Thanqol

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

York!

"I hear you. I was actually kind of thinking of taking a vacation," said Orange. "Somewhere cooler. Might be hard to reach for a while."

That's what she thought he was saying, and she got it. Get out before this blows back on us. She stiffened her back. There'd be even less need for her when they went.

Dudekov!

"Well," said the Chase Black agent. "If you say so, sir. Excuse me, I've got to call this in."

He turned his back and stood by the doorway, sub-vocalizing into his throat mike. There was no urgency from him either, he fell into the position of guard duty with the practiced slouch of someone who knew to hide energy bars in their utility belt.

Breathless Dead

Mosaic!

"The first shape of anger is to conceal your anger," said Hera.

She never let it show. She never let the monster boiling beneath the surface show even for a second. She crushed it back and smiled. She poured tea and tended her bonsai. So patient, so calm! She never raised her voice, she never shouted, she never raged. She was only ever disappointed.

But that did not mean she was not angry.

There were certain things an Assassin could never say or do. Political reliability is essential, a lack of ambition, a lack of impulsivity. She was good at wearing the mask, even though it made bile raise in her throat. But she learned that other things could be done with that bile. A harsh word, a disappointed glare - if you were powerful enough and/or beloved enough you did not need to do much to break a heart or fill someone with terrified anxiety. Sometimes you didn't even need to do that - you just needed to break your pattern. Leave a breakfast early. Take a long walk. Plant a seed and let it grow and your victim would tear themselves apart for hours after hours after hours wondering what you meant, how bad it really was, how badly they'd damaged something you'd made precious to them.

A maid learned this kind of anger too.

Ember!

The electric storm ignites again but this time your Plover does not die. Bolt after bolt strikes you as you take your bearings, coursing through the metal frame and out through the cable, null energy again and again without effect. Electrical death is nothing compared to the firehose of power from which you now drink.

It's only incidental that your nervous system has to deal with thunderbolts of null energy coursing through it from every direction. Doctor Ceron, in her wisdom, designed for that. It's quite simple, you see: when a Ceronian is electrically overloaded then their brain shuts off entirely and they become an instinct engine of hormones, chemicals and pheromones. It's a berserker trance; an eternal moment of empty mind and designer instinct.

Better hope you're pointed in the right direction.

[Damage your Sense]

Dyssia!

That gets their attention.

The entire flock pulls away from the other Knights, away from the Reactor itself, away from every other priority and objective to come after you. After all, you are the Azura Knight - the one real person amidst all these rogue servitors, the inciting incident, the greatest prize. All of these other creatures mean nothing against you. Without you, they will be leaderless and lost.

And so they close in on you with nets and ropes. They bind you in chains and set their thrusters to maximum and tear away back towards the Slitted. It limps in the far distance, a broken eye, surrounded by frenzied moons that try to patch the scars you gave it.

You will, of course, be afforded the courtesy of a Knight. That means you will be taken to meet the the Crystal Knight.

Dolce!

"Oh, forgive the confusion," said 20022 modestly, taking a bow. "I was under the impression that you were following me because you were still interested in joining the Service. Of course, I'll have the Architect deposit you back on Beri after he has finished resonance mining the area around your home. I'll even put in to have your establishment rebuilt, not a splinter out of place."

It was remarkable, how someone could be polite and even nice, and not even a little bit good.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

York!

She relaxed; this was an argument. She was relieved; she could do arguments. Arguments made her feel worthwhile.

"A few reasons," said Orange. "The first is because we're currently experiencing another environmental collapse and the exact same people and systems are still in charge. Two is because it's the right thing to do. Three is because now we have an unprecedented opportunity to follow up because of how distracted everyone is and how many old people will be looking to clear their consciences. But the real reason..."

She took a deep breath. This was something that she believed.

"Because history is important," said Orange. "More important than anything in the battlefield for ideas, and Aevum doesn't have enough of it. People your age and your level of online suspected but didn't know, but kids going through the education system today sure as shit aren't taught the controversy. They're taught the polished version where nobody was to blame and all of those far away people were a statistic that didn't mean anything. It's almost poetic the way they say it, that it was just the natural culmination to the environmental disasters that had been ravaging earth to that point - one last act of nature. But it wasn't an act of nature, it was a decision made by people that hurt people who weren't them, just like every decision that incited the climate catastrophe in the fist place."

"Think about how many people lost their faith in America when they looked into America's history - the Trail of Tears, the United Fruit Company, the Red Scare. The historical records of those things are important because they're non emotive. They're not relevant, not defended, not part of the present day culture war - they're factual atrocities to be absorbed intellectually, and in so doing provide the intellectual framework that lets people unplug themselves from the emotional battle over politics. It's an undefended front that the shock jocks can't rage against; the wikipedia rabbit hole that helps intellectuals reason themselves out of unexamined positions; the revealed lie that makes you question everything else."

"Nobody cared then, just like nobody cared at the time about indigenous people during colonization," said Orange, impassioned. "Just like nobody cared at the time about the slaves of Rome, about the famines in India. But because nobody fought for the historical dead then those eras of history were allowed to sink into culture as facts rather than choices, as a golden age beset by external tragedies, something worth preserving and recreating and continuing. If Aevum began with a blood-soaked genocide then it's like an American learning about George Washington's slaves. The whole edifice creaks as its foundation shifts."

She sighed, looking down again. "It's the most important battle to me. It's just not the most important battle to all of me. Anyway, get Junta a condiments set. Hospital food's not great and I think he'd appreciate being able to add flavour to choice back in."

Dudekov!

The Chase Black didn't look sympathetic - he didn't quite have that range - but he managed a look of disgust that was close enough to pity. "You're delirious," he sneered. "Come on, sir. We need to get you debriefed. Can you walk? I can call for a stretcher."

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Orange: I need to issue a correction regarding my previous statement r.e. Squeaky Fromage.
Orange: Red's reaction was surface level correct but she didn't account for the fact that everyone associated with Fromage is about to have tabloid journalists tunneling into their laudromats. We'd be fighting the entire station's media core for interviews and we don't have the resources.
Orange: While that's what the people are hungry for, the people are stupid. We need to get onto the next story while they're still chasing the previous one.
Orange: York I'll talk to you offline.

York!

"Alright, I had a busy night," said Orange. She looked sharp, crisp, ironed. "And the most important thing I learned from all of it was that the Space Fountain wasn't an accident."

She held up her hands. "I know. I haven't been on the internet. I know it's the ur-conspiracy theory, but I got it from the horse's mouth. 'Australia was picked for being the largest industrialized landmass that was still mostly empty desert, that was always the plan'. Adrian Dudekov, the guy who I had Junta trail, let it slip. He'll never talk, though, not normally, not on the record. I'm digging deeper in a different direction but I'm at capacity and I need..." she groaned and massaged her temples. "I need more time. I don't have capacity to dig up a decades old cold case. But I can tell you there's something there worth digging into."

She quietly clenches her fists under the table.

She's being sidelined.

She's been put on this because it's the least important thing that the collective can't ignore. She used to be the centre of everything; the ascendant energy that co-ordinated her entire family into a single purpose. But she'd somehow been losing influence, pushed towards the periphery. First it had been Blue. Next was her. Some part of her always had to be the least important part.

She'd never thought it would be her.

*

Dudekov!

The door opens quietly.

The Chase Black agent creeps into the room, pistol leveled. Doors and corners, he takes each one like a professional who's been put on notice. Long slick black real leather jacket, widow's peak, corporate namebadge glittering gold and black, Malta Cross on his chest. Chase Black used to be the private security subsidiary of BlackSun. Their umbrella corporation had dissolved but branding is immortal.

"Clear," he said, after the sweep was completed. "Sir? Are you -" He blanched. Blanch was the right world; like green blood withdrawing to the periphery of the temples. Not all Chase Black employees were headhunted from Central Casting's list of SS officers, but anyone who wasn't they shoved in a full face helmet whenever possible. "Dear God. Are you all right?"

Huntresses of Hybrasil

<I don't know,> she signed. <I've never even heard of anyone doing that before. It's foesign to the outsider and speech only to family and intimates, so to mix the two is...>

It felt like more than that, somehow? The clarity of understanding in two languages at once, at an idea garbled by incompatibility but emerging stronger from the journey? The way the mind had to follow specific paths to try and imagine how to express an inexpressible idea, not just listening to what someone else said but reconstructing their thoughts, their meaning.

She imagined how that would mix with Hybrasilian words. Their words had such ambiguity to them, never requiring full commitment, allowing safety in implication. Even their words for 'I love you' had a subtext that implied it was a choice, a moment of weakness, a smug certainty in the knowledge that they knew enough about their opposite to feel fundamentally unthreatened, so much that they could allow the weakness of a blink.

But... to translate from the directness of foespeak into Hybrasilian? How could the Hybrasilian add ambiguity where there was none? How far would the language have to reach to express unguarded intent? How would -

She was daydreaming. She was blushing even harder. She had left the poor girl in the midst of a meltdown. <... it's fine, probably. Um. It might just be a me thing?>

Breathless Dead

Mosaic!

"Yes," said Hera. "It is. It is your fault when they look away. It is your fault when they fall. It is your inadequacy when they find happiness and purpose outside you, your failure when they come home with shared stories, and proof that you are unworthy of love when they love another. And this pathetic wretchedness will boil inside you, no matter your exterior glory, no matter the praise and reassurance you receive. The adoration of millions will feel as nothing compared to the loss of one, because the loss of one will reveal what the millions could not see."

She looked out at the polychromatic black. "To wear the regalia of control. To be unable to control the things that matter. It's enough to make you want to murder a child."

She sighed, gently stroking the ox's nose. "In the end, I never escaped my father. I couldn't, not like Zeus. His was the form my anger took when it reached the breaking point. And you? Your parents were monsters too, in their own ways - the Emperor and the Assassin. The anger they left you with sleeps inside you still, though the Lethe washed it away."

She offers her hand, delicate beneath the jewels. "I cannot tell you how to overcome your anger. But I can show you the shapes that will inspire it when it comes."

Ember!

The storm descends. It is a miracle you survived.

You are far from the ship, your tether is severed, and the primary defense you have against the flock all about you is the cloud of frozen debris from those you have already dispatched. You are boxed in; they cannot come in, and you cannot come out.

From your vantage, you see the Reactor Sphere deploy.

Azura spaceships are modular, orrerys of spheres, different platforms for weapons, shields and armour. What comes now is an aspect of the Slitted; a secondary reactor that was close enough to a gravitation catapult to be launched at ultra high speed out to this deep space engagement. This far from a gravity well it maneuvers like a coral reef but it doesn't need to - all it needs to do is provide the tethers to empower the flock to engage in close range battle with your Knights. In fact, already plovers fly out with cable spools to revivify enemies already disabled.

This is the target. But how to escape the trap? How to strike?

Dyssia!

You land a direct ELF strike on the system defense Plover. It doesn't flinch. Too late you see the tether - too late you see the support reactor.

They changed the rules of the puzzle on you.

Enemies that should be disabled light you up, blasting you from every side. Your tether is cut and the Plover jolts cold and still. You can see whirling lights as the Knights try to reattach you but they are far away.

Still, though, just because your machine is disabled doesn't mean you are. A Knight of the Publica, unarmed and dismounted, is meant to be the match for any Plover. Azura Doctrine would state that you would be the most valuable captive and most dangerous enemy, but you fought in an unmarked and ancient engine from the human empire and so the servitors here overlook you.

Dolce!

20022 looks askance. "Why, yes. You don't know the Kneel Before The Victor Prayer? It's standard issue in the Service, a prayer to Mars that is answered with knowledge of how a particular battle concluded. Invaluable, really, it's very important to have things ready for a new incoming administration. I was going through it on the way here, and frankly it's a disaster - the Crystal Knight humiliated," he said this with an especially neutral expression, "the Slitted critically damaged, the Imperial warship escaped with a crew full of rogue servitors, the whole population of Beri. This is a regional issue now."

Despite the tutting and shaking of his head, there was the subtle impression that 20022 was pleased. Not at the escape, but because the escape meant he had license to get off Beri.

"Naturally, the Regional Director for Genetic Stability is Biomancer-General Liquid Bronze," he said. "A colourful figure, hero of the Avatara War. He's a rising star in the Skies, especially after the Pix fiasco unseated his main rivals. You'll like him."

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Pink!

Crystal's Kiss has done her work. It has drawn the absolute attention of the gunship, that hideous piece of military hardware. But if Chase Black knew November at all, they'd have known that she never had it in her to be monogamous.

On a rooftop behind the gunship a second laser cannon lifted itself up on its hydraulics. Pink had her tablet out, rapidly feeding it targeting coordinates. And, with a gentle caress of the firing lever, Fiona's Bite let herself be known.

The second rotor went out, pitching the gunship down into the middle of the marina. Dozens of luxury yachts waited to catch it, quiet and empty and costing on average $400 a minute over their ten year lifespans. The gunship tangles, breaking its momentum amidst their breaking masts, crew huddling in the prison of their impact foam.

[Preparedness MOS]

Black!

When Dudekov stood up all the blood rushed to his head.

November, for all her skills and talents, does not have many formal qualifications. The one exception to this is that she possesses a full medical license with a geriatrician specialty. Mrs. Everest had an unending tide of health complaints and absolutely hated doctors - "filthy vultures who make their money gladhanding with the sick" - and so November's early career was marked with sitting dead-eyed through an online medical degree. She never had any passion for it, but when it came to calculating the exact amounts of sedatives to give an old person she knew how to scan his medical bracelet, check for allergies and metabolism factors, and deliver a compound that wouldn't start having effect until there was an adrenal spike.

This was actually off plan; she'd anticipated the drug wouldn't kick in until she got to strap him into the surgical suite, but it made a useful backstop for situations like this.

Black, lying slumped on the seat, rubbed her face where Dudekov had kicked it. She looks up at him with the same ruthless calm as always, as his vision starts to blur. "I told you before," she said, as a helicopter crashed into a marina behind her, "don't try to pull dumb action movie stunts at your age."

[Preparedness 3/8 Pharmacy 0/1 4+4 8]

*

From there, it's time to get out.

The motorboat roars away on autopilot, to come to a stop inside a cloudwater drain. It's a diversion; November assumes the Crimson Tower cover identity. She's the Johnny On The Spot when the fire engines start roaring in, organizing dispatch and response briefly before commandeering one of their transport haulers. She pulls away in the chaos, heading for a hotel safe room with a very permissive set of camera shadows.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Black!

"The Mandate of Heaven is lost when the Emperor can no longer control the rivers," said Black, nodding like she agreed with everything he said. "And it is the dragons of the rivers who decide when they will no longer be controlled."

Pink!

Power draw is the problem. There's not enough battery power to do what she needs. She doesn't have the power to fight a helicopter.

More importantly, she doesn't have the right kind of power.

Crystal's Kiss is a classy lady. A lady like that you can't offer the potato chips of an industrial wall socket, and she regrets having to feed her that already. Pink felt the buck, felt the shift, felt herself almost lose control for a moment there. She needs to do better by her girl.

Brown pulls up by the marina. Pink leaps over the side onto the dock, cable spool in hand, and sprints at full speed down the dock.

Power draw is the problem. Crystal's Kiss barely tolerated the batteries, they were just to shoot down the warning shots and get her to the restaurant. The problem is there isn't a wall socket in the world capable of charging an industrial laser to fire multiple times at high power. The only place where you'd find something like that is... well, in the docks of Zeus, where oligarchs were unwilling to wait an hour to charge their high tech electric yachts, and had ultra high powered energy flows installed.

No hazard tape. No secure locks. Those would quite spoil the view, wouldn't they?

Pink makes it before the helicopter draws into position, slamming the extension cord into place and slamming down the breaker. Brown aims at the sky - and the lady steps out to dance.

[Athletics 5/8, High Society 0/1, 4+6 10]

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Black!

Black nodded. "You're absolutely right," she said. "If I was running the game of station maintenance, I'd start asking questions. Like, why is the air in Ares right on the borderline of hazardous? Why does Zeus have this recreational canal network while Hermes is experiencing water rationing? Why is the housing density in Aphrodite eight times what its life support is rated to handle? Why have these problems been persistently worsening over time? Eventually I'd want to do something about it. I'm sure you can understand how it feels to have your name associated with bad policy."

She leaned back. "But the thing is, I came to that conclusion anyway. And you, fool that you are, have created the perfect conditions for my takeover. You see, all you have done is reinvent monarchy. You have built a world where by necessity one member of my family must reign supreme over all of Aevum. You put a child on the throne and controlled the world through a regency council, but now I have taken him off the board and given him an education. He will not be a puppet again. The only choice that was left to you was, which of us do you enthrone? But you hesitated and now I have taken the choice from you. So instead, all that is left for me to do is thank you - you who have carved me a throne, you who are about to tell me the secret names of all my enemies, you who are my greatest servant. None of this would be possible without you."

Pink!

[Shooting 0/1 Preparedness 4/8 2+5 7]

The battery pack ejects from the side of the laser cannon. It hits the ground with a percussive crash, the thunder after the bolt of lightning that lit up the night. A close thing. She'd used more power than had been budgeted for the first round.

She immediately hurls herself into the work of reloading; pulling open the fastners, the click and clunk of the next pack slotted into place.

"Time?" she yelled back to Brown.
"Three minutes, keep them off us!"
She nodded grimly. She patted the warm side of the cannon. It needed a name, she decided. It was a sword of light that would win her the skies, a thing of terrible beauty - oh, of course it had to be the Crystal's Kiss. With that thought, she knew that she had become immortal.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Black!

"Two years?" asked Black. "I could fix it in a month. I could fix it in an afternoon with my siblings behind me, and fix the underlying systemic problems in a decade after that. Would you like to talk about mass death? Why don't we talk about the smouldering crater where the continent of Australia used to be. The Space Fountain collapsed due to the untrained scab labour that was mass produced to replace us. The current situation in which you find yourselves is due to the same untrained scab labour that was mass produced to replace us fucking up in the same way, resulting in a station permanently on the brink of a failure cascade. You patched that hole with my brother. Perhaps you thought you were kind. Perhaps you think of playing video games all day every day forever, unable to escape, quit, take a break, receive love, comfort or support or family connection as kindness. Or maybe that was just necessary."

"After all," she went on. "The alternative was negotiating with us. Treating us with respect. Listening to our concerns and complaints. Offering us wages and working conditions. Perhaps even letting us show off a little. None of those things were necessary, only the parts that involved violence and brain surgery and a family torn apart and locked in boxes for decades. I agree with you. You did what was necessary. And never one step further. This is what the world looks like when you do what is necessary at the expense of what is good, and kind, and right."

Pink!

Resources it's going to be.

Pink finishes assembling the laser cannon emplacement. A bulky, silver tube, shining bright and painted with fire like flowers. It's a repurposed shipbreaker cutting beam, chassis still marked with yellow and black hazard stripes.

Power draw will be the issue. The battery packs for this thing are huge and each only lasts a single full powered shot or a few seconds of rapid fire. It's not a... good weapon, exactly; a direct hit at max power might put a pinhole sized puncture into the helicopter, and it'd have to be very close for her to stand a chance of hitting something critical.

Pink slots the first into place with a deeply satisfying click and spins the barrel. Effective or not, it has insanely good kinaesthetics. Each kur-chunk, click, quick release and pivot of the weapon felt industrial and slick all at once, like going through the steps of a rhythm game with cosmic destruction as the finale. Just wait until she fired it.