostile forces are present but unaware of action. I'm sending a set of coordinates to your spotter.
Heard, Cassander. Keep me updated on their movements.
Replying is at the speed of thought, faster even— even though Nera feels herself moving her jaw as if to subvocalize, she knows he's heard faster than her mouth can move through the legionspace connection.
"This is Alpha Actual, we have eyes," she says instead, into the comms that require her voice.
"Can we get that routed to Spotter, Actual?"
"Cannot. Spotter has to talk to Cassander." Nera can feel the relief through the link, and frustration on the other end of the line as their Spotter, an Athena-class named Irina, starts pinging Cassander for the data instead of routing into the cameras directly.
Is she serious about these data requests?
Very.
She has the processing power?
"This is Spotter, jump coordinates have been isolated. Standing by. "
A reminder that she's on the clock. Nera directs Postlimniae towards the edge of the hangar, where they normally initiate blinkspace jumps from.
She's efficient. Anything notable about the feeds?
Blind spots. They're clustered. Too condensed to be accidental, I'd guess sabotage.
We consider that hostile territory, then. Can we route around it to the casket room?
You'll come close, but yes.
There are five others accompanying her. Two are fairly green. This is likely the first deployment they've had where live fire combat is possible. Of the three others, one is in full plate.
"Take positions, jump in 30. Remember, Gai is in command if I blink," Nera says into her comms, with a silent prayer that she won't.
There are three sensing kits among the six of them. Each one should be sufficient to get the reading they need. At the moment, the mission parameters are only to reach the casket and get the reading, but everyone here has been trained in casket quick-release and handling in case things go too badly.
The pirates on the other arc reportedly have mech access and have been hostile to expeditions previously. They attack supply lines and tap the pipes that give air, water, and fuel to the rest of the arcs. Harrison Armory has repeatedly made inquiries as to the presence of known pirate crews in the Orbit and whether they constitute illegal privateering as a mode of stealth operations, but logistics and lack of knowledge has made rooting them out an untenable task.
It doesn't mean Nera hasn't suggested it. When she mentioned it to Cassander, just after landing, he mentioned that it's possible that Akakia is shielding them.
15 seconds to jump.
Nera starts to engage the slipstream module. There's a notable hiss as Postlimniae starts to brace around her, a loose tension sinking into the joints of the frame like a cat pre-pounce. She adjusts her head in the chair, stretches, as she feels that lock-tension reflected back into her own body. She double checks the coordinates.
"Jump in 5. Still post-jump."
A familiar dread kicks in as the hiss turns into a squeal. Every bone in Nera's body yearns for her to disengage the jump, and then.
There is the hangar. Then there is another hangar.
"Alpha Actual, checking in."
There's five responses. No one lost.
Where are we going?
Let me share.
An understanding of the structure comes to Nera immediately. She communicates her gratitude back to Cassander, unfamiliar, like the thanks of an infant, and then immediately turns Postlimniae to move.
"On me," she says, starting to move down the halls, "Keep weapons sheathed at all times except in self defense. Do not presume hostile intent."
The halls are the quiet of a station that hasn't seen air in over a century. Old signs of construction lie, abandoned, across walkways. It would seem entirely untouched if not for the odd door stuck open, pockmarked with the scars of laser cutters.
The Arc is still the size of a city, though, and the path to the casket room is deliberately labyrinthine. Cassander has ensured that the doors they need are already open when they get there, but the first massive atrium they enter that seems devoid of people sets tensions on edge. Even after Nera's years of experience, it feels like the old KCC training sims, the big open rooms signaling the presence of an ambush. Except now there is nothing but the old unlit faces of places that were left abandoned, some clearly picked over but just as many wholly untouched.
The anxiety sinks deep, and across the six. The comms channel is remarkably clear of chatter, something Nera knows is driven partially by her presence, but likely also by the way the others keep glancing into old buildings and down unlit hallways like they're being stalked.
Shadows dart. A consequence of their lights, Nera thinks, but sometimes she feels it in the information that Cassander is passing her across the link. Little blips of possible activity before it's concluded that there is nothing there. She's reminded a trip she took to the reclaimed wilds of Umara as a child. The movement of animals in the reeds. The horrifying mystery of what's behind the movement.
There's either nothing there, or there's something there.
There aren't actual positive signs of movement until they approach the atrium nearest the casket chamber. It's one of the locations so far closest to the camera blackout zones, and the sounds they hear when their feet meet ground include the hum of reactors.
There's someone here. There are reactors, but whether they're mech or civilian are unclear.
Nera feels her skin prickle. She doesn't reach for her knives, but her Postlimniae's hand tightens around the survey equipment.
"Slow. There's someone nearby."
Do not draw your knives, she thinks to herself. There's every odds that these pirates are not armed.
They continue closer. The lights of an old-model Vlad blink on from the shadows. One of the kids behind her draws his blades.
"Alpha 4, you are not authorized to attack," she hears from Gai, over comms.
Nera adjusts her output to wide area.
"We are not here to attack you. We just need to access the casket chamber."
More lights appear from around the room, shapes she had written off as junk revealed to be powered-down mechs, now coming to life. The hum of reactors under Nera's feet grows louder.
The kid behind her doesn't put the knives away.
"The NHP aboard this arc needs help. We are here to provide it," she says, glancing to the people surrounding them.
There is at least a dozen of them. They're outnumbered.
The kid starts to engage his FADE cloak.
Many things happen at once:
The pirates, seeing the far more well resourced and outfitted team that has just invaded what they see as their space, immediately withdraw weapons and begin to aim them at the kid. No amount of "Dice, stand down!" coming over the comms manages to stop the feedback loop that's begun. He disappears, and immediately one of the pirates fires into the space he had previously been in.
The others, told to react only in self defense, draw weapons as well. Nera slings the equipment over Postlimniae's shoulder, hanging it off of the scabbard that held Arete, the Terashima blade that marks her status as command, and brings the blade to hand. The pirates fire again before she is able to make another plea over comms.
All hell breaks loose. Nera shouts a
"Permission to engage, nonlethal force only," over local comms and engages her slipstream module.
"Core engaged. I'm making a break for the casket room. Gai, cover me."
Then she runs. Each move she makes is a cut through realspace. She feels Postlimniae's leg brace to run and then she blinks and she's across the room. Another step and she's towards the hallway. Her chaff launchers obscure most of the spare shots sent her way, but a spare shot grazes the leg in a way that Arete is too slow to deflect.
Things are too hot. Is extraction possible?
You shouldn't.
Not what I asked, Cassander.
Sorry, Akakia's in a panic. Can you get a scan under these circumstances?
Nera glances behind her as she turns the corner into the corridor leading to the casket chamber. The link to Cassander has become odd. Painted fuzzy with her panic, perhaps, but she thinks she's nearing it. One of the pirate frames seems to be on her tail, though.
Maybe. They need to be okay with the possibility of me needing to grab them and go, though.
She can feel the panic crawl up her spine. It's not just her own. Nera's been in tight combat situations like this, she's not afraid of a few scrappers, this can't be just her panic. She sidesteps another shot and feels it threaten to overcome her. Part of it is over the link.
You need to find an alternative. They can't be without their body. You understand—
Cassander's voice blends. It's not just him anymore, Nera can feel it, and she can feel the panic slowly creep through her bones. She feels feral, she suddenly feels cornered. For a moment she feels like she is very small and sandwiched beneath something very very large.
I will do what I can, but—
She cannot get the thought out. She cannot do anything, she feels every muscle in her body lock and her heart start to jackrabbit in her chest. Nera is frozen in her cockpit, frozen in her body, Postlimniae completely still. She tries to will it to move but nothing happens, and she feels a slow removal of herself from her body. She is no longer there. She is. She is.
Postlimniae registers a direct hit. Nera is no longer there to perceive it. Her body crumples.
Lancer uses exaggeration to make points and critiques frequently. This, I hope, is not news.
SSC utilizes perfected genetic editing--that is, gene-editing without the racism--and the point it makes is that adhering more closely to the ideal human form is still eugenics. Harrison Armory is an idealized meritocracy, and the point it makes is that an idealized meritocracy will still fail its people if they can't do enough. IPS-N is the idealized worker's co-op, and it is still shown to be as evil as any company.
NHPs are an exaggeration of psychosis and a commentary on medicalism. Let me explain.
NHPs are not actually that complicated, when you get down to it. An NHP's casket is like a human brain but less well-contained. A human psychotic episode is contained within the brain. A NHP's cascade, easily likened to a psychotic episode, is a psychotic episode where the visions of the psychotic leak onto reality and begin to distort it. Hallucinations become reality and begin to affect others; sound and light become overstimulating. Shackling is, in this allegory, some form of antipsychotic medication. Eidolons take this a step further; when you enter an eidolon's lamellae, you are literally trespassing inside its mind. You're almost an intrusive thought.
The question that NHPs ask is this: if there was a medicine that could counteract your mental condition, one that could and would harm those around you, would forcing that medicine on you be morally justified?
Hello, Orbit! We're back and in charge of the systems. Please be patient while we reorient ourselves to the controls. The dummy comp/cons may be in charge for the next few days, and we might be slow to respond, but be rest assured that we're back and getting better!
OT01:::still registering my objection
NERA-MONTAGUE:::Registered.
NERA-MONTAGUE:::As I hear it I will need to send people into the Grand Arc at the very least. Possibly the Tranquil and Unyielding arcs as well.
OT04:::That's correct.
NERA-MONTAGUE:::Do we have camera feeds?
OT04:::Access to that infrastructure is difficult, especially on the Grand Arc. OA10G's organization has been difficult to parse.
OT01::its also a lot of cameras for us to track and only half of em work
NERA-MONTAGUE:::Do the bylaws allow for temporary turnover in times of emergency?
OT01:::super no
NERA-MONTAGUE:::Les Fulgurites has NHP spotters that specialize in spatial analysis that should be able to guide us.
OT01:::it would have to go thru us and we super duper cant hand systems over to not the genet nhps
OT01:::especially if a noble asks pretty please
OT04:::We can temporarily pass back control of the camera feeds to have them guide you, or
OT01:::dont finish that
OT01:::not the genet nhps includes ur fucking ominous pyramid
OT04:::Or you can go in blind.
NERA-MONTAGUE:::I can lead the expedition into the Grand Arc.
NERA-MONTAGUE:::Can you pass the feeds to Cassander? We already have a rapport.
OT01:::sure can
OT04:::Adjutant-Commandant, are you fit to do that?
NERA-MONTAGUE:::Of course.
NERA-MONTAGUE:::I've been cleared to pilot, and I am best fit to negotiate with potential hostiles in the Grand Arc.
NERA-MONTAGUE:::I also trust myself most to make the call if we cannot afford to make an onsite scan.
OT01:::which i will emphasize
OT01:::is ideal
OT01:::idc if the arc seems compromised by pirates or w/e
OT04:::I do.
OT01:::stfu 04 ur phone-a-friend agrees w me
OT01:::removing akakia from their servers is worst case scenario shit
NERA-MONTAGUE:::I understand that, OT01.
NERA-MONTAGUE:::Removal will occur only if there is no other option.
We would like to address the recent rumors of Dynamic Solutions' involvement in the recent so-called "King Tide" incident. While the nature of our previous, current and upcoming contracts remains strictly confidential, we officially disavow these rumors as utterly false. The sovereignty of corporate settlements such as New Columbia is important to us, and as such actions are a clear violation of not only the laws outlined in Section 39.46D but also the rights of those living aboard the settlement, we strongly condemn the crimes committed by the rogue terror group upon New Columbia as senseless violence.
We would also like to thank our business partners at Harrison Armory for coming up with a decisive resolution, and we offer our condolences to anyone affected by the "King Tide" incident on New Columbia.
Wasn't there confirmed footage of a frame registered to Dynamic Solutions LLC hacking station security mechs to pieces? Like, not to take the wind out of your official pr post or anything but like, I'm pretty sure the blackbeard that got the most screentime in those hearings, the one that did like- eighty percent of the killing, was confirmed to be both owned by you guys, and in service at the time of the incident.
Like, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that was confirmed in court.
Dynamic Solutions does not appreciate your implication that our personnel may have been involved in such an operation. As we have stated previously, we disavow any and all illegal actions taken within the New Columbia settlement. Please remove your post, and our legal team will be in contact with you shortly.
<CARU:Under Certain Circumstances: Look you're on the news.>
INTERCEPT | DECRYPTION CONFIDENCE <94%
SOURCE: ARCHON/SPEARHEAD_SOLEMNVIGIL
-- and what else is new. I'll tell you what is. Classified Constellar stealth ships publicly appearing in front of a civilian habitat station without declaring affiliation. I asked [][][][][][][] and he says it's Midnights.
If ||||| had Constellar intervention in the latest pre Dawnline spat in their iten--
-- and even then no cell rotating out of Pavonis Mons knows about it. Not us, not Kraken, not --
--regarding it. Might be wise to get some independent info, in any case. So if you would so kindly lean on UBO/NTM to see if that thing slipped through any Gate near Harlequins. Get it to me by next skip. I am expe--
[MARU/MET -> CARU/UCC]
< Solemn Vigil and whispers on Mars, all over me? Well, I'm flattered.
'Pre-Dawnline' these days, is it? Then they know perfectly well the fire won't be allowed to start over a UFO sighting at the Orbit of Glass. Besides, a little showboating every so often is good for the ecosystem. Keeps the crackpots fed and raving.
Appreciate the tip, Circumstances. An aside: let me know if you manage to figure out how the conveniently-anonymized Ontologistics Technician 04 of the Orbit of Glass happened to know about our existence and purpose.
