Chương 68: Chapter 23 — Last Chances

Cato-Heimdall was already in framejack when the news came in. The arrival of all the new Alums thanks to Project Exodus had already put him into war mode, so he, along with Raine, Leese, and even Meshka and Temek Uriv, were all in the simulated war room, with feeds on every wall showing surveillance footage and updates from other worlds. The closure of the portals had come first, ceasing the flow of Alums out from the Core.

It was incredibly fortunate that the portals weren't actually gone, merely that they barred people from going through, so he still could take in the digitization of those who had fled.

"Every single world," Cato said, almost in disbelief.

"The entire frontier is getting shut down." There were hundreds of thousands of instances of either a Cato or a Lineage reporting that the Deity had left the world — and that there was a quest for the inhabitants to follow. The restrictions on lower ranks traversing portals had been lifted some time back, but this wasn't merely the evacuation order from a world purge, which was bad enough. [Quest: Enter the portals. These one-way portals will lead to an appropriately ranked zone in the Core. Your current world will be removed from the System.] Heimdall itself didn't show any evidence of such a thing, and in fact none of the Inner Worlds seemed to be affected. But the portals meant that the billions of people spread across hundreds of thousands of worlds were being sent out of Cato's reach. To a place that was already doomed, even if they didn't know it yet.

"We always thought it was really a tossup whether you moved first or them," Temek pointed out.

"In a way I'm surprised you didn't already."

"I didn't want to force anything until my anti-Core weapon was further along, but now I don't have a choice." He still worried about the Core opening portals to other worlds, ones that he couldn't get to, but he'd finally gotten the feeds from some of the severed worlds way back during the very first annexation, and they came with good news.

It seemed that the System on a world failed on its own when it was severed from the network and the Core, which meant that Cato didn't have to worry about some obscure missed world turning into a second expansionistic System.

"We're taking the frontier now." Across the entire frontier, versions of Cato activated The Phage. Chill Out saturated the air, putting the vast majority of people into forced lassitude, and micro-warframes assembled themselves from the ground. More rained from the sky as forces moved in, but without The Phage there was no telling how many people would have been stolen away. Exterminatus timers started to appear as worlds registered his presence, while digital citizens scrambled to deal with the sudden deadline.

Some people moved, others duplicated themselves across words, and some even reconciled back down to a single individual. FungusNet reached peak capacity and stayed there as activity exploded over half a million worlds. Despite the exterminatus threat, most of the frontier didn't need to be mass-digitized. With no deity oversight or high-rank elites to stymie him, Cato's forces made short work of the dungeons and Nexus buildings.

On world after world, the technological population sent their final signoffs and the portals closed, the planets returning to lightspeed communications only. Some of those planets were only dozens of light-years from others, but many were hundreds or even thousands, and even the deep-space communications arrays had their limits.

Those worlds would take centuries or more of infrastructure building, sending out slower-than-light manufacturing probes, to link up with the nearest planets, but every Cato had all the technology: the database he'd taken with him had long been copied to every single world, providing all the wealth of humanity's efforts. In a way, the far-flung worlds of the System would end up more human than anything else, as for most of them there was no real culture other than the endless fight.

At the same time, Alums that had escaped the Inner Worlds continued to filter out to Hunting Worlds, heading to prepared digitization pods waiting in orbit. The digital Alums were transmitted over FungusNet to Heimdall itself, as electromagnetic radiation still crossed over the portal boundaries, even if physical matter no longer could. He was very certain that if the Core Deities had realized they could wreck everything simply by turning the portals opaque, they would have done so long ago.

The numbers were depressing. Out of something around twenty thousand Alums, only eight hundred had been contacted and convinced to leave. Chief among those was Shiel-Ruyu, who had done the bulk of the recruiting — and likely had ended up killing a few other Alums in the process, but Cato would be hypocritical if he condemned Shiel-Ruyu for that. Oddly enough, Shiel-Ruyu was two intelligences in a single body, rather like the jager frame — only, this was the natural version and far better designed.

There were even a few humans among the Alums, although not as many as Cato might have hoped. The bulk of the humans seemed to prefer the System to their birth civilization, even if a reasonable facsimile of the System could easily be constructed in virtual reality or with an angelnet. Though that wasn't too much of a surprise, as most people with the right personality to thrive in a combat-focused apocalypse were not interested in playing nice to begin with. People like Lorraine were oddities.

"I'm going to start greeting our guests," Cato said, tearing himself away from the external feeds.

"You can join me if you like."

"I want to meet Shiel-Ruyu," Leese said, joining him at the virtual console.

"Not so much interested in any of the others."

"We'll wait 'till they're integrated," said Meshka, which was fair enough. Onboarding got fairly repetitious, and everyone had experience with some degree of it at this point. Despite there being hundreds of Alums, Cato-Heimdall was interviewing each of them individually. With framejack speed, he had more than enough time, especially since the gestalts themselves were held in stasis until he'd assigned them to a substrate. Despite all that was going on, for Cato-Heimdall there was nothing more urgent.

"Then let's say hi," Cato said, pinging Raine and Leese with an invitation to the holding space he was using. It took the form of a large, well-appointed sitting room with plenty of comfortable seats; the walls were burnished wood and the floor covered with a thick rug, a fireplace with a cheery fire and enormous windows looking out onto a snow-covered landscape.

The psychological comfort of warmth in a cold environment was pretty universal, and while the rustic surroundings might be alien to people used to System constructs, all the components were simple and identifiable. Raine and Leese settled down in a couch, while Cato remained standing as he tweaked the remaining furniture to fit Shiel-Ruyu's frame.

Then he instantiated the former Alum's body, seating it on a couch and covering it with a simulacrum of the leather armor Shiel-Ruyu had been wearing when he was scanned, and finally loaded in the gestalt. Shiel-Ruyu looked around, blinked, and then tilted his head at Raine and Leese.

"I didn't think you two would be here," he said.

"We're not the same Raine and Leese you knew," Leese replied, tailtip flicking back and forth.

"The Sydean Lineage is headed back to Sydea. We're here to get everyone settled in Heimdall."

"Bizarre," Shiel-Ruyu said, peering at them closely.

"You are different from them. I was told, but it's still odd to see in truth. And you are a different Cato, then?"

"Yes, I'm Cato-Heimdall, but I have all that you discussed with Cato-Sechul," Cato said, tapping his temple with a forefinger.

"Under the circumstances, I believe that you would prefer a networked Elysium, connected so you can talk to or visit all the other Alums you convinced to leave. We already have some here, as well as refugees from purged worlds and even some former Deities."

"I'd rather not be stuck by myself," Shiel-Ruyu agreed, glancing at Cato and rising from the couch to start pacing around the room, inspecting the decorations and tchotchkes.

"But, you know, I think I'd like to start entirely fresh. Something completely different, where I can just throw myself at it and learn as I go."

"Simple enough," Cato said, looking to Raine and Leese. They had been doing as much work on the various Elysiums as he, coupled with Yaniss' teaching matrix. Since part of the goal was easing people out of the System, and away from continuous fighting, they'd tried to manufacture and adjust scenarios to make them more appealing to ex-System types.

"If you want something really different, maybe cyber-noir," Raine suggested, not needing a reference to know what was available. She'd taken to scenario construction like a natural, and had probably put in twice as much time as Cato and Leese combined in perfecting them.

"I don't have any idea what that is," Shiel-Ruyu said happily.

"Keep in mind that wherever you go, it's not like the System," Cato cautioned.

"That is to say, you don't have to stay there. You can take a break, build your own realm, visit with others, and then return. Or you can stay fully immersed, it's entirely your choice."

"Like I could have a Deity Realm when I get tired?" Shiel-Ruyu asked, and Leese shrugged.

"Close to it," she acknowledged.

"Though some people don't like that, and want to stay inside their chosen reality. We have different options for different people, which is the opposite of how the System did it, and it might feel a little odd. But I'm sure you'll get used to it."

"It's not like there's a choice now!" Shiel-Ruyu said, though in good humor.

"We already decided we wanted to do something else. I'd like to wait for Leyel and Goyle, though. Be nice to coordinate with them."

"I'll get them," Cato said, sorting through the list of Alums to find Shiel-Ruyu's companions, and instantiating them next to the former Alum. They were all different species — Cato actually knew who Goyle was from before, while Leyel was a white-scaled, whip-thin woman who had more snake then lizard in her ancestry. His presence wasn't even necessary to orient the other Alums, as Shiel-Ruyu had their attention immediately, the three of them falling into a rapid-fire exchange.

It was actually a surprise how easily they seemed to adjust, or at least didn't seem to care they were no longer in the System, compared to the tutorial needed for both gods and low ranks — but Alums were supposed to be something special. Cato was still surprised at how sanguine they were, but he preferred that to the kind of aimless despair or anger that occurred with the people he'd been forced to digitize on purged worlds.

Once Shiel-Ruyu and his friends were ready, Cato transferred them to their permanent substrates in one of the massive server clusters orbiting a distant gas giant. He'd probably overbuilt, as there were dozens of clusters with millions of distinct substrates in addition to mass-computronium blocks capable of hosting billions more — and that was just the one cluster. But better to overbuild than to be caught lacking in an extremity.

As Cato, Raine, and Leese were processing the Alums, the Phage on Heimdall was sending Big Bad Bug Bombs into dungeon portals. Chill Out was being produced in enormous amounts, each strain tailored to a different species, but held in small, plant-like pods rather then released. He needed to coordinate everything as closely as possible. In orbit, antimatter fighters and particle beams were shifted into position in case Cato needed to annihilate things.

Being one of the Inner Worlds, Heimdall's surface wasn't liable to survive the removal of the System anyway — there were two enormous floating mountains and a number of cave layers that went down thousands of miles. At least a third of the crust was structurally unstable, and the result after System removal could euphemistically be referred to as a restructuring event.

In real terms, it wasn't likely that one stone would stand upon another afterwards — those that weren't melted or buried by uncontrolled volcanic activity, at least. As ruinous as the process was going to be, he couldn't put it off. While his infrastructure could technically survive the loss of the primary star, such an event would be cataclysmic and send all the gas giants off in different directions.

There was only a single reason why he wasn't planning on taking every one of the Inner Worlds in the same way simultaneously, and that was because he still needed a line to the System itself. Whichever version was the last to leave would still need to make sure that new planets hadn't been opened, that some last-minute surprise didn't imperil everything he'd already done. Not until the Core was gone.

He was just getting ready to trigger the cascade when a transmission came in from one of the monitors placed on the deity comms devices. They hadn't seen nearly as much use as he'd hoped, whether due to fear, disinterest, or ignorance, but he hadn't abandoned the premise. Most of the places he'd put them were gone by now, of course, as frontier worlds closed down by tens and hundreds, but some still remained.

The sudden activation was surprising enough, but he certainly wasn't expecting the familiar figure on the other end.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. Muar didn't bother with interviewing any of the late and unmourned Marus' associates directly. They would lie, dissemble, and waste his time — or worse, actively cover up what Muar was looking for. Instead, he walked through the space between realms, extending his senses through his [Interface] as he probed each System Space directly.

As [Overdeity], every single one was open to him, utterly transparent and stripped of any protections. It was, he mused, as simple as lifting the top of a box and peering in. Though he wasn't limited to merely his own senses when surveying the Estates. His Interface queried that of his target, providing Muar with a wealth of information about the actions of the god in question. Their Interface requests, their essence stores and transfers, their scry communications with others; all of it was open to him.

For many things, that did not help much, as he still had to look, think, and make decisions. When he was looking for something very specific, it meant he could breeze through a wealth of information, much of it that deities would prefer to keep hidden, and extract the few useful bits. In this case, he found a trace of Marus after only the third name on the list.

The Interface confirmed receipt of a [Divine Communications Array] from Marus several years back, which would have boded ill for the deity in question except for the fact that the array had never been activated. It seemed that Deity Emsen had simply stored it and not touched it again since; a fair enough response, as the [Divine Communications Array] was relatively esoteric and expensive to use. Emsen certainly didn't have the essence reserves to invoke it casually.

Without bothering to ask or, in fact, mention anything at all, Muar plucked the device from Emsen's storage. A thought struck him as he inspected it, and he queried it through his Interface. While Marus was no longer around to question, the [Divine Communications Array] itself would have some links that remained. Sure enough, the array had seven siblings, scattered among other gods, and a number of broken links where such siblings once were.

Two of them had been used, and Muar made note of the deities there for further questioning. He plucked all of them from where they rested, testing each. Five of them were no longer connected to anything, their mortal-ranked twin presumably destroyed. The rest of them of them, however, still resonated. Without bothering to even leave the in-between space, Muar energized one of them.

Unlike ordinary Deities, he did not have to pay the extra tithe to the System to use one of the arrays — and he had no shortage of essence, either. It projected a view of the other end, which was a small inn room with a single individual, a fairly unremarkable specimen of one of the many crab-like clans. But Muar knew who he was looking at.

"Cato," he said.

"Muar," was the reply. Cato didn't seem startled to see him, and Muar was in turn unsurprised that Cato seemed to be expecting the contact. Whatever kind of being Cato was, Muar knew that any emotions were merely performative. An act to achieve a desired end.

"I assume that if I pulled you into a private space, that body of yours would be just a hollow puppet," Muar said. Considering how many incarnations of Cato had been killed over the [Crusade], he didn't bother trying to threaten the Copper-ranked mortal.

"You assume correctly," Cato said.

"Though if you wish to continue this conversation, you may wish to redirect everything to one of the Inner Worlds. As I'm sure you know, the frontier is collapsing quite rapidly." Muar's hand flexed, just briefly, at the lack of care in Cato's tone, the casualness far more pointed than something like gloating would ever be. But unlike many mortals, or even gods, Muar wasn't controlled by his emotions. No matter his fury at Cato, he was more than aware of the value in being able to discuss matters with the invader.

Not terms of course; that was entirely out of the question. But to interrogate, to prod, to force Cato into revealing things — all of that could be useful. Though it was not his alone to decide.

"Perhaps it is time we had a true discussion," Muar said, and accessed his Interface to transfer the building with Cato – one which was otherwise empty of occupants – to the outskirts of one of the cities on the nexus world of Gripke. Then he crossed back to Misse, not bothering to interrupt the Array.

He didn't truly need to navigate space like other Deities, a simple thought being enough to return him to where Misse was talking with one of the Clan Elders, and a simple twist of essence being enough to shield the projection from anyone but Misse. She took the situation in at a glance and held up her hand to stop whatever diatribe was in progress.

"Unless you can conjure worlds of your own accord, it is in your interests to calm your Clan members and organize yourselves. Have I seized your essence reserves or your personal effects? No, I merely severed you from a corruption you did not even realize. Cato has shown he can kill deities, after all — I do not imagine you would wish to test that yourself." Misse waved the Elder away.

"Now, I have an urgent matter to attend to." With a wave of her hand Misse moved herself and Muar back to her office, and turned to regard the fairly ordinary-looking mortal visible in the array. Or at least, superficially ordinary. His lack of surprise or humility when beholding a deity – not to mention his possession of the mortal half of a [Divine Communications Array] – meant that Misse could guess his identity without Muar having to introduce them.

"Misse Eln," Cato said, not using any honorific. Muar bristled internally, but of course gave no outward sign. That sort of disrespect was only to be expected from such a heretic.

"I have heard of your reputation and your consolidation of power. Would I be correct to think that the sudden absorption of Mishkell and the collapse of the frontier is your doing?"

"Rather, it is your doing," Misse said, studying Cato as if he were some species of repulsive bug.

"None of it would be necessary were you not our enemy."

"Not yours," Cato disagreed.

"My quarrel is with the System."

"There is no difference," Muar said, having heard this line of reasoning before.

"The System is us. We live in it, we nourish it, we help it grow and expand, just as it provides us with what we need to grow and ascend. Not merely essence, but challenge, guidance, and knowledge." He wasn't arguing because he expected Cato to listen, but rather because he simply could not let the sheer effrontery of Cato's words to go unaddressed. For his own sake, if nothing else.

"If it were that simple, I wouldn't be here," Cato said, chitin scraping as he shifted in his chair.

"You are entirely free to live as you like, but not at the cost of other peoples, other civilizations. I am perfectly happy to offer any deity that wishes it an existence in something like the System, but one that won't affect other people." Muar's muzzle curled in repulsion at the so-called offer, while Misse audibly scoffed.

"You offer to make us slaves in a world of your own design, when we have gained power through our own efforts in the divine System?" Misse's voice dripped with scorn.

"Especially since, for all that you have done, it has become obvious that there is nothing you can truly do to harm us if we do not wish it."

"You wouldn't call losing half a million worlds harm?" Cato's head tilted, but Muar didn't trust it. Everything Cato said and did was manipulation.

"He is trying to bait out information, and none of his appearance is genuine," Muar sent Misse through the Interface, dropping into fast-time to do it.

"The only value in this is whether we can trick him into betraying any of his own plans, to see if he has any way to stop us."

"We might be able to get more than that, depending on his true goals," Misse disagreed.

"But it is good that our thinking is in accord on this matter." Muar kept an eye on Cato, and he saw that, despite being in fast-time, there were indications that Cato had somehow noticed their lightning-fast exchange. Nothing Muar could articulate, just the look in the crab-puppet's eyes.

"I'm surprised you don't know," Misse said in reply to Cato, flicking her ears in lazy nonchalance.

"The frontier is really not that important. I can rebuild it, and better than it was before."

"At the cost of all the people within it," Cato said. Like Misse, his tone was conversational rather than argumentative, as if those that he was stealing away to his own hell didn't matter.

"You would have killed them all regardless," Muar said, forcing himself to match Misse's aplomb rather than snarl as he would have liked. He was a Deity, [Overdeity] even, and Cato was not worthy enough for Muar to break his comportment.

"We have provided them a way off, but you have stopped it." His Interface told them that very few mortals had evacuated through the portals, and almost all were still on the worlds that had already been targeted for expurgation.

"Very, very few people on any of the worlds I have secured have died," Cato replied.

"But of course, I imagine you think that any existence outside the System is tantamount to death. It is not, and those who have joined me would testify about that. Even one of your own."

"You mean Marus?" Misse laughed.

"He is hardly an exemplar among Deities."

"And yet he was a deity, and can speak about what I have provided." Cato sighed in the odd bubbly manner of his puppet-species.

"I am not deluded enough to think that I can convince you of my correctness in this matter, only how earnest I am about it. How little interest I have in punishment or control of those within the System, even deities. Only in removing the threat the System itself poses." Misse laughed, a short sharp bark of disbelief.

"You speak of threats, yet you are the one who has brought the battle to us." She shook her head slowly, ears forward.

"You cannot be so disingenuous."

"I didn't start the war," Cato replied.

"The System killed more people when it invaded Earth than exist in the whole of the System." It was an absurd claim, but like many Cato made, if it were a lie it existed to no purpose. Muar had no doubt Cato believed it, even if it was not the actual truth of the matter.

"I would rather not kill anyone if I don't have to, which is why my offer is open to everyone."

"There may be an opportunity here," Misse mused to Muar over her Interface in fast-time.

"There are many lesser deities who will be restless now, despite their assured future. Ones who would rebel and make trouble, not understanding the designs of the divine System. If we allow Cato to make his offer, we remove from our ranks the cowards and malcontents, while suffering none of the issues of having to deal with them ourselves."

"I do not like ceding anything to this invader," Muar disagreed.

"Why give him any sort of choice or a platform? It is bad enough that he is taking all those who could not get to the Core in time!"

"He may not be of the System, but the lessons remain the same," Misse replied thoughtfully.

"We are challenged, and those who are unworthy fail. Whether that is through stagnation or death. Yet it has been a long time since a true challenge appeared for many deities. It is a simple challenge; are they weak enough to abandon the divine System for the obviously false promise?" Muar considered the logic for a moment, tail twitching in fast-time. While it grated to offer any ground to Cato, he had to admit Misse had a point.

More, he had seen himself the weakness of many deities, the problems of those who had gone too long without the crucible the System provided. If the next great challenge was something more insidious than Cato, anyone willing to take an offer now would be likely to betray them in the future.

"Then we allow it, but the decision must be made now," Muar suggested.

"Don't let them dither or negotiate, and force Cato to respond on our terms. If he offers to take them in, then he must be ready and able to do so now."

"One chance, and no more," Misse agreed, before addressing Cato.

"If that is what you claim, then we shall test it." She flicked a finger, opening a communications scry with every single clan god. Through his Interface, Muar could see the broadcast spread out among all the deities, without a single exception.

"I am [True Deity] Misse," she said, voice and image sent out to tens of thousands.

"The System has chosen me to lead and direct all things, and it is I who have severed the frontier to remove Cato's corruption. Some of you may be unsatisfied with this, and may not believe in the new dawn we will all soon see. For you, there is an option: if you feel you can no longer rise to the challenges the System offers, Cato will take you." She waved to the scry-view, where Cato's unimpressive puppet-body stood.

"Any god who wishes to leave the System and join me simply needs to go to the bounds of the System's influence in any of the Inner Worlds. I will pick you up from there." Cato said, apparently unworried by the clear disadvantage.

"If you still desire to manage worlds, that can be arranged. If you want to try something different, that can be arranged too. This is not something I can force upon you, but I do warn you — I have set in motion an action against the Core that can no longer be stopped or deflected. There is still time to leave, but less than you might think."

"Indeed, far less," Misse said.

"For the Inner worlds will become Core Worlds soon enough, and then we can rebuild anew." She severed the connection with the [Divine Communications Array] and lifted her head imperiously, gazing through the scry-link at all the System's subjects.

"If you are a coward, go. There is no place for you here."

"Time on target," Cato-Aleph said from the tactical center of the Nicoll-Dyson Beam Parry This You Filthy Casual. The focus of the room was the strategic display highlighting every single installation created for Cato's solution to the Core, along with completion percentages and timing data. The hologram floated in a military-style room of dark metal and sharp angles, in front of a massive viewscreen displaying the weapon in question. The largest weapon Cato had ever seen.

A Nicoll-Dyson beam was a very simple, but very devastating concept — surround a star with mirrors, and then use those mirrors to redirect all its light to some distant point. While it wasn't a laser, that hardly mattered — the output of an entire star redirected and focused onto a single target was orders of magnitude more than Cato could ever have created with fusion bombs or particle beams. Nor was NDB Parry This the only one.

As soon as he had found out the nature of the Core, he had seeded twenty four versions of himself around stars of sufficient luminosity, launching from the Inner Worlds with the closest physical proximity to the core. The dense cluster of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud meant there plenty of candidates within only a few light-years of the Core, all of which had spent nearly eighty years building manufacturing infrastructure and then, only in the past two or three years, actually producing the mirrors.

"Time on target, aye," Raine said, keeping an eye on the countdowns. They weren't all entirely complete, but it was good enough. Adding mirrors was part of normal maintenance anyway, considering the volatility of a near-solar environment, and it wasn't like they had a single shot. The concentrated light beam could last as long as the sun did, a permanent destructive force aimed at the System Core.

An assault from twenty-four stars, coordinated across light-years, targeted at a single point in space less than a million miles wide.

"Targeting," Cato said, as if anyone needed the command. He knew that when this weapon hit, it would kill thousands, millions. Maybe more. All those deaths would be on his hands, but the alternative was leaving the System to forever expand, murdering billions and rendering civilizations down to the same undifferentiated mush as it went.

"Targeting," Raine said, tapping her console, while Leese monitored the sensor systems on the NDB Parry This. Nobody had ever actually made a Nicoll-Dyson beam before. They were too large and effectively monopolized a star, so of course Sol had found no use for them. But Summer Civilizations had delved deep into the insane logistical requirements of creating such weapons, as their basic components were so simple that the simulations were relatively straightforward.

The materials and electronics to create satellites that used photon pressure to balance gravity – so they didn't have to rely on orbits – were well known and widely used, so in many respects the weapon was just ordinary commercial technology on an incredible scale. The archive from Cato's father had included the relatively minor tweaks needed to turn basic designs into components for such a device, and he'd spent the last eighty-odd years putting them to use.

Minutes passed as the signal propagated from the minor planet that had been turned into the control center bunker, then minutes more as the signal returned. On the viewscreen, the orbiting swarm of mirrors shifted, ambient light dimming to almost nothing as the star's output was, in coordination with twenty-four others, turned to a target five light-years away. Cato and the sisters made their final preparations to transmit out before he gave the last, wholly unnecessary order.

"Fire."