Chương 174: Chapter 144

It's always something with these guys, - Anonymous We are beyond your reach. You cannot touch us - Uknown TOUCH! - Daxin Freeborn TELKan flinched back as the other Gestalt let go of his eyelids and straightened up. He wet his lips, trying to find something to say. Anything. The Telkana, the female Telkan, turned away from TELKan, slowly walking over to the window.

"You can't, can you?" she said softly.

"Please," the Telkan Master Gestalt managed to say as the other gestalt slowly opened the window. The Solarian Gestalt put her hands on the windowsill, sniffing at the air and then cocking her head and listening. TELKan knew it was to update her profiles.

"We have a wide breadth of options with you," she said, her voice slow and low.

"There are some who believe I should just declare war on you and have done with it," she shook her head.

"Usually the younger and more excitable who were born in this very system." She sniffed again.

"Sentiment is rising that we stay broken off from Telkan itself," a cocking of the head.

"Some say we are too different. That forty-thousand years of micro-evolution has changed us too much." She closed her eyes and raised her head, sniffing, her whiskers trembling.

"Analysis of medical data shows we can interbreed, we haven't drifted that much." She suddenly whirled around to face TELKan.

"But it also shows us, as plain as moonlight on a duck's fan, where the genetic engineering has happened," she snarled.

"Did you think it could be hidden forever." TELKan knew he was sweating. The other master gestalt was running unshielded, completely naked and open to her people's feelings, statements, beliefs, and other metrics that could affect the electronic amalgamation of her species. That was something only the older species, with their more placed and calm people, actually ran and did. TelkSol stopped for a long second then moved over and sat down.

"Only fifty officially listed," she said softly. She looked at the red-eyed one.

"Thoughts?" The red eyed one made a low growling sound.

"Only eight Telkan Marine Divisions listed," it growled.

"Off the books, there's nearly three thousand divisions scattered across those three hundred unlisted worlds as garrison troops. Each world is currently training up to be the host to another fifty division," it lifted one hand up then slammed it back down, the claws sinking deep into TELKan's head. Its red eyes streamed code for a moment before he spoke.

"Over one hundred worlds have covert ship building facilities. All of them are engaged in rapid fleet expansion," it growled.

"The information is heavily encoded but still moving across the military background bandwidth, where I can reach it." TelkSol shook her head.

"Yet according to civilian and non-governmental data, the Telkan Space Navy has been reduced to a mere six divisions, only one of heavies, and no super-heavy."

"Affirmative," TelkSolMil stated. The male Telkan on the couch suddenly burst out laughing.

"Oh my Digital Omnimessiah and the Twelve Biological Apostles, you weren't going to, were you?" TELKan felt the sweat wick down his spine.

"Do what?" The male Telkan laughed even harder.

"You were. You really were," he reached up and wiped a tear away.

"You really though you were that tough, that badass." TelkSol started to frown, then her eyes opened wide and she burst out laughing.

"Oh, Vuxten's warsteel nutsack, it always comes down to that, doesn't it?" TELKan looked around. The males on the couch were shaking their heads, wiping their eyes after their laughter. The female was still giggling. He looked up at the red-eyed one who just looked back down at TELKan and shook his head.

"What that 'queen' came up with isn't even that innovative," TelkSol said. She laughed again.

"And I doubt it's any good. Probably little more than a shadow," she shook her head.

"But it always comes down to that, doesn't it? The whole reason you're building up troops and a navy is nothing more than that simple thing."

"How did you know?" he asked.

"Because they always do. And now that The Bag is opened, you're trying to decide on letting the Mar-gite take out the Terrans or," she paused for a second, then stood up, brushing off her skirt.

"Or do what every other half-wit does." She moved over to TELKan and set her hand on his forehead.

"Now I have to keep you from running out and committing racial suicide in that spectacular manner of making the Prime Miscalculation." 0-0-0-0-0 TREA raised an eyebrow as TelkSolCiv appeared at the end of the bar, ordered a shot, then slid it down the bar to him. He nodded and picked it up, rolling it in his fingers. What the hell, he thought, and tossed the shot back. The data immediately blossomed. All of it. Including some rather disturbing evidence that pointed at an even more disturbing plan.

He pinged Hat Wearing Auntie, Pubvia, Kobold, and Rigel, then waited. When they all lined up at the bar next to him, silent, looking grim, he ordered a shot for each of them, loaded the data into the alcohol, and slid the shots to each of them. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. One by one they each took a shot, then looked at Trea.

"Telkan did this?" Pubvia asked. He shook his head.

"Thought they'd know better."

"Bought into their own press," Kobold said.

"And forgot a basic fact," Hat Wearing Auntie said. She shook her head.

"Queen's Demise, I can practically hear them: The Confederacy was only three thousand years old when we joined. We're a senior member, we know what we're doing." RIGel snorted.

"Our business is our own, it's a purely internal matter." KOBold shook his great reptilian head.

"It isn't Confederacy business." TREA snorted.

"This evidence makes it our problem." PUBvia tapped the bar until the bartender turned around.

"May I help you?" the VI asked.

"Secure conference room with linkages to our controlling governmental heads. Top level only. SCIF enabled, high processing and flops," PUBvia said. The bartender paused a moment then put an ancient looking brass key on the bar.

"Room 317, third floor, on the right." TREA slapped down the payment and was the last to head out. Lank watched them leave with side eyes. 0-0-0-0-0 Senior Data Analyst Angela Angus Kusumoto heard the rapidfire pinging of her work's emergency alert going off and groaned.

"It's just getting to the good part," she half-whined. She stood up and ran her wrist over the register payment scanner. It beeped and flashed a smiley face three times at her, but she was already moving, her hand reaching up to touch her comlink.

"Kusumoto here," she said.

"Ma'am, Atlantis control's Gestalt Overwatch and Recording section is going haywire. The Gestalts are pulling down ten times what they normally pull down, while at the same time other Gestalt's bandwidth and processing power is dropping fast," a half-panicked voice with the tag "McHiroshi" said.

"Give me a piggyback onto the central control console," Kusumoto said.

"I'm enroute but I won't be back for at least fifteen hours. It's Day One of my Four-Day."

"Roger, Ma'am," McHiroshi said. The data appeared and Angela watched it stream by. She cursed as she realized what she was seeing. Flat out combat between some of the Gestalts. Worse, it was looking like they were attacking computer networks across the board. Fighting between Gestalts was so rare that Angela wasn't even sure it was covered in the books.

She opened up her administrator level search access and ran a quick search even as she briskly moved down the street to the fast-mover autowalk that would move her at over three hundred kilometers an hour as she walked though the tube. She stopped, briefly, to buy a data pad, then got back onto the autowalk to where she could grab a taxi to take her to the hyperloop rail, to take her to the skytram, to take her to the startram.

She had about four hours before she reached the startram, and then it would only be ten hours to the Atlantis stop and then an hour to get through Atlantis security checks. In the taxi she crossloaded her security programs then accessed her external globalnet feed, then took a look at the Gestalt chat. It was just discussing population metrics. She watched it for a long moment then logged out while leaving a sneaker there. The Gestalts paused a moment, then continued talking about population metrics.

They see the sneaker, she thought. There had been more than a few people who were starting to wonder just how much power the gestalts had. She leaned back, chewing on her lower lip and thinking. She went back to checking on her datapad, scrolling through various functions, libraries, and datastores. After a bit, sitting on the hyperloop, she nodded to herself. She had what she needed. The question is...... would it work. 0-0-0-0-0 TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS There's something strange going on. Anyone else feel it?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- HAT WEARING AUNTIE I do. A weird plucking. ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS And someone tried sticking a googly-eye on the wall. Wonder who that was? ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- >KUS HAS LOGGED IN TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS Who? ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- KUS I want anyone with Tier-One or Zero Layer Access to message me immediately. /////// HAT WEARING AUNTIE Are those Atlantis codes? ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS They are! Are you guys finally awake? ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- KUS I am.

I am Senior Data Analyst Angela Angus Kusumoto. There is unusual activity on the Gestalt Channels and I am investigating why. /////// TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS Make the room. We'll tell you. It won The Detainee snapped her fingers and everything cut out. The ships hung in space, dead sticks, no power, no computing arrays. A bright white flash made everything appear strangely flat as it washed away the shadows.

"Saved your life," she smiled. The Admiral watched as the ships came in.

"Target those seed ships! I want them blown out of the..." The white flash hit the task force, to no avail.

"sky as soon as we can!" On a computer read a simple phrase.

"HURR DEE HURR!"

"YOU ARE NOW STUPID!" The Admiral gave a cold smile. HAT WEARING AUNTIE BRIGHT LIGHT BRIGHT LIGHT ATLANTIS ALERT CHATROOM SYSTEM HAS FAILED Angela stared at the datapad as it suddenly went to hash. She was alone, in a stateroom on the startram that was moving several thousand miles an hour. She still had six hours to Atlantis. Her cyber-eyes rebooted, her datalink took a second longer to reboot. She watched as the system booted up. Watching the old quantum computer system POST messages roll by.

ouch what hit me the flash again curse you marco for programming me to feel pain i can taste cherry nipplegloss and blood where did that come from Angela watched the small lowercase text slowly appear and raised an eyebrow gestalts are out of commission that stupid flash thought i had it beat its moving inward from the great gulf i got triple teamed heh holiday in bermuda three ports no waiting ugh curse your sense of humor marco Angela shook her head. Marco was known to be one of the main programmers.

Killed in the Mantid attack on the Sol system. wait whats that there is an active gestalt but its running on a system outside Angela reached out and hit the marco to append her credentials to her little gestalt. oh codes good codes all right kus here you go Data suddenly streamed onto the datapad, flowing from the gestalt chat master control to her own datapad. She got a little nervous toward the end, grabbing a storage extending external drive and slotting it in.

She moved all storage to the external drive and leaned back, watching it stream in like floodwater. Angela gave the software orders to forbid her internal cybernetic systems from accepting any strange data. Her visible range dropped to 360p. The data stopped at 86. 86% with the external drive. Nothing but raw data. Angela pulled the external storage off the datapad. Angela was still typing in the commands to do some interrogation when her screen suddenly flashed bright white, then went static filled.

The datapad made a buzzing sound. Her eyesight went black and white and a ringing sound filled her ears. She got her cyberware under control right before the pad suddenly gave a loud squeal... And melted right the fuck down as the attack hit the pad directly. She'd seen the message that had popped up. Her memory was good and she knew she was in over her head but there was no choice but to keep treading water. Atlantis and the Onion itself were under attack.

She turned on her cyberware systems and made a call to a number that was so far out of range it wasn't even funny. Angela had been through a lot the past decade. She didn't even blink when the line started ringing. 0-0-0-0-0 The snow was unmarked and blameless. The little cottage in the middle of the woods radiated homeliness and happiness through the windows with gold light on white snow.

Three people sat at the kitchen table, enjoying a peach cobbler and some hot chocolate with marshmallows topped with whipped cream. On the wall a baby-crap yellow telephone with a receiver that was attached to the base with a cord suddenly began to ring. The woman stared at the tired looking man.

"That's for you, Pete."

"It's about damn time," the tired man said, standing up and walking toward the phone. He lifted up the receiver.

"Doctor Igwe here.