Chương 66: Chapter 21 — Final Preparations

Yaniss looked up from the intercooler she was tinkering with, wiping off her hands while the communicator chimed. Technically she didn't need to have clean hands to answer the comms, as she could tap into the network directly, but she always felt it was more appropriate to answer in the flesh if possible. She crossed over to the corner of her workshop and accessed the interface there, accepting the call.

Normally she would have expected Raine or Leese, or possibly Cato, perhaps informing her of more people arriving. Over the past few years Mii-Es had helped send over a hundred of Yaniss' fellows to the orbital station, which still meant there was room for at least another ten thousand or so. She would welcome some more of her own race to fill out the available space and give her more students to teach.

Instead, she blinked at the sight of two Sydeans she didn't recognize, one with dark blue scales and the other with light blue, both with obvious modifications. The female Sydean's horns were some form of hologram, composed of a number of floating black segments, each segment inlaid with glowing geometric shapes. Her companion had clearly artificial eyes, but also some sort of augmentation that outlined each scale, a subtle digital flicker.

"Hello!" The female said, lifting one clawed hand.

"I'm Meshka Uriv, and this is my husband Temek Uriv. We're from, the Uriva Sydean habitat, Tamiliken."

"Raine the Elder is my grandmother," Temek put in.

"We're in a group that's going around visiting the various Catos and habitats, and maybe sharding off if there's anything interesting," Meshka continued.

"I thought we'd at least stop by to say hi. Permission to come aboard?" With a blink, Yaniss realized that the two were fully digital entities, not just broadcasting through FungusNet. Cato hadn't even warned her, but probably because he genuinely considered the habitat hers and not because he didn't know. Which was good, because while there were times when she wished he gave a little more help, she would have hated constant oversight.

"Of course," Yaniss said, going into the network with a thought and giving the group of digital entities – twelve in all – the proper permissions.

"Just be aware that all the Ikent aside from me are fresh from the System. I'd appreciate if you refrained from harassing them too much." Given that she had full administrative control of the network, she could always cut the digital visitors off from any ability to access the comms and surveillance network. There were protections in place for their actual selves, as the fundamental substrate for digital life had some built in self-autonomy, but they were very much guests.

"Oh, you'd let us talk to them at all?" Temek asked, a little surprised.

"The Younger Urivan Lineage was pretty protective of their charges."

"I don't see why not," Yaniss said, taking a moment to shift the feed from the wall interface to her own implant, leaving the half-finished Ikent-morphology ornithopter in the workshop.

"We're doing different things. The Uriv project is basically set up so Initik can take over. Mine is so I can get everyone up to speed as soon as possible." She'd listened to the arguments about how difficult it could be to set up a proper, distinct Ikent culture, but considering that nobody was around that remembered anything pre-System, it hadn't seemed worthwhile.

Instead she'd browsed through the history of Summer Civilizations until she had found something workable — some of the so-called human branches were very different from Cato — and stolen most of it. If anything, meeting some other postbiologicals would be good for the people on the station.

"We appreciate it," Meshka said politely.

"We haven't had much opportunity to talk to anyone other than Sydeans and Cato-Uriv!"

"By all means," Yaniss said with amusement, keeping an eye on the network traffic as a dozen extra digital life suddenly bumped the bandwidth use by a couple orders of magnitude.

"I think Cato's a bit overprotective, if anything. The System is a harsh environment, and people learn to adapt, so a completely different setting is only a mild setback. Though I will admit I wouldn't want to let any prior high ranker have access to an energy transmitter or the like." There had already been more than a few fights even among the Ikent, and it wasn't hard to turn industrial tools like lawnmowers or saws into weapons.

"I can imagine. It makes me glad that grandmother decided to set up a proper tech base first," Temek said, his virtual avatar appearing off to her side. Not a projection, just a virtual overlay onto her vision. Meshka appeared a moment later, the two of them looking over the small but bustling neighborhood Yaniss had created. Almost every house was three full stories of burnished wood, but with a narrow footprint and broad balconies around the central rooms to take advantage of low-gravity flight.

Ivy climbed the trellised outer wall of many of the houses, sprouting colorful flowers. Most of the people were engaged with some form of learning program, an extension of the teaching matrix Yaniss had created, gathered in backyards or parks to practice a new trade.

"Now, you probably won't be allowed in the outer habitats," Yaniss said. She had a version of herself there, reconciling every few hours, but her role in that was very minor.

"Mii-Es is very protective of the Mesh-ia."

"So Cato-Ikent told us," Meshka chuckled.

"We sent a polite message but that's all. Though it's a good reason for a version of us to stick around; bringing an entire race back from nothing is a serious project!" Yaniss ruffled her feathers in silent amusement, as every world in the System was a serious project. None of the planets or the peoples that lived on them were truly ready for a life defined by technology rather than by Skills and essence, and every single one would require a lot of guidance to survive.

What Yaniss had accomplished in her small neighborhood did not scale to millions of people spread out across hundreds of distinct communities, teaching matrix or no.

"If you want challenging work, I don't think you'll find a lack of it," she said instead.

"I know Cato still asks me if I'd like to shard myself out to help in various places."

"Yes, but you're Yaniss," Meshka said.

"We grew up hearing about your contributions. Your story. The first ally outside of the Talis sisters, someone who can reconcile thousands of versions or more!"

"Really?" Yaniss blinked, looking over at the Sydean's projection.

"I never heard anything about this."

"The historians and a few novelists drew from the public records," Temek explained, looking a little sheepish.

"Nobody's spying on your habitat, but there's a lot that was just available because of what the various Catos talked about."

"I'm not sure how much I like that," Yaniss said, although she had to admit it did play to her ego a little bit. Somehow becoming a historical figure was certainly a bizarre thing, but at the same time it seemed right. It was something she would have to get used to, after all — she was almost certainly going to be the oldest Ikent most of her species would ever encounter, as any Alum refugees would wind up on Heimdall, and all sorts of future generations would grow up knowing her.

Even outside Ikent, hundreds or even thousands of worlds that were no longer part of the System would be using her work for centuries.

"I think it's too late to head it off," Temek said with a chuckle.

"You're part of history now. And unlike Cato, you aren't going to be around once the portals close."

"That is fair," Yaniss allowed, since despite the occasional prodding she had no desire to find herself stuck outside of the Ikent system. Which would inevitably happen, if she allowed herself to be spread over many different systems.

"I suppose I wouldn't object to you sticking around, though it will be a while before you're truly needed." Twelve extra postbiologicals wasn't all that much considering the long-term plans she had for Ikent, and the millions of people who would need guidance and oversight once the System was removed.

"We'll probably come back," Meshka confessed.

"Better to go the rounds and shard off the most complete version of ourselves, after all. I'm not nearly as good at reconciliation as you. Heck, I'm worse than Cato, and I can only do two and maybe a day's worth of time at most. So I figure we'll do a quick tour, see if anyone from the other habitats want to join us, and then shard off to a bunch of worlds. Maybe all of them?" Yaniss blinked at that, but it wasn't like Cato and the various Lineages hadn't spread themselves that wide already.

For her, it seemed like a massive net simply because she had always reconciled her various selves, but for people who were fine with divergence, there was no difference between being in one place and being in half a million.

"If that's what you want," Yaniss said, discarding the impulse she had to caution against such a thing. They were adults, and if they thought it was a good idea to split themselves up that way it was their business.

"I don't think I'd want too many people here, but it might be good to get some company now — before we can't anymore."

"You know, it's pretty crazy to think that's the Milky Way," Lorraine said looking upward during one of the rare nights on War-World Shenk. Raine and Leese followed her waving hand, taking in the enormous swirl of stars that dominated the sky.

"Like, before, actually going outside the galaxy was like, a million year journey, and I don't think anyone seriously started out on it. Somewhere in there is Sol, something-thousand light years away."

"Sydea is there too," Leese remarked, stowing the upgrade materials from their latest kill. Of late, Lorraine had been losing interest in any sort of loot — and Raine had to admit she wasn't particularly interested, either. At Alum, the climb was less obvious, more of expertise and refinement than of any clear progression in power.

Perhaps she would have welcomed it under other circumstances, as each increment meant she and Leese could explore deeper and wilder part of the War Worlds, but she knew there was more out there than the System. While she hadn't spent nearly as much time outside the System as most of the other versions of herself and Leese, Cato had supplied some stories of what they were doing and what they'd created.

That there were all kinds of little habitats, laboratories, ships, fighters, and stations scattered throughout System space that promised more than just fighting. Not that Raine was tired of fighting, exactly, it was just that she was realizing how much there could be to explore beyond it. Her Bismuth cornerstone still meant she wanted to travel, to experience, to see new things. But doing that within the System felt oddly hollow, trading as they were on Cato's augments and gifts.

While the monster-infested reaches of the War Worlds satisfied some part of the itch, it was at the same time merely work to be done.

"Maybe we can go back one day," Raine said, though she knew she had only the haziest idea of how. Without a portal, travel between worlds was sure to be difficult, though she'd never inquired about the details. It just hadn't come up, and Cato certainly wasn't promising any of the Earth types a way back to their home, but when Cato had spoke of it his concerns were about time rather than anything else.

"It'd be a while," Lorraine said.

"I don't know how long it'd take from the nearest System world, but, well. Thousands of years at least. Kind of a long time to just sit around on a ship. It's not worth just hanging around if you don't spend your time on something worthwhile, you know?"

"Hm," Raine said, not entirely convinced. She'd seen all the options that Cato had suggested for Alums and Earth-types alike, and there seemed to be plenty of things to spend their time on. Perhaps not for thousands of years, but on the other hand, it didn't seem to her like the System had enough for thousands of years — and there were plenty of Alums that were far older.

"I guess it doesn't matter," Lorraine said with a shrug.

"Not yet, anyway." She dusted off her hands on the cloth armor she wore, although Alum-ranked [Clean] meant that her gauntlets stayed utterly pristine.

"Man, so when is this guy going to get out?"

"Probably soon," Leese said, looking at the far distant mountain where there was a dungeon, and within that dungeon, was one of the Alums that Shiel-Ruyu had suggested. Most Alums were, of course, somewhere deep inside the War Worlds, but Shiel-Ruyu had some ability to find out where when it came to those who were nominally part of Punchy Bastards. He'd given them some information on the more reasonable ones, the types that were the least likely to try and call down a god or attack them directly.

Hanging around outside a dungeon, waiting for an Alum to emerge, was more than a little suspicious, which was why they were so far away. Close enough to be sensed, but far enough to be polite. If this particular Alum actually paid attention to his farcaster, then the entire process would have been easier, but like many at the top he was too invested in competing with the leaderboards to care too much about unprompted communications.

"He's already out," came a new voice, and Raine actually jumped as she whirled to face the source. Even with Cato's advantages, even being at Alum herself, she wasn't able to actually sense their target. It reminded her of how Dyen preferred sneaking up on them, although the Alum was better. Even with her eyes she couldn't see anything until he let go of his Skills, melting into view at the edge of their little camp.

He looked somewhat like a triple-sized Yaniss, a heavy avian frame, a beak, and four eyes watching them with curiosity. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

"Oh, damn," Lorraine said.

"That was awesome. I wish I had a chance to make that kind of entrance." The Alum laughed, and the tension went out of the clearing.

"Alum Kappist?" Leese asked.

"We're with Punchy Bastards too," she said, although an [Appraise] would already have told Kappist that.

"Shiel-Ruyu sent us to see you."

"Yeah? And what does that old relic want?" Kappist asked, completely unworried.

"How about an opportunity to get out of here?" Raine suggested, reaching into her inventory for one of the pamphlets, this one customized for Kappist with the small amount of information Shiel-Ruyu could give them.

"Do something else? Something more interesting?"

"That is not what I expected to hear," Kappist said after a moment, waving a feathered arm at the pages in Raine's hand. Her combat brain noted a tiny essence intrusion into her Domain, but she let it happen rather than crushing the essence tendril, which without the combat brain would have been too subtle for her to notice.

"He recommended you because the last time you talked, you seemed somewhat dissatisfied," Leese explained.

"And you might be willing to not only leave the System, but find others who feel the same."

"Leave the System?" Kappist repeated, bemused.

"I don't…" He trailed off and tapped the pamphlet, which he had somehow taken when Raine wasn't looking.

"Even reading this, it seems strange. How do I know any of this is true?"

"I come from outside the System," Lorraine volunteered, fumbling something from her own inventory.

"Here." She tossed a crystal to Kappist, who caught it and peered at it curiously with a click of his beak.

"How did you get your hands on a memory crystal?"

"A girl's got to have some secrets," Lorraine said, clearly pleased by Kappist's reaction. Kappist just grunted, essence swirling briefly as he used the crystal. Raine had heard of them in passing at an auction, but had never seen one herself. After a moment Kappist grunted and returned the crystal, dark eyes considering the three of them speculatively.

"And you really believe that this Cato can somehow contest the System?"

"He's taken a few thousand worlds," Raine pointed out.

"That's public knowledge. I would not underestimate what he's capable of."

"I will consider it," Kappist said after a moment.

"You are certain he will take the risk to respond if I go to this hunting world?" He tapped the plastic with a talon.

"You're probably taking more risk than he is," Leese said with a sigh.

"If the gods find out…"

"Ha! We are not as vulnerable at Alum — but yes, point taken," Kappist said, amused.

"That should not be a problem for someone with my talents, however." Raine had to admit he was right, considering that he seemed to have a stealth cornerstone Skill. She doubted he could truly evade the eyes of a god — but then, perhaps he had a blessing the same way they did, something to keep him hidden from the eyes of the divine.

"But tell me, has anyone actually taken this offer yet?"

"A Bismuth from the frontier, who I know personally," Leese replied.

"Of the Alums, I do not know. It's not easy to find them no matter what."

"I see." Kappist said with a click of his beak.

"If Shiel-Ruyu thinks it is worth investigating, there is no harm in speaking to this Cato."

"No, I think—" Leese started, then cut herself off as Kappist vanished again, only a fast-vanishing trace of essence to show where he'd been.

"Rude," said Lorraine, before flopping onto her back in the grass of the clearing they'd secured.

"Stealth types are strange," Raine agreed, though she didn't relax quite yet. Not only was this the wilderness, and Alum-rank wildlife abounded, but Kappist might well be around watching them to see what they'd say when he was gone — Dyen had drilled that lesson into their heads.

"How many more of these meetings do you think we'll have to do?" Lorraine wondered aloud.

"It's awfully stressful to talk to people that could obliterate you with their little pinky."

"There's a reason we're only doing Shiel-Ruyu's recommendations," Raine said in agreement.

"But you know you don't have to come along."

"Nah, you're my friends," Lorraine said from where she lay on the ground.

"Besides, the memory crystal helped, didn't it?"

"Very true," Leese admitted.

"I didn't know you had one."

"Just got it," Lorraine said.

"Thought I'd keep it as a surprise."

"Could I see it?" Raine asked, curious as to what Lorraine had put on there to convince someone she came from outside the System. They had seen some things from Cato, but it was obvious he didn't represent every human.

"Sure!" Lorraine flipped it to her, and Raine sent her essence into the crystal. Immediately a vision appeared of Lorraine performing some arcane process on a glowing screen full of symbols in boxes. The view shifted from the screen to take in a small, cluttered room, and other glowing screens showing different landscapes; something similar to the portal-windows in the Punchy Bastards guildhouse, but obviously fake.

A faint chime made Lorraine walk to the door of the small room, opening up to reveal a floating artifice of some sort holding a bag with the logo of a bowl with noodles in it, and beyond it, an imposing cityscape.

Each of the buildings was the width of an entire System city, and as Lorraine stepped outside the room, taking the bag and watching the artifice fly off and away, it was obvious that each of the buildings was thousands of feet tall, steel and glass formed into towering slabs with thousands of the flying machines buzzing between them.

"That is not like Cato's artifice," Raine said, blinking and handing the memory crystal off to Leese, who checked it herself before offering it back to Lorraine.

"Yeah, New Singapore is a heck of a place," Lorraine admitted.

"I don't want to go back there, but, y'know, I miss the noodles." It was obvious there was more to it than that, and given what they knew about the System, Raine could only imagine everything she'd seen had been destroyed. She didn't really understand the allure of what she saw, but it was so far different than anything the System offered that she probably couldn't understand. Which was almost certainly the point.

"We can ask Cato to provide more noodles," Leese offered, since neither of them were sure how else to respond to that.

"Ha! Yeah, I'd like that," Lorraine said with a laugh.

"It's the little things, you know. Just being able to eat some nice food, bum around a little, watch the stars. It's weird to me how few people in the System do that. Like, I had to make up my own constellations when I got here; nobody could tell me any!" She waved at the stars, tracing out strange shapes with a casual spark of her Skills.

"I never thought to look too closely," Raine admitted, having been far more focused on ranking up and, beyond that, all the burdens of being Cato's agents. Not that she would complain, and it wasn't like she and Leese hadn't spent any time just relaxing, but she'd never thought much about the stars of foreign worlds.

"Yeah, there's one there that looks like a giraffe," Lorraine said, pointing at one part of the sky and invoking some non-System word.

"But you know, its nose has gone missing in the past few weeks. One of the stars dimmed and then went out. Which is weird. Do you think that's Cato's doing?"

"We can ask," Leese replied, sharing her uncertainty with Raine across the link. Cato had some impressive abilities, it was true, but to think he was capable of snuffing stars – or to fathom why he might – was beyond them. Raine agreed with the confusion, but went ahead and reached out with her essence, a fire-limned hole opening in the air and leading back to the capital city.

"Cato, Lorraine just wanted to know if you're responsible for one of the stars disappearing?" Raine sent an image of the area in question, even if she didn't know exactly where Lorraine was pointing, or indeed what a giraffe looked like. She hadn't thought much about constellations since she was young, back on Sydea, when her grandmother told her stories.

"Damn, I am surprised that anyone even noticed. But yes, that one and about twenty others. I've been working on something to deal with the Core for upwards of eighty years now. If you can't see the stars anymore, they're almost ready." Raine whistled softly, but passed that on to the others.

"Okay, you know what? I don't even want to know what's going on there," Lorraine said, hopping to her feet, while Leese just shook her head, as dazed as Raine was by the idea.

"Some sort of outer colonies AI nonsense, I'm sure." Raine didn't know either, and Cato had very obviously not explained, but the exact details hardly mattered. She knew that they certainly didn't want to be around when Cato's project was ready.

Cato-Mishkell wasn't certain if he was envious of some of the other versions of himself or not. The most consequential parts of the war effort were being taken care of by Cato-Uriv, Cato-Ikent, and Cato-Heimdall, which meant they had the most to do but also the greatest number of headaches. Like the small trickle of human Alums that had come with Kiersten. Reading the reports and experiencing some of the recordings, Cato-Mishkell was glad he didn't have to deal with the former Earth natives.

As could be expected from those who had thrived under the System while formerly being relatively ordinary people, they were all some manner of sociopath. The vast majority were just enamored of their own power, and even if they were willing to give it up to leave the System that was simply a matter of self-preservation. It seemed many of those leaving with Kiersten were intrigued by Elysium possibilities, rather than the ontological struggle that Kiersten or Yaniss had entertained.

The rest were people in neopredator frames who wanted a regular body again. The difficulty was, most of those people were murderers and worse, but they hadn't been so before the System. Cato wasn't judge or jury, and it wasn't like anyone involved in the whole System mess was innocent, but it still felt wrong to completely ignore the crimes and outrages that had been perpetrated by his fellow humans. Yet there was no other option he could take, not without making himself a worse tyrant than the System itself.

Which wasn't to say that he was just letting these incredibly dangerous people walk free. They all were operating under a very severe network restriction, with a silent but intrusive virtual intelligence to keep an eye on their actions. It wasn't much different from the restrictions he'd placed on Marus, but with an extra level of security because he really worried that Earth types might know more about how to exploit the networks themselves. Or at least be more interested in trying to take them over.

Kiersten herself was actually petitioning Yaniss to be embodied at Ikent, rather than on one of the habitats in Heimdall, but had no interest in talking to Cato. Which hurt, but at least she wasn't trying to kill him anymore, which was an improvement. He still didn't know about Morvan, but it seemed Kiersten at least hadn't taken a combat cornerstone, so she wasn't compelled to fight all the time.

"I just lost one of my fighters," Raine Mishkell said, interrupting Cato's perusal of the latest reports. He closed down the video logs as he framejacked into combat mode, pulling up all the surveillance data and looking through it in a panic. Except he couldn't find any Azoths outside the atmosphere or, in fact, anything out of the ordinary save for the fact that one of Raine's fighters had gone unresponsive.

"It's still there," Raine said, joining him in the framejack. She popped up in his tactical display, reaching out to poke the ship in question where the surveillance network was tracking it.

"But it's dead."

"Nuked by System physics," Cato guessed, as the ship was actually at its periapsis, and so closer to the Inner World they were monitoring than any of the communications or surveillance craft. The radius of the exclusion zone for Inner Worlds was already significantly greater than that of the frontier worlds, something closer to a quarter million miles, so they didn't have any truly close satellites.

"But that means the radius is what, ten thousand miles wider than it used to be?"

"At least," Raine said.

"It's—" She was cut off as another piece of the network went offline. Then another. The closest observation satellites were being clipped by an expansion of the System's demesne, the front moving far faster than anything they'd seen before.

"Could you check what's going on down there?" Cato asked, pinging Leese to join the framejacked meeting.

"I'll scramble what we have here just in case."

"Right," Raine said, vanishing from the framejack as she bounced down to the Platinum rank frame on the surface. Getting frames into place in the Inner Worlds was a lot trickier than elsewhere, but over the years they'd managed one for each of the Inner Worlds. It had taken a lot of resources, gathered from elsewhere in the System, just to pay for the inns, but it wasn't like the money was being used for anything else.

Leese appeared a few subjective minutes later, ratcheting up to the same hundredfold speed as they watched the System expansion march outward, marked by satellites dropping from the network. Cato was communicating by remote, as he didn't trust any local infrastructure given how fast the wavefront was expanding. While it'd still be months before it impacted anything in the outer orbits, it wouldn't be too long before distance would make the energy and time requirements on any communication extremely impractical.

"Make sure you have all your work packed up," Cato told her. He wasn't sure what the best response was to what was going on; removing the System on the Inner Worlds was a more difficult proposition than it was on the frontier and required a lot more buildup time. The Phage had been seeded for a while, but as it only affected lower ranks it was of limited use. Until he decided on an appropriate response, it was best to prepare for the worst.

In framejack, processes that normally took only minutes could stretch to subjective hours, but Cato didn't dare reduce the framejack speed until it was clear what was going on. He issued orders to bring all their weaponry online, as well as doublechecking the status of their most powerful comms arrays. If FungusNet failed, they were only five light-years from the next System world inside the Large Magellanic Cloud, but a lot could happen in five years. Better not to take the chance of being cut off.

The information processes moved quickly enough, but the physical changes took a lot of time in framejack space. The work of a few minutes turned into subjective hours as satellites realigned, sensors went to active scanning, and various labs and habitats backed themselves up. During the entire time, they were waiting for Raine to return, a quick jaunt to the surface stretching into an extended foray under the stretched time of framejack.

"We have to leave," Raine said, appearing back in the network and projecting the message that she'd seen. [Inner World Mishkell has qualified for elevation to Core World. Transport to the Core will begin in 6: 53: 27]"Ah, hell," Cato said, and after a moment decided against trying to invade Mishkell. Not only did the ever-expanding System bubble make it difficult to get his forces in position, but the largest dungeons needed far more than seven hours to get through.

He didn't know whether this elevation would only include Mishkell, or the entire heliosphere — after all, the white dwarfs in the Core weren't likely to come from nowhere.

"Yes, let's go." He took a moment to compile everything they were seeing into a report, and tweak the remaining infrastructure, including an emergency evacuation order for the smattering of postbiologicals being hosted on local server clusters. They were already near the point where FungusNet would have trouble broadcasting any replies. The organic transceiver couldn't handle hundreds of thousands or even millions of miles of broadcast distance with any assurance.

The sensor feeds could continue to stream to the surface, blindly transmitting in the hopes something could pick them up, but that was just not sufficient for anything short of an emergency. With everyone loaded up, Cato sent them all to the waiting area on Heimdall with extra redundancy to make sure they all arrived intact. He settled into the computronium substrate there with the rest of the refugees, the reports filtered out through the network and alerting everyone to what was happening.

They didn't even bother moving on from the digital vestibule, the three of them – along with a half-dozen digital Sydeans – turning to watch the feeds from Mishkell itself. More and more of the satellite cloud went offline as the System bubble expanded, but there was enough coverage to extrapolate a massive limb of System-space reaching out to the primary, which proceeded to shrink over the period of the next hour, dimming as the G-class star turned into a white dwarf, billions of years ahead of schedule.

Then the feed cut entirely as Mishkell was lost to the Core.