To Walk the Constellations Pt. 13

Meetra nodded. Techne frowned. "So, we can send messages to anyone on Eudamonia. Big deal."

"And what is a mind but a message in a fleshy meat puppet!" Enriquah exclaimed, tapping her nose with one hand and pointing at Techne with the other. "Or a more sleeky, sexy chromey puppet?"

Techne turned to look at Meetra. "Is she..." She looked back at Enriquah. "Are you seriously fucking suggesting what I think you're suggesting?"

"Farcasting!" Mal said, his eyes shining.

"Jesus Christ that's the stupidest fucking idea I've heard in my life," Rossck said, leaning back in his seat.

One of the Alliance lieutenants -- a marine by the color on his armband -- coughed. "Uh, Farcasting?" he asked, scratching at his blue-white chin beard of crystalline growths. The musical sounds of the crystals rubbing against his gloved hand was shockingly loud.

"Simple," Mal said. "You disassemble a human mind on the nano-scale, record the data, then reconstruct it on the far end of the communication beam with a river of mana. The next best thing to teleportation."

"Exactly!" Enriquah said, clapping her hands.

Rossck sat up, then put his hands on his knees. His tail started lashing from side to side and his teeth flashed as he growled: "Or, in other words, a fucking murder box."

"Well, when you put it like that, everything sounds bad," Enriquah said, her hair fanning out.

"That's what it is," Rossck snapped. "You know what happens when you disassemble a brain? It dies. It'll just be another Rossck, a perfect copy of Rossck, stepping out of the other end. No thanks. Not doing it."

"That's not actually true," Mal said, slowly.

Everyone in the room looked at him.

Mal blinked, as if he hadn't realized he'd be the center of attention. He coughed. "W-Well,uh, on Atom City, they have a lot of time for this kind of research. What with, ah, their wealth and their security and-"

"Yes, yes, we're all jealous," Techne said, grinning at Mal, who glared at her.

"The current theory is that human minds are quantum effects operating on biological or comptech systems," Mal said, pressing his feet-palms together and interlocking his toes. "Which means two perfectly recreated minds should be able to crosstalk while both exist. Then removing one snaps your consciousness to that body."

Enriquah blinked at him. Then she said: "Oooooooooooooooooooh!"

"Oh? What's oh?" Techne asked.

"That's why Lord Drak kept his powers," Enriquah said, cheerfully. "That's been fuckin bugging me."

"Wait, Lord Drak's done this?" Meetra asked.

"Yeah, that's how I knew it'd work," Enriquah said. "...did I forget to mention that?" She shrugged. "Whatever. But the Hegemony has tried cloning and printing copies of Hegemonic Knights, and it's never worked, they're never anything more than regular humans. So, if a human consciousness is a quantum effect, and the Machines can influence quantum effects at a distance, that's how they can entangle themselves with us, and through us, influence local tech!" She clapped her hands and her hair strands together. "Yay! Science!"

Techne slapped her hands on her thighs and stood. "All right," she said. "Sold. Whose with me?"

Rossck hissed. "Fuckin fine. But if the other me isn't me, I'm going to kick your ass when you join me in hell, Captain."

"How could I turn this opportunity down?" Mal asked.

"I'm in," the marine lieutenant said. "And if I can't find a platoon of troops who'll want to run the risk, I'll eat my hat."

Meetra nodded. "All right," they said. "We've got QE reservoirs from the Victrix. We grab the one connected to Eudaimonia and you-" They pointed at Enriquah. "-Build us the bridge to one of Eudamonia's manufactorums. One of the semi-automated ones, so security will be easier to spoof using subversion programs." She nodded to the marine lieutenant. "Then, our troops go in. We'll take a beachhead in the megacity, then plan the next stage of the operation from there."

Everyone nodded.

"Can I come with?" Enriquah asked, her hair perking up excitedly. Meetra glared at her.

"Absolutely not."

***

The largest interior space on Gem was, at that moment, the hanger bay for the dawn age fighters that had brought down the Victrix. But with a great deal of the fighters -- and their pilots -- having gone down in flame and a spray of railgun slugs, there was enough of the hanger free to set up the interior of a Eudaimonia's manufactorum. The design schematics, culled from dozens of espionage reports and checked against the memories of Enriquah, were as close as the Alliance could manage: Brutal lines, harsh black metal, heavy doors. The concept of a manufactorum was to take advantage of a Domain era river of mana in the most secure way possible.

Not the most efficient way, mind.

The rivers were each isolated from the other by thick walls and security rooms. The pipelines that brought raw feedstock from the industrial sections of the megacity weren't even direct linkages. They dumped into autonomous tankers, which were checked, then waived through the security. Said security was fierce: Two dozen shocktroopers in power armor, separated by squad, contained in sealed and armored rooms.

The Alliance Marines ran through the rooms four times, each trying a different tactic.

Each ended the same way.

Techne sprinted forward, her armor heavy on her shoulders. Around her, she could hear the hammering sound of the shocktrooper's rifles. She threw out a chaff grenade and slammed, shoulder first, into the doorway that Corporal K'Tok had blown open with a sharped charge. K'Tok was writhing on the ground, groaning in agony. The chaff exploded outwards, and the beams of targeting lasers illuminated the field. Several converged on her and she started to roll aside, but two dozen impacts smashed into her armor. She sprawled and felt the simulated death-charge explode through her. A few seconds, and few dozen shots, later and the buzzer rang and everyone got to their feet, groaning.

"We haven't managed to kill a single goddamn one," Lt. Tarks said, pacing back and forth in the debrifing room. Meetra sat impassively, looking at the recordings, while Techne rubbed the spots on her chest that would have been bruised. If she could bruise. The recordings made things even more starkly clear than her own confused impressions: The Alliance Marines could be constituted by the river of mana, but they couldn't survive the experience. And even if they, by some miracle, managed to do it, they couldn't then leave without putting the entire megacity on high alert.

"We may need to scrub the mission. Maybe...see about contacting the local criminal element on Eudaimonia?" Tarks suggested.

"There's an easier solution," Meetra said, quietly.

"What?" Techne asked.

"Hello!"

Techne screamed and jerked backwards. Sitting on the table, right in-front of where she had been seated, was Enriquah. The Hegemonic Knight had her legs drawn up under her and her hands on her knees. Tarks snapped backwards and reached for his sidearm. Meetra raised an eyebrow and gestured with their hand towards Enriquah. "That's how," she said.

"I need my augs checked," Tarks muttered.

"She goes in first," Meetra said. "Blinds the security systems. Then you and the Alliance marines walk out of the manufactorum without anyone the wiser."

Enriquah beamed. "That's basically the idea, yeah."

Techne rubbed her temples. "And what's going to prevent you from just stabbing us in the back?"

"Uhhhh, the Hegemony wants me dead?" Enriquah asked.

"They won't if you bring a collection of Alliance troops in for a capture," Techne muttered.

"Nooo offense, chrome-butt, but you, Lt. Tarks, the amazing ape and Mr. Lizard aren't exactly prime catches," Enriquah said, shrugging. "Next to Lord Drak bringing in your one and only Liminal Knight, I'm still in the shits."

Techne crossed her arms over her chest. "Is the Hegemony that stupid?"

"The Hegemony can afford it," Meetra said. "They've got almost a dozen, maybe more, Hegemonic Knights, most of them more powerful than her."

"So, they are that stupid," Techne said.

Enriquah shrugged. "Do you want me or not?"

Techne rubbed her palms against her face. "Lt. Tarks?"

"You're the one in charge of this run, Techne," Tarks said, his voice gruff.

"I want advice, not to pass the buck, Tarks," Techne snapped, dropping her palms from her face.

Tarks sighed. "Sometimes, you have to roll the iron dice and hope for a twenty."

"What the fuck kind of dice do you use, Tarks?" Techne muttered under her breath.

"Awesome ones, it sounds like," Enriquah said, beaming.

Techne let out a long, suffering sigh.

The next three runs in the simulated manufactorum -- the ones that had Enriquah taking the lead - were almost eerie in how easy they were. Each of the Alliance marines who were strapped down in shocktrooper armor and using Hegemonic weapons swore, up down and sideways, that they had no idea where any of the Alliance Marines had been. One Marine had even tried shoving a shocktrooper, but the armor -- hardened against small arms fire and powered with an exoskeletal frame -- reacted to the shove the same way a wall might have.

Though, Enriquah did ask to not strain her powers any more than they absolutely had to.

With the final run complete, Meetra gave them the go ahead. There was little ceremony and no speeches. Just one last meeting at the bar, where Meetra poured each of the platoon a shot from a large pitcher. As the marines and the crew of the Tiamat held up their drinks, Meetra hefted the narcoalgorithm generator in their hand. "All right," they said. "Good luck."

They thumbed down the button just as the marines all tossed back their drinks. Techne tried to not feel smug that, right now, she was downing a perfect simulated recreation of the finest brandy in the Chain, while everyone else was making do with fabbed rotgut.

Together, they headed for the river.

***

There was a flare of light. A fleeting moment of pain. A second of blackness, a gap that was still spent with solid awareness. Then Techne stepped forward across the entire breadth of the Chain. An unimaginable distance -- a number of light years with so many zeroes that writing it out would blanket a million worlds with paper -- crossed in the flickering of an eye, with a single expenditure of Q-bits so immense that whole worlds would have beggared themselves to buy it.

Techne shook her head. This wasn't like the simulation. In the simulation, she merely stepped through the door. There was no way to simulate the staggering dislocation, the awareness that she had transcended the Chain. That she had stepped, casually, past the barriers that humanity had been struggling with for uncounted eons. It left her feeling as if she should drop to her knees and pray. Not to Jesus, but to the Machines themselves.

Then she mentally smacked herself.

Marines were walking out of the river of mana behind her. Many of them were shivering and the rest looked shell shocked. But Enriquah was standing beside the door that led out of the rectangular, matte-black room that they stood in. Light came from several lamps set in the walls, a pale yellowish hue that gleamed off the floor, the walls, the ceiling. Techne spotted a few cameras and resisted the urge to wave at them. The door that led out of the area was already open, and Techne waved her hand. The marines and her crew formed up on her, grabbing and holding onto their training with the white knuckle grip of soldiers in incredible situations across a million years.

Enriquah grinned and gave Techne a thumbs up, then ducked out of the room. Her feet padded silently on the floor, and she walked with casual confidence, despite her lack of a threshold blade. Techne held her rifle against her chest, trying to not think of what using this on a shocktrooper would do.

The answer was painfully little. The Alliance had few enough weapons that could stand up to a shocktrooper, and the captured weapons from the Victrix were still too dangerous to risk using in a battlefield condition against the enemy. It'd take one missed kill-code to render them all armless.

Literally.

They came around the first corner that was on the blueprints. And there were two shocktroopers.

"Have you heard Lord Drak's on his way back?" one asked.

"I hear that guy's a mutant," the other said, her voice soft.

"A mutant?" the first asked. "Who told you that seditious bull."

"You know Sergeant Matoi? From the 501^st?"

"Yeah," the first said, sounding skeptical.

Enriquah lifted her palm, her brow furrowing.

"Well, she's serving on the Victrix and-" the second paused. "You hear that?"

The other nodded and they both hurried off, banking around the first corner -- which, if the bluepritns were right, led to the control room. Enriquah jerked her chin at Techne, who nodded back at her. They started to move again. Techne was starting to feel like she might actually get out of here, might actually manage to pull this off. But then they came around the last corner, the one leading to the nearest exit into the exterior. There was the heavy door. There were the low slung laser turrets, ready to scythe down anything and everyone that pissed them off. There were the two shocktroopers.

And there was a plain clothes officer, dressed in a sleek Hegemonic naval uniform. She had long blond hair and ice blue eyes and was looking over the checkpoint with an expression of sneering condescension that seemed to be inbuilt into Hegemonic officers across the Chain. Techne, her crew, and the marines all froze. The officer, her eyes locked on the clipboard, didn't look up immediately. Techne gestured and everyone started to shuffle backwards. Enriquah stood right where she was. Techne ducked around the corner just as the officer lifted her eyes, her brow furrowing.

"Who the bloody hell are you?" she snapped. The shocktroopers both turned around -- and the turrets whirred to life, tracking Enriquah, who had her hands on her hips.

"I'm most disappointed, most, most disappointed," Enriquah said, shaking her head as she walked forward. Her hair reached out and, as if it was a hand, tapped against the gaping officer's chest. "I've managed to get in and almost all the way out of this facility without being challenged by someone in subtech uniforms. The rebels have Liminal Knights now, have you not gotten the memo!?"

"...my lady!" the officer said, realization pinging home. "I, uh, I had no idea you would be here."

"It'd be a kind of a garbage security check if you knew I was coming!" Enriquah snapped. "Fix this." She snapped her fingers. "Start with the security cameras -- you should have some mechanical detectors, something you can't just slice into from a distance." She started to walk down the corridor, which made the officer start and then hurry after her. Soon, the officer was gone. Techne's heart hammered, a simulated heart beat that reflected a very real opinion. She breathed out.

They couldn't stand here forever.

She started forward. The shocktroops, their diversion completed, went back to their old positions. They didn't chllenge her way. And they didn't start as the door opened for her and the marines. They walked out and the door hissed, then slowly began to shut behind her and the rest of her troops.

"That fucking worked?" one of the marines muttered.

Rossck chuckled. "Liminal Knights," he said, sounding appreciative.

Techne knew that she had a timetable. And she had no idea how she was going to get Enriquah back. But she had to take a moment to simply marvel as she walked slowly away from the door and at the world beyond the manufactorum. The manufactorum itself was merely one of a dozen dozen, each massive, rectangular structure set in the center of a park of other industrial buildings. Feedstock pipes the width of her beloved Tiamat arced overhead, bringing the raw materials the manufactorums needed to print out guns, bombs, weapons, ships. The sky overhead thronged with flying cars, whirring and buzzing as they flew along their guidance paths.

And the city.

Everywhere there was the city. The endless city of Eudaimonia. The capital of the Hegemony.

"All right men," Techne said, sliding her backpack off her shoulders. "Into civy mode."

The rifle she had held might have been almost useless when pitted against a shocktrooper's powered armor. But it could fold up and retract until it was nearly a quarter of its normal size. She tucked it into her backpack and then tapped the smart tabs on her collar. The clothing she wore shifted its hue and flattened out, the armored plating becoming less obvious. Soon, she was dressed in a moderately fashionable set of casual wear, as were the rest of the Marines. They still all looked like they purchased from the same shop. But once they were past the manufactorums, hurrying forward without outright running, they found out that the teeming masses of Eudaimonia often looked as if they all bought from the same shop.

Each strata of society they saw as they walked had their own look. The poorest were dressed in cheap, flimsy wear that had to be printed every other day. Those who had clearly fallen on even harder times wore many patched versions of the same white overalls, their clothing literally falling to pieces on their bodies while multiple rivers of mana were walled off a few miles away, printing out the wealth of worlds. Techne tried to ignore the homeless people who were huddled in the alleyways. They were almost all humans that didn't fit the extremely narrow band of what the Hegemony considered human.

Even the people who were as the Hegemony preferred them -- pale skinned, light haired, blue eyed -- seemed to be perpetually in a hurry. Techne adopted their movements, a did her crew and the marines, and tried to think of the next step.

The first thing they needed was a safe base to set up their kit.

Techne slowed at a public information terminal that was situated at a crosswalk that spanned a massive chasm. It looked like the city had been built up and around and down into some ancient strip mine. Gleaming lights flared below her, visible in the glass rectangles set every few feet on the bridge, and the edge of the bridge had dividers that seemed just a bit too short for her comfort.

"Glad I don't have vertigo," Mal said. He was dressed the most conspicuously of the lot -- in a thick robes that wrapped around his body, and several religious symbols that matched one of the accepted Hegemonic faithlines. From a distance, he'd merely look like a burly penitent, hunched forward under the pain givers strapped to his back. Hopefully, they'd get him into cover and a support position before anyone checked any closer.

"Yeah," Techne said, tapping a few more times at the comptech. She brought up the localized map and grunted. "There's a warehouse that's marked as techgaunt infested."

"I hate techgaunts," Rossck muttered.

"Well," Techne said. "They're gonna hate us even more."

The screen blanked out. Techne was about to start sprinting away when the terminal itself flared with a triumphal march. The passing pedestrians stopped in their hurried, furtive ways and turned to look with awe as the terminal projected a holographic figure. It was a massive form -- digitigrade legs, barrel chest, masked features. They had a billowing cape and a threshold blade's hilt hung from their belt.

Below the figure flared a large, text caption proclaiming him to be SUPREME-LORD OF THE HEGEMONIC KNIGHTS: KHARN VORSOTH.

"That fucker," Lt. Tarks muttered.