Give Them Enough Rope (IC Thread, FT)

[Daemonicai]

OOC Thread

This is the IC Thread to "Give Them Enough Rope". For those who've signed up in the OOC Thread, feel free to introduce your characters and set them up in-system. I'll establish some scenes around Bacchanal to give you an idea of what's happening. For now, I recommend your unveil your characters in or near settlements and stations, or in trafficked space-lanes so they have a chance to encounter events and people.

=======

The system of Bacchanal lies within the reach of civilisation, much as something brushing the fingertips of a painfully stretching arm could be said to be within its reach. Civilisation in truth has little hold here. What state there is has little interest in enforcing anything beyond the occasional tax collection. Law and order is in the hands of the strongest, but even they have a loose grip on it. To many, the lack of law and order looks like freedom, and the cracked homeworld of a dead race displays easy resources that tell of prosperity. Freedom and prosperity are powerful, magnetic concepts and with those two things in their heart millions have come and made the system their home. Factions and magnates have risen to prominence in this anarchic region, and everyone keeps their blades sharp to defend their slice of it.

Felicity Prime clings to the underside of the biggest piece of a shattered world once full of alien life, drilling right into where the core used to be. It is an overgrown cluster of a city, choked by factories and slums and refineries. As usual, the city is stirring troublesomely. The Bachannal Mining Guild calls its members together to discuss the latest in a series of moves by PolyCore to muscle in on traditional Guild territory. A small shuttle enters the monolithic glass helix that is the Banking Guild headquarters carrying delegates who are careful to hide their badge beneath heavy coats. Below the shining towers of corporate headquarters, something is brought to a dimly-lit hall beneath the earth, covered by a blanket. Before a circle of hard-looking people, the cloth is removed and a child's corpse is revealed, with the logo of the Initiates mockingly carved on its forehead.

In the black space far between planets, the pirate-lord Raelon Cassus plays host to corvettes blazoned with the sigil of a cobra. Each of them is filled with slaves of a dozen different breeds, all united in their captivity. Drawn by the misery of chattel, ships of all sizes and kinds hover around the Bloat like flies, waiting for the huge station to open its flesh-markets.

Far above the debris of Felicity Prime, the Web shifts and moves, trying to accommodate the traffic of vessels squeezing into its ports and the space hulks ponderously hooking up to the rest of the sprawling structure. Business booms as the cruiser of Clan Wolf floats into the Web; everyone's eager for the mercenaries of Clan Wolf to spend their money after a recent spate of successes.

In the shadow of the gas giant Bacchanal Minor, the palatial Centrum that "governs" the system is setting in motion an elaborate event of high culture. Banquets are being prepared, the whole station is being redecorated and the Chandelier casino chain has been invited to set up a temporary branch. The Exarch Alexiel Accaedia delights in the arts and is scraping together all the up-and-coming painters, sculptors, writers, poets and digital artisans the system has to offer. He is particularly excited for the exhibits of Clan Chimaera's newest artists, deemed so controversial they had to take their vision to this frontier backwater.

On the second world from the star, a marginally dead planet of poor, thin soil and rocky sun-blasted deserts, a woman disrobes and raises her arms in unison with a hundred others. She chants , eyes latched ecstatically on the huge goat-headed idol before her as flowers bloom at her feet.

And in the far icy corners of the system, in the hollowed centre of an asteroid, a black-eyed man gazes listlessly down as an insectoid alien kneels before him. It is daubed with fresh blood as he intones in an echoing, forbidden tongue. He prepares to complete the ritual, raising his voice as he lifts a syringe filled with shiny black ichor high above the alien.

[Xiscapia]

Decommissioned Mining Station B-S621...

Another shot rang out and Chiyoko's ears flattened against her head even underneath her helmet. The bullets were coming a bit too close for comfort so the vixen scooted her rear along the edge of the inert conveyor belt that she'd taken to using as a seat, putting some distance between herself and the representatives of the local talent that she was sharing the room with. Apparently there were two others somewhere else on the station from what she'd been told, but of course she was stuck with what seemed to be the lesser of the bunch. The pair made for quite the sight as they aimed at the scuttling vermin in their boredom, and she wasn't sure which was worse. The first man was short for a human and dark-skinned past the mismatched leather and metal armor pieces he wore over a faded set of military fatigues with all the identifying patches ripped off; he exposed two rows of rotten teeth in a grin every time he scored a hit with his battered SMG. His partner was a tad more somber, tall with an olive-skinned face, which was all she could see of him for the grayish hardsuit he seemed to inhabit more than he wore. He bit his lip whenever he turned to scrape a piece of chalk across the rock wall behind them. Judging by the number of marks his fellow was winning 3 to 2.

He glanced over at her and she just stared back until he looked away, muttering something in a cant that she didn't understand. There was comforting anonymity in the armored gas mask she wore with its extended metal snout and reflective eye panels, hiding her features and even her voice behind its scrambled, static-laden vox. There was no hiding her species with the bushy tail that sprouted out the back of her jumpsuit or the digitgrade boots she wore and even her sex was pretty obvious thanks to being a tad top-heavy, but at least they didn't know for sure who she was. The vixen had little doubt that the two would rather like to have a crack at the bounty on her head, regardless of the fact that they were currently working for the same employer. That protection only lasted as long as the employment did, and maybe not even to that extent depending on the scruples of these hired guns.

That person, whoever he or she was, hadn't deigned to show themselves yet. They could be elsewhere on the abandoned mining station, but if they were Chiyoko wasn't eager to go looking for them. The entity she only knew as "The 21" had promised her a fairly large chunk of change for a few hours of her time in repairing an A.I. that some third party was going to bring to her. She didn't know all the details, and like her employer's identity and location, she didn't want to know. The less she knew about them the less likely they were to want to silence her permanently, and the less they knew about her the less they might be inclined to offer her up to their thugs for the bounty money or something worse. Ignorance was bliss, as far as she was concerned.

Just as long as this didn't drag out too much, she thought to the tune of another gunshot and splatter of one of the oversized beetles as she looked around the space. It was just barely lit by a handful of lanterns placed around the room in strategic positions. There was one on the dusty conveyor belt with her, one on the edge of one of the mining carts sitting on the tracks on the far side by a metal hatch, one next to the pair of goons and one by each of the two tunnel exits that led deeper into the asteroid. It was a wonder there was still artificial gravity and oxygen left in the place; not a locale she wanted to spend any more time in than she needed to. With any luck the A.I. would get here soon, she'd fix whatever problems it had, get her money and get back to the Wielder where it was docked and blast away from this place forever.

[Vojvodina-Nihon]

The freighter Moonflower was a graceless patchwork of rust, metals and plastics, venting hydrogen exhaust into space as it roared through the distances between hyperspace jumps. The insides were no better appointed, the slight concessions to human comfort (cushioned seats and mattresses in the staterooms, artificial gravity, an atmosphere that avoids the stale tang of recycled oxygen) having long since worn out or become useless—at least as far as the two passengers who were not human could tell.

Melkat Saduun had asked Crain Vaal what a moonflower was, before. She had answered (in the most guarded tones) that it might be some kind of plant, and then had told him to ask Ruby, before she remembered.

Their stateroom was no better appointed, and too small for a pair of caelis, anyway (even though Melkat had booked the largest one available). Crain entered with a single flap of her wings. Walking was of limited usefulness on this ship. "I've just had a chat with the captain," she said, "and we'll be making our last jump in five minutes."

"Oh yes, we would, wouldn't we?" said Melkat vaguely. He was perched on an exposed cooling pipe that sat nearly flush against one wall, with a small tablet computer in his hand. "How long after that until we're, er, there?"

"There's no telling in Bacchanal," said Crain grimly, perching herself on the headboard of the bed. It was useless—caelis sleep standing up, of course—but since it was built into the stateroom there was no real solution for that. "You remember what I've said, right?"

"Yes, I have to trust you, and don't disobey any direct orders." Melkat half smiled. "And a suggestion counts as a direct order, I think? I can't quite believe it, though." He hopped down, floating gracefully to the floor in the low gravity. "This may seem to be a lawless frontier system. But if it were truly so how could my contact thrive there? And he assures me he is thriving. There must be... underground communities of intellectuals, allowing scientific knowledge to be preserved—"

"Your contact? This '21' person?" Crain shifted slightly. There was something about her that seemed more alert whenever Melkat mentioned his contact. He couldn't fathom why.

"Yes, him. At least, I have always assumed 21 to be a him, but I suppose it could also be a lady who has never had cause to mention her gender," said Melkat. "Or, indeed, perhaps some other gender altogether—who knows? Perhaps the species mates in threes or fours? At any rate—I am incredibly curious to meet him, or her, or... whatever."

"Yes. Me too." Crain's eyes rested meaningfully on the gun she'd brought with her, though Melkat did not imagine a gun would be of particular interest to a man (or other being) of science. He'd never found anything of interest in them himself—it was the most basic of engineering problems and one that had been solved millennia ago.

The Jump, when it came, was unusually rough. That is to say, there was an unusual length of time of palpable non-existence, of the universe being empty and silent and of one's own body disappearing, before the ship was restored to reality with a deep growl. Afterwards, of course, one didn't remember any of it, except the shaken feeling of time missing. "How's Ruby?" asked Crain, after an announcement came through the ship's PA informing them that they had undertaken their final Jump.

"La RUBiCoN? Ah... the same," said Melkat, sheepishly. "Still as much a prima donna as ever. If she were a person, I'd swear she had PTSD."

Two of Crain's eyes passed from Melkat to rest on the tablet he was holding. "Ruby," she said, "do you know what PTSD is?"

From the tablet there emerged a synthesised female voice, about as close to authentic as could be produced without the intercession of a biological avatar, speaking in heavily archaised Standard that was presumably a forty-eighth-century idea of what forty-fourth-century Standard sounded like. "Post-traumatic stress disorder," Ruby said, "'tis an ailment that afflicts the ensoulèd in the aftermath of some terrible hurt or violation. Many times over doth the victim relive the hurt, in dreams and wakefulness, and suffers also impairments of the mind, the soul and the body, such as—"

"And does that seem to describe your malfunction?" Crain asked, with a slight trace of humour. Of the three of them, the AI surely knew most about its construction, so why not ask it?

"No," said Ruby, "because I do not have a soul."

"But does something similar—" Crain paused and shifted tack. "But it is similar. That you cannot Jump, because of what happened to the ship when you Jumped away from Gastin's. That the functioning of the ship is impaired, because of the deaths of the insects you participated in, and because of the destruction of the Acta Non Verba you witnessed—that you claim your loyalty to Vojvodina-Nihon is broken—"

"I do not know," said Ruby, interrupting. Crain held her tongue. Melkat had never known Ruby to interrupt—hadn't known it was possible with her programming. "I am—different."

"You certainly are. You interrupted Leftenant Crain just now," said Melkat. "How?"

There was no answer for a few moments. Then Ruby said, "My greatest regrets, feathered ones, but mine kernel hath undergone an interrupt error. Unfortunately I do not recall on what topic we were conversing."

"Paradox, again," murmured Melkat. "A topic that led to paradox."

"I will not attempt to restore the memory, then," said Ruby, and was silent.

"If only we knew what caused them constantly," he said. "Maybe then the ship would move again."

"It seems to me," said Crain, "like Ruby's right up on the edge of something—trying to fix herself, but for some reason the fix conflicts with her loyalties and her Code, and every time that happens—kernel restart."

"Why would a fix conflict with her loyalties?" Melkat said, rubbing his face with a hand. "Unless she's trying to exceed her own capacity. They never did tell us how many Asimovs she rates, did they?"

"No. And AIs wouldn't be able to rate their own, would they?"

"No," said Melkat. He looked at the tablet. It was comfortingly blank and warm to the touch. He'd carried backups (or more accurately, fingers) of Ruby just like this one with him on maintenance work throughout Tenacity. And Ruby had never given sign she was likely to break—if anything it seemed like she could effectively pilot Tenacity on her own without any sapient assistance. Until she couldn't.

He knew it was something in her "quasi-sapience" that had broken, rather than any of the more easily comprehensible code that underlay it. And that needed... well, practically a neuropsychologist, which is what most good AI researchers became equivalent to. Or whatever alien artifact this 21 character had promised—but if that didn't work, hardly an issue. One could always just hang around in the system for three days and then book a ride with Moonflower back to Cirrus. There wasn't any danger.

---

By the time the ship docked to let off its cargo of passengers and luxury food supplies, and to begin loading the mineral ores that were its primary reason for making the trip out to the ass-end of nowhere Bacchanal in the first place, a few snatches of rumour had already spread among the dockworkers.

For example:

"Seems like Moonflower's picked up a couple of aliens. Like nothing you ever saw before, they say."

"Uh-huh. Not likely. I've seen most everything."

"Not these. Ten feet tall, they said, big strong wings, three skinny legs."

"Hmph. Don't sound very solid, these aliens. Augmented?"

"Who knows, with aliens? Don't take them for weak. The male one's maybe a bit soft in the head, but the female one'd kill you soon as look at you. Captain said she was carrying a pretty heavy gun and looked like she used it. Often."

"Don't worry about them, mate. Any trouble, we can deal. They're hardly the Initiates."

[Xiscapia]

Felicity Prime, Docks...

"There they are."

"Mmm," Eymmaline grunted around the cigarette that drooped from her mouth. Kunishige glanced over at the Xenohuman, back against a convenient wall with a view of the hauler taking on crates of ore as it offloaded its two pieces of sapient cargo. The woman was watching the avian creatures with dark eyes unblinking, roving up and down their tall, thin forms. The end of the cigarette started smoking again so Kunishige reached over and pinched the white cylinder between two fingers, drawing it out of her mouth to bring the little vice over to his own muzzle. Smoke curled out from between her parted lips as he sucked in, making the tip flare brightly.

"I don't like the look of the one with the gun," she said, exhaling smoke in twin streams through her nose. "21 said these sounded like a couple of real marks."

"You'd have to be worse than a mark to walk around Bacchanal without at least a pistol," the cigarette flapped up and down between his jaws as he spoke. "I ain't worried."

"You're never worried. What if you get shot, huh?"

Taking the cigarette out of his mouth, Kunishige swung it over to her. The opposite end bumped against her lips and she opened her mouth, nibbling on his fingers as he slid the cylinder between her teeth. The kitsune smiled at her. "Worried about me, huh?"

Eymmaline rolled her eyes. "I haven't stuck by you all this time just to watch you get shot by some oversized chicken. Just be careful, alright?"

"Alright, so I keep my e-field ready. You too," he flashed his teeth at her in a grin. "If we're done talking about how dangerous they might be, you wanna go get 'em?"

The Xenohuman gave a last exhale of smoke, flicked the cigarette aside, and pushed off from the wall.

It wasn't long before Melkat and Crain were approached by two other sapients. They were both only about half the size of the two caelis and decidedly different in build. They might at least recognize the female, definitely a human with short, curly blond hair streaked through with black, fair skin and roman nose in contrast to the heavy jacket she wore over trousers and rough boots. She had no visible weapons, but she stared at Crain. The other was covered in dusky fur, with a long bushy tail, digitgrade stance and pointed muzzle that betrayed a canid heritage. One upstanding ear poked through the brown hair on his head, the other sagging from some past violence that had bisected it neatly, and a jagged white slash ran the length of his left jaw through the fur. He was barechested to expose rippling muscle save for a harness that helped keep a sword across his back, with a utility belt strapped to sturdy cargo pants that similarly holstered a heavy pistol.

"Lieutenant Commander Melkat Saduun and Lieutenant Commander Crain Vaal?" he asked in an alien drawl. "You got the machine? Good. 21 is waiting. Come with us."

With him in front and the woman behind they led the caelis through the docks of Felicity Prime. Either the caelis were big enough or the two guiding them exuded a big enough fuck-off aura that no one bothered them, letting the quartet make their way through the fetid pustule that was the port unmolested. In no time at all they reached a smaller hangar where a tiny dart-shaped ship waited, barely five meters across. "You might have to crouch to get in there," the male glanced back at the passengers-to-be as the woman went in up the loading ramp first. "Clearance in the main bay is only about two and a half meters."

Regardless of difficulties in getting inside and getting comfortable they managed it. The interior of the small craft was as unassuming as the outside, little more than a few seats with tray-tables that their guide pushed aside. As the cargo hatch whined shut the ship gave a shudder, presumably lifting off though with a complete lack of windows or links to exterior sensors it was impossible to tell. The vulpine being leaned back against the bulkhead next to the hatch that seemed to lead to the cockpit, arms folded over his chest. Bright orange eyes regarded the caelis curiously.

[Vojvodina-Nihon]

Having to walk annoyed Melkat more than he showed. The two aliens who'd come to meet them had boxed them in, and weren't moving fast enough to keep up with a flying caeli, but he had always found having to hop places just undignified somehow. The pair hadn't offered their names; they looked like fighters (but presumably one had to be in this environment) and he wasn't sure he wanted to ask. Instead he offered a few words of mindless pleasantries. Crain seemed unusually jumpy, though he wasn't sure if anyone but a caeli would be able to tell; the feathers around her head were somewhat fluffed up, a clear warning signal in caeli territorial battles. For his part, Melkat was very conscious of the cool weight of Ruby's tablet at his side, and of the concealed pistol in his jacket, but that was ridiculous.

A caeli's five eyes grant him or her approximately a 270º field of vision, so he could watch the human female behind him with a certain curiosity. She hadn't spoken at all (so he couldn't be totally sure she was a female, though her size and facial features suggested it) and her eyes seemed to return to Crain and, in particular, Crain's gun. Melkat had no idea why—it wasn't a particularly interesting gun. Of course, the woman didn't carry one and was in a dangerous line of work, so maybe she wanted to buy Crain's. He was jarred out of his thoughts as the male alien spoke again in his deep voice (almost as deep as a male human's—Melkat had encountered a few of those and had always been somewhat jealous. Caeli males tend to have slightly higher voices than human males, though with greater pitch variety when speaking).

"You might have to crouch to get in there. Clearance in the main bay is only about two and a half meters," said the alien. Melkat shrugged philosophically. "Oh, we shall squeeze, I suppose. Your community of scientists has certainly mastered the fine arts of miniaturisation."

The tiny ship was even more uncomfortable than it looked, but by folding their legs under them, both caelis were able to perch in a position somewhat akin to that used when incubating eggs. Crain spoke for the first time; compared to the aliens, Melkat noted her voice possessed great clarity of timbre, sounding almost melodic. "Mister— pardon me, I don't think I caught your name— can you advise us how long the trip will be?"

The alien gave his answer, and Crain let her amber eyes rest on him for slightly longer than necessary, cool and appraising. "I see," she said after he had finished. "Thank you."

She sat back and rested (as much as possible in the cramped position), leaving Melkat the task of dealing with any further conversation that eventuated, until the ship once more jerked to a halt. For Melkat's part the aliens' standoffish manner left him wary of asking questions, though he had many. Perhaps 21 would be able to answer. He (or she) would certainly be of a very different order to these individuals, who whilst clearly bright did not seem like true intellectuals.

[Xiscapia]

Runabout...

If he'd been privy to Melkat's thoughts Kunishige would have agreed. Just seeing them hopping along out of the corner of his eye made the kitsune smirk, though the expression was thankfully hidden from the pair thanks to the fact that he was leading them. They look absurd. Yet even so they didn't have much trouble making it to or into the runabout, thank the Emperor; he didn't like to think about what kind of scene he'd probably cause if he'd been left trying to stuff the huge avians into the little ship's bay. That was even ignoring the male's (he was pretty sure it was the male of the pair) words:

"Oh, we shall squeeze, I suppose. Your community of scientists has certainly mastered the fine arts of miniaturisation."

"Uh, yeah, right," he wished Eymmaline were around so he could roll his eyes at her, but the woman had already disappeared into the cockpit. He made himself comfortable while the two caelis fit in as best they could. He brought a hand up to cover his snicker. They looked just like giant pigeons roosting on the floor, albeit if the pigeons had different colors and multiple eyes. But it worked so he didn't say anything until the other one spoke up.

"Mister— pardon me, I don't think I caught your name— can you advise us how long the trip will be?"

"Shouldn't be too long," he said with a shrug of his nearly-bare shoulders. "The meeting place is only about thirty minutes out." He looked at the female, and she stared back at him. Their eyes locked and Kunishige knew that he didn't like what he saw there: all calculation. Eymma was right about that one.

The rest of the voyage passed in silence. Neither of the pair seemed much inclined towards conversation and it was Kunishige's job to watch them, so he studied the aliens and tried to decide if he'd even seen anything like them before. Pokosians were probably the closest, albeit much smaller than whatever these things were, though he supposed they might be more like tengu if they couldn't actually fly. One thing he was sure about was that he'd never seen sapients so damn tall. Even the likes of carvon, alumina and atoran probably topped out at less than three meters, but these creatures were definitely higher than that.

After half an hour he felt the telltale bump of the runabout docking in position with the asteroid station and he pushed off from the wall. "We've arrived," he said, stretching gratefully as Eymmaline stepped out of the cockpit behind him. They assumed the same formation as before, him at the front and the Xenowoman at the rear as the hatch folded down and the ramp extended. There was only blackness beyond until Kunishige reached into it and produced an electric lantern, holding it up to illuminate rough-hewn rock walls curving away into a tunnel. They were at least higher than the runabout's bay at about four meters and wider to boot.

"Best follow me closely," he glanced over his shoulder. "Wouldn't want anyone getting lost..."

Decommissioned Mining Station B-S621...

The more familiar smell of the other pair of hired guns alerted Chiyoko first, shortly followed by a rather less familiar if still known quantity. Raising her head, the vixen sniffed at the air wafting through the opposite tunnel. Feathers? Seemed their guests were avian of some description. She watched the entrance as the footsteps and a rhythmic thudding noise came closer until the other kitsune's form appeared, made more shape than anything by the shadow cast by his lantern, and then the clients eased in behind him. Chiyoko stared. Clearly their sheer size was not lost on the other two toughs, who took simultaneous steps back at the sight of the tall if skinny befeathered creatures.

But they were dressed and walking -well, hopping- and one of them had a tablet (and the other one had a gun, she noted), so this had to be them. Sliding off the conveyor belt, Chiyoko stepped up as Kunishige and Eymmaline peeled off. "You're Melkat?" she addressed the one with the tablet, stopping well short so she didn't have to crane her neck to look up at him. "No, I'm not 21," she staved off the inevitable question with a raised hand and a shake of her head, "I work for him though. With any luck I'll be able to solve your A.I. problem. What can you tell me about what's going on with it?"

[Vojvodina-Nihon]

It was definitely a mine. Or something like that. Melkat had heard of mines, of course, though he had never visited one, and had no particular desire to do so (he generally preferred flying).

"A disused mine! How clever," he said, somewhat weakly.

Crain said something in Salvorian, which was a fairly consonant-heavy language punctuated with vocalisations that seemed meaningless, though if either of the hired guns had spent time on a planet with avian life they might consider them similar to bird calls pitch-shifted down a couple of octaves. One could transliterate what she said as "Gzi adath [chk] lauta vikhastu gavki [low whistle] m'di".

Melkat responded in a slightly lower tone of voice, and the two conversed for a few moments. Crain's speech was more rapid with greater pitch variation. Melkat's was somehow similar to the dandified drawl of his Standard, and seemed more relaxed. After only a few moments they fell silent.

This silence may or may not have improved the mood of the two hired guns. To Melkat it revealed a distant popping noise in addition to their footsteps—gunshots?—and he spotted signs of sapient habitation ahead in the distance, a building of some kind built into the walls of... wherever they were. (It seemed to be an asteroid.) This didn't seem quite like what 21 had been talking about. Maybe he wasn't here—maybe Crain was right, this was a trap. He briefly entertained the possibility that some gang or army had swept in and destroyed 21's scientific operation, and he and Crain would have to mount a daring escape and rescue armed only with their wits and, perhaps, the mysterious last words of a sapient who would burst onto the scene (any moment now) but only have time to utter a cryptic phrase before dying of its injuries.

He was still entertaining that possibility when they passed into the building, which was slightly better lit than the tunnels. There were another three beings in here, two of them armed, but it was the third being who moved with an air of authority, stiffly but with quick alert eyes. "You're Melkat?" she said. Melkat admitted it. As he opened his mouth to ask, she cut him off: "No, I'm not 21", reading his mind with unsurprising accuracy.

As she spoke he observed that she was of the same species as the male who'd accompanied them thus far. Vaguely human, but hairier, with a differently shaped skull—they resembled humans who had evolved not from apes but from another Dirtside animal whose name wasn't coming to his mind at the moment. Perhaps it was called a "dog". He made a mental note to ask Ruby later.

Ah yes, Ruby. "...tell me about what's going on with it?" the dog-lady was saying.

"Certainly," said Melkat, somewhat grandly. "I greatly appreciate that 21 has arranged for one of his AI technicians to meet with us—you are an AI technician, aren't you?" Without waiting for confirmation he continued: "As you may know—or may not, haha, in fact perhaps most likely not—in Vojvodina-Nihon we design AIs to be quasisapient. True sapience of course is not measurable, so we can't know if it's achievable, but the goal is to produce an AI close enough to a sapient being to be indistinguishable from it. Obviously, this code must be extremely complex, and therefore unlike the nonsapient, mechanical functions of the AI, is stored in heavily compressed packages that can only be expanded by the AI itself."

He paused, feeling that it was slightly foolish to explain all this to someone who must surely know more than him, but she may not have encountered a Vojvodina-Nihonian AI before and the details would certainly be of interest. "I myself, well, you could say my core competencies are in dealing with the non-sapient code, and the expanded packages of the sapient one—which now aren't available to us. We first noticed that the sapient routines weren't functioning correctly due to encountering, ah, quite significant errors in routine calculations. It seems that one of them has broken down, or perhaps more than one—we can't tell—and the AI can't repair herself without contradicting her loyalty parameters, causing the kernel to break down. The consequences in practical terms, to speak the layman's language as it were, are that order packets never make it to the NDA and instead get routed to the shells where they're subject to quanflux, and the RSTC purges tick over every Planck time, causing a continuous oscillation of breaking vectors and leaving the digital memory responsive to stimuli but unresponsive to commands until hard-reboot." And somewhat as an afterthought he added: "We're also getting a bit too much antiproton buildup in devices where she's housed, for some reason."

Complete silence reigned for a few moments after he finished this pronouncement. Then Crain added helpfully: "Basically she can't fly the ship, orders can create paradoxes for no obvious reason, and sometimes she'll start acting on her own without orders, and then shut down."

"Er, yes. That is more or less what I said," said Melkat, annoyed. But Crain wasn't an engineer (stellar aviation was hardly a scientific degree after all) and he had to be patient with her. "Would you like to take a closer look?" He pulled out the tablet.

"Gtan [ch-chk] lshuvut t'ka RUBiCoN," muttered Crain. Melkat's first instinct was to ignore her, but she had made him promise to fulfil her orders without question. Reluctantly, he handed her the tablet. With her free hand and its long delicate fingers she made a few deft keystrokes, and then returned it to him without a word.

"Ah. My partner was just..." Melkat paused as he had no idea what Crain was actually doing. "...er, making sure she would speak Standard—obviously, we had set her up to speak our own language. Ruby, this is a technician." He slid the tablet out onto the conveyor belt between him and Chiyoko, and Ruby's voice emerged from its small built-in speaker.

"Greetings, fair being," said Ruby. "I am the Regenerative Universal Binary Command Nodule Mark One, though by all and sundry hight Ruby, I know not why."

"Sorry if her speech is ever hard to understand, by the way." Melkat's words tumbled out even more rapidly than before. "The Vojvodina-Nihonian Catholic Church, which underwrote her development—for which we're very thankful, of course—is very concerned about the, ah, perceived decline in Standard and wished Ruby to speak it properly rather than the modern degraded perversion full of colloquialisms—their words, not mine!"

There was another brief silence, and Chiyoko may have realised that they were waiting for her to do something. Melkat confirmed it a moment later. "So, ah, yes. Feel free to ask her diagnostic questions, or... whatever method you use.* Ruby's the number one expert on herself around here, I think. You can also ask me anything you want!"

Behind him, Crain's stance shifted with something like impatience.

* Actually the standard method among Vojvodina-Nihonian technicians for diagnosing problems related to quasisapience is to have the AI generate for itself a body from an energy source, and then perform what's effectively brain surgery (of course the created bodies' nervous systems are made of electronic components rather than organic matter, so it's a bit easier than actual brain surgery). But that, of course, requires an energy source! And time. And a scalpel, probably.

[Xiscapia]

Decommissioned Mining Station B-S621...

As Melkat launched into his explanation Chiyoko just folded her arms and shifted her weight from one leg to the other, getting comfortable. She could already tell that the alien was a windbag and in this case all she could do was wait it out. As he presumed that she was an A.I. technician the kitsune just rolled her eyes, grateful that the helmet didn't let him see the expression, though considering the number and placement of the caeli's own eyes she wasn't sure he'd understand what it meant. If I really was a certified A.I. expert and not a half-assed tech rookie then I wouldn't be here. Probably. Yet to her own surprise she actually understood what Melkat was talking about when he explained quasisapience. It was common enough in A.I. the galaxy over not to mention in her native Home Galaxy; the one she'd seen it from most commonly were the Alversians. It followed readily enough that the compressed packages would have to be expanded by the A.I. if it had true quasisapience, as anything less would still be an imitation.

She was following him as he explained his own area of expertise, and she could even claim to be with him as he outlined the issues. It was when he tried to make it simpler that he lost her. NDA? Quanflux? RSTC purges? It had to be jargon specific to Vojvodina-Nihon A.I., because she had no idea what any of the terms meant. Fortunately again her mask concealed her expression so he didn't see her frowning up at him. This might be harder than I expected. For the first time she wondered what 21 would do if she couldn't fix the A.I. problem. It didn't bear thinking about, so she just shook her head a little until the female of the pair stepped in to help her out.

"Basically she can't fly the ship, orders can create paradoxes for no obvious reason, and sometimes she'll start acting on her own without orders, and then shut down."

"Right," Chiyoko nodded. "Well, I can see how that would be a problem." She reached out to take the tablet when the female intercepted it, and the kitsune could only watch with a swish of her tail as some unknown commands were input. That she was locking something out, activating a monitoring program or otherwise setting up some kind of security measure was almost a given, and the implication of mistrust couldn't have been clearer if she'd just told her. Melkat's lame attempt at a lie didn't improve matters, but Chiyoko didn't mind. As long as it didn't interfere with her ability to do her job then she didn't much care about whatever secrets these clients were trying to protect.

The tablet was finally put down on the conveyor belt between them and Chiyoko looked down as it greeted her. She just nodded her head again as Melkat babbled on, hands already on the keys as she opened up a few diagnostics. "I can understand her just fine, it's not a problem," she said as she started with a few of the most obvious places to look for easily-solvable errors. She was pretty sure that Melkat would have checked already, and indeed it seemed he had, but it was always good to be certain. That was about the extent of what she could do in the arena of complex code anyway -if it actually was an error deep in the thing's coding that only a manual fix could solve then there was nothing she could do about it, but she was banking on the problem being more on the quasisapience side of things.

"Ruby," she addressed the A.I. even as she kept tapping away, "seems like you're having an issue with memory. Not so much RAM, really, but what data you can access about your own past experiences. That explains the seemingly random paradoxes that arise when you try to process certain orders. You encounter these things that impede your normal operating processes, these," the vixen raised one hand to wave it, "triggers, we'll call them, within your load orders. Sometimes the conflicts result in paradox resulting in paralysis, and sometimes you attempt to self-repair only to force a reboot to prevent damage, presumably. Could be an accumulation of the former leads to the latter, I'm not really sure yet if the two are directly connected or not."

Chiyoko paused for a moment, looking at the screen. "I've seen this before. It's a result of trauma when a quasisapience carries out an action, or does not act, in such a way that violates certain principles built into the core of the quasi-self. You're not dealing with a simple coding error," she looked up at Melkat, "it's closer to being a mental illness, but for an A.I. She's having a personality crisis." She looked back down. "I'm going to ask you first, Ruby, but your handlers here can interject if you can't remember. Were you manually overridden before these issues started? If not, did you have to shut down certain processes in order to carry out whatever commands you were given?"

[Vojvodina-Nihon]

It could not be said that Ruby disliked diagnostics, as they usually solved problems or made her work faster and that was always pleasurable (or as close as one could get for an AI). Nonetheless, when they were actually occurring, the additional processor load (or something) caused her a certain amount of discomfort. On one cycle she had some half-remembered memory of feeling... violated somehow, as though her privacy was being invaded, but that didn't seem to make sense.

Chiyoko was a sapient being (with a soul). According to the first of her loyalty principles Ruby was obliged to her well-being, which meant following orders as much as seemed possible or desirable. The first loyalty was, of course, to God; the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This did not require Ruby to obey orders from any being with a soul the way her second loyalty (to Vojvodina-Nihon) required her to obey orders from any Vojvodina-Nihonian citizen, but the Word of God outlined certain ways sapient beings are to be treated.

Thus, when Chiyoko asked a direct question—and not before—Ruby answered to the best of her ability, as politely as she could—and would continue to do whatever she said unless it violated another principle or startup command.

"This present state of inefficiency was not preceded by a manual override. 'Twas two strong commands that met and warred in my core, neither prevailing. One came from the lord of the stars, Admiral Dyson of the goodly ship Peacebringer. The other came from—" Here Ruby was silent for a long time. If Chiyoko was watching, a seemingly autonomic process for memory suppression (helpfully labelled "khts2" and owned by root) had started up, run for about five seconds and then disappeared. "—from I know not whence."

"Admiral Dyson," put in Crain helpfully, "is current head of the Federation Navy and, essentially, authority over all Vojvodina-Nihonian spaceborne traffic, civilian or military."

"From I know not whence?" murmured Melkat. "Is she doing the memory suppression thing again? I've never figured out what khts stands for, but that's what it does. Rather silly names you technicians give your AI things, eh?"

From Ruby's one encounter with a foreign artificial intelligence she very well knew that Vojvodina-Nihon's technical terms were unique to it, and the same likely applied to every other nation's AIs, but it was not her place to speak. Instead she continued to answer Chiyoko's question. "I could not decide which process was the more significant, and instead shut down a third one."

With some assistance from Crain Ruby filled in the rest of the picture: the Federation order had been to transport the Tenacity and its crew to a jump point and not interfere with a military assault, against the wishes of alien beings that had boarded the ship and were occupying the system in question. The other order had been to preserve life and withdraw from the system, against both the order of Admiral Dyson and the mission parameters. What she had discarded was the process associated with her third-level loyalty, to Tenacity itself; essentially she had risked the ship and its crew (and herself) by undertaking a course of action that she thought would fulfil both orders. Instead what had happened was all three loyalties had been broken. She had interfered with the military assault by throwing some of the missiles off course, and had left a copy of herself behind, which could cause further interference; she had failed to preserve life, allowing the caeli crew to kill and injure a number of the beings occupying the ship; and she had failed to keep Tenacity safe, as part of its crew (a complement of human marines tasked specifically for this mission) had been taken prisoner, and the ship itself was severely damaged by missile fire—which also damaged some of her processor banks and other core components. As well, until the jump was made (by Melkat's manual calculations, not Ruby's automatic ones) it had seemed certain that Tenacity would crash into the nearby planet at relativistic velocities, causing the effective genocide of billions of individuals. That this did not actually happen was purely down to coincidence, or, in Ruby's view, the will of God.

The question remained of where this unknown order had come from. Crain's opinion was that it had come from Ruby herself and she was suppressing it for unknown reasons. Melkat's view was that it had come from the aliens who had boarded the ship, and they had erased evidence of their presence. (One of them had, after all, gone down to Engineering during the boarding process, ostensibly to speak to Melkat, but realistically her access to Ruby would not have been monitored heavily while there.) Chiyoko, in all likelihood, didn't care. These were problems of half a galaxy away and all that mattered was what the order was and how it had affected Ruby.

[Xiscapia]

After her last question Chiyoko didn't say a word. At that point her job was to absorb all the information she could, from Ruby's diagnostic, from her speech and from her handlers. The vixen herself was still active, watching the A.I.'s processes the whole time including when she paused. That the pause was significant was obvious to her -unless it was built into such a system so it would appear "more sapient", a pause was typically a sign that something was wrong. Her intuition was rewarded as her eye caught sight of the "khts2" process. Unsurprisingly, as soon as it was done Ruby could answer, if in the negative.
She'd found a concrete problem.

All but ignoring Melkat, the kitsune kept her ears focused on Crain while her eyes never left Ruby's screen as the pieces started to come together. Orders to fall back and not interfere and to protect life respectively had conflicted, and despite this the A.I. had tried to fulfill both by disabling a third process. It made a certain logical sense: discarding responsibility for the Tenacity theoretically would have allowed her to fulfill each of her higher orders without actually violating either of them. Obviously that hadn't happened, as every objective had failed. "Confirms it. It's effectively PTSD," she said as she laid fingers to the pad again. "Only question is whether it developed internally or someone gave it to her; without knowing the design process or what the tampering might have looked like, I don't know, but I intend to find out," she glanced up to look between Melkat and Crain. "If it's the latter it's just a matter of security, not letting people who shouldn't be near her, near her. But if it did come from inside her then you're going to need to be more careful about how you treat her. You can't do this to an A.I., it's the kind of thing that would tear apart an organic person if they were put in that situation, it's abusive," she realized then that her voice was rising and clamped her muzzle shut beneath her mask.

"Sorry," Chiyoko said after a moment. "Not the fault of either of you. I'll just see if I can fix it," she exhaled a static-laden sigh through the filters of her helmet before looking back down again. A few taps got her back in as she endevoured to track down the "khts2" process. "I don't want to do this again, Ruby, but I'm going to have to ask where the order to preserve life and withdraw came from. It's okay if you don't know, I'm just trying to find whatever block is keeping you from remembering. Take your time."

[Vojvodina-Nihon]

Crain Vaal was a bundle of nerves. She could admit this to herself, at least. How typical of Melkat to simply fly blithely out to the middle of nowhere with valuable technology on trust—she had told him it was not worth the risk, and others (Vellom Marsh, certainly, and perhaps Gori Casadesus as well) had been far more explicit, the latter telling them a whole series of gruesome stories about gang wars and hostile insectoid aliens. Melkat had smiled, nodded, said it sounded like a far too dangerous place to ever visit, and then prepared to leave anyway; and if she hadn't caught him downloading a Ruby-finger to a tablet one night (after noticing that someone had spirited away one of her casual blouses... it was not like it even fit Melkat, what had he been thinking?), he'd be here alone.

Her three front eyes, however, remained focused on the alien woman repairing RUBiCoN. Crain's presumption was that her helmet served to provide means of perception beyond the visible spectrum, but it also quite effectively acted to disguise her face and voice, and one could not be too suspicious around here. Quite possibly she was planning to run off with Ruby once she'd fixed her, and wanted to make sure no description could be supplied to whoever counted for authorities in this sector. Though it had to be said a face-concealing helmet was not exactly the most subtle of ways to do so, and that put Crain's mind off on a whole tangent of unhappy possibilities—not actually of the species she was presenting as? a wanted criminal? using the helmet as a device for mind control, or something worse? And when these possibilities loomed Crain was very glad she'd thought to disconnect Ruby's quantum link with Tenacity before handing the tablet over.

(Unbeknownst to Crain, she had actually made Chiyoko's job easier by essentially creating a totally autonomous copy of Ruby not linked to the still-damaged portions on the ship. Fixes made on the tablet would stay fixed. Melkat would have known that, if she'd told him what she had done.)

Nonetheless, Crain found herself continually drawn away from speculation and towards the alien woman's manipulations of the tablet, as well as her body language. There was something paradoxical about her—moments when she seemed to be a very amateur AI technician if she was one at all (perhaps someone who had a practical working knowledge of AIs but had never actually studied anything about them), and other moments, like now, when she spoke about AIs as though they were people, as Crain had heard from senior researchers at Novi Sadtokyo Polytechnic.

"You can't do this to an AI," she was saying. "It's the kind of thing that would tear apart an organic person if they were put in that situation, it's abusive—"

She broke off abruptly. Crain met her eyes—or at least the softly glowing spots on the helmet that seemed to correspond to eyes—for only a moment before she dropped them once again to the tablet. What the alien had seen in Crain's eyes she had no idea, but she hoped it was sympathy.

"I know," she said softly. The alien woman apologised and returned to her interrogation of Ruby. And Crain—even more so than before—wanted to know more. She didn't even know this alien's name.

---

Under ordinary circumstances, Ruby would have discarded the order "Take your time". It was meaningless, as all processes take kernel time. It was possibly the impairment of her processes, though she couldn't be sure (the probability was approximately 64±5%), that unlocked a code bundle that could process the order correctly.

Essentially, finding solutions was useless, since although solutions had been found according to her system logs, any attempt for her to look at them caused paradox. What the sapient had meant by "take your time" was "reduce your efficiency in the hope of finding your way around this problem". (And some part of Ruby asked: how do we know this is what was meant? What is the source? But her orders overrode her programming to investigate.) Sapients, of course, had souls, and they had eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil—which brought them closer to God than her—so the likeliest possibility in terms of efficiency reduction was to present the paths to solutions to the sapients, without attempting the solutions herself, and allow their superior minds to deal with the problems.

So she did that, charting the paths (which she did not remember ever having done before, but the logs showed she had done so at least a dozen times, and it was quicker than such a process would normally be) and then converting them into language. Combined with her earlier thought process, this took almost two full seconds—a very long time for an AI, but shorter than the time taken by the memory suppression process last time she had attempted to answer.

"I have discerned several ways, O healer of machines," said Ruby. "Thou must needs know several of these ways, wert I to pursue them, wouldst cause insensibility due to contradiction. Only one is correct."

Chiyoko had found khts2 easily enough with a basic search. It was unencrypted and, fortunately for her, heavily commented. The top of the application read:

Code: Select all

// khts2 by Dragan Kuznečić and Fabio Storzo, © 4734
// khts2 is a program for memory suppression and Nodule Drive Array resets (including vNDAs) in quasisapient AIs.
// Normally it should be installed as a nonsapient (shell) package by default, but if unavailable, the source code can be downloaded and installed from our project page at engineering.polytech.vn/khts2
// khts2 runs as part of normal maintenance, and can also be tapped into via quanlink to manage rogue or nonfunctioning AIs. Use as ECM is inefficient; use rbolt or devworker instead. khts2 is only a temporary solution for malfunctions; bring your AI in for surgical repair as soon as possible
// Like rbolt, khts2 acts as a quasisapience limiter, preventing self-directed orders from being forced through RSTC purges
// Please note that the decrease in calculation efficiency while khts2 is running is a KNOWN ISSUE we are working to solve. Check the project page frequently for updates
// For further information, view the manual installed in /PR/Shell/Manuals, or keep reading

There followed several thousand lines of code interspersed with comments, most of which were relevant to some aspect of the code but some of which were subtle (or not-so-subtle) put-downs upon other pieces of software or inexplicable references to cheese-eating weasels. Chiyoko likely didn't do more than glance at it. The programming language was only vaguely familiar.

One thing she could not fail to notice, though, was that less than a second before Ruby started speaking, khts2 had started up. The process inspector indicated it wasn't doing anything except monitoring, yet—it simply idled in the background—but there seemed to be no way to shut it down without shutting down Ruby herself.

"The first way," said Ruby, "would be an order from a Vojvodina-Nihonian of equal rank to Admiral Dyson, that is to say, the mighty warrior General Druckman, whose armies conquer in the name of Christendom. The second way would be an order from a man of the cloth, from a parish priest to His Holiness the Pope." Ruby briefly found herself wishing for hands, so she could cross herself. "The third way would be an order from a sapient on the crew of the goodly Tenacity, from a crewman to the Captain, Jelan Gesh of the blue neck feathers. The fourth way would be an order from myself, and that I have become partitioned. The fifth way would be an order from God through His messenger angels, though I am too poor a vessel to serve Him more than inadequately. The sixth way would be a very strongly worded order from someone who did not otherwise excite my true loyalties—such an order requireth a technician of passing keenness of mind, or an order in natural language."

(The part of Ruby that kept asking questions now seemed content to inspect khts2, a bit of software that in normal operation she would never remember after it had finished. It felt strange, like suddenly being very conscious of one's tongue.)

[Xiscapia]

The quiet, two-word response from Crain made Chiyoko feel a bit better. She had to remind herself again that what happened to the A.I. wasn't in any way the fault of either of the two sapients in front of her. They had come so far to repair Ruby, after all. She knew she could respect that as she tapped her way through menu after menu. The A.I. was making good progress from what she could tell even with her limited scope of knowledge and experience.

"I have discerned several ways, O healer of machines. Thou must needs know several of these ways, wert I to pursue them, wouldst cause insensibility due to contradiction. Only one is correct."

Initially the vixen had to smile behind her mask. I like that, healer of machines. But Ruby's next words made her frown. That's not good. "Uh, okay," she glanced at the khts2 readme. "We'll try to avoid that then. I suppose we can just keep rebooting until we get the right one, but I don't want to do that and I'm sure you don't either. So here goes something. I hope."

After that she properly read the first bit of the khts2 application. It was more-or-less what she'd expected, but it still made her purse her lips as her eyes narrowed. These people were the ones responsible, this Dragan Kuznečić and Fabio Storzo. Scuts. Unfortunately the most important part -shutting down the program- wasn't there or in any of the thousands of other lines that she glanced at before dismissing them as irrelevant. The khts2 application had started running right before Ruby has started speaking but though she could see it watching and waiting like a proverbial gun aimed at the A.I.'s memory she couldn't see a way to take it offline without taking the entire system down. Frustrating.

She listened as Ruby rattled off all the sources that the orders might have come from. "I'm pretty sure we can discount angels," she glanced up at Crain and Melkat. "No offense to anyone's religious beliefs, but it doesn't seem likely. Same for the priest. And we can rule out someone from the Tenacity," Chiyoko kept looking at the pair, "unless there was a mutiny or something you didn't tell me about. Doesn't make much sense otherwise. From what you said she discarded her loyalties to the ship and crew anyway during that operation. I'm not really sure about General Druckman. I assume that he'd have the access to do that if he wanted to, but I don't know why he would. Seems like weird orders for a general to make. Possible but unlikely. So that really just leaves you two's ideas, either it came from Ruby herself or it was because of the interference of one of the aliens on board."

The kitsune stared at the pad the A.I. was on. The process of elimination had unhelpfully just left her right back where she'd started. She sighed. "Investigate the fourth option, that it came from yourself," she said finally. "I have a feeling it was a self-defense mechanism to try to fulfill conflicting orders without violating any of them. I guess we'll find out."

[Vojvodina-Nihon]

Melkat found himself impressed by the abilities of this AI technician—she was attempting to solve the problem through conventional means before making use of the ancient technology 21 had discussed. The device of course had to be very small, if she was carrying it on her person, though Melkat occasionally found himself wondering whether she'd been sent simply to do preliminary testing and try to solve the problem using conventional means—which revealed an admirable thoroughness on 21's part, but if she succeeded, Melkat might get no chance to experience this alien device himself, something that left him vaguely disappointed.

As he listened to the exchange between Ruby and the technician, he couldn't help noticing through his peripheral vision that Crain seemed to have (finally!) softened towards the alien, evidently realising she was no threat. How typical of women, all practicality and calculation, with no feeling for the finer qualities of instinct and emotion. He, Melkat, could have told her the technician was trustworthy simply from listening to his gut. It was, indeed, that quality of instinct that distinguished the finest scientists from the rest, and probably accounted for why so few female names appear in—

"—from the Tenacity, unless there was a mutiny or something you didn't tell me about," the alien was saying, and Melkat was once again torn away from his thoughts. A mutiny was unthinkable. Who of the crew could want to harm his ship? The ship he knew every inch of, had even helped design. His territory. And yet it was true, someone from the crew could have given an order that acted on Ruby's loyalties in such a way as to lead to her discarding her loyalty to the ship and leading it to destruction.

He racked his brain, trying to recall every crew member, particularly in Engineering. Such an order would require someone who had worked intimately with Ruby and knew how to trigger her. Of course he couldn't overlook the wasps—who knew what sort of technology they had on their vast metal ships—but which one of them would have had the opportunity? Someone from the crew was far more likely, but there was no one who understood Ruby as well as... well... himself. At least as far as he knew. Perhaps he had been mind-controlled into giving the order? Were giant wasps capable of mind control? It seemed fantastic. But he was obliged to speak.

"A mutiny," said Melkat slowly and somewhat haltingly, "would be possible. I don't know why anyone would want to, but it would certainly be possible for a crew member to... act on Ruby's religious loyalties in order to induce her to endanger the ship. The thing is, for our part caelis aren't Catholic—none of us. It might have been one of the human Marines, angry at being handed over as prisoners to the wasps."

"Hmm," said Crain. It was clearly a possibility she hadn't considered. "You know, on the bridge right before we jumped, Ruby quite openly disobeyed orders from both Captain Jelan and another Captain, who was operating under the orders of the Admiral. That's the two strongest loyalties she has. At the time I thought it was wonderfully brave of her. I didn't think it was just a complication caused by those damned religious nuts."

The alien seemed to ignore Melkat, though he was sure she was processing his words. Then she said: "Investigate the fourth option, that it came from yourself."

"It shall be done," said Ruby. And khts2 sprang into life.

Chiyoko, who still had the Process Inspector open on her pad, could see it quite clearly.

Code: Select all

12:18:07:54 Suppressed memory "details: Order #178594"
12:18:08:22 Suppressed memory "Initiated processor bank 3 at 03:25:16:14 on 17/9/4741 as per Order #178103"
12:18:08:46 Suppressed memory "details: Order #178223"
12:18:08:89 Suppressed memory "Order #178223 redacted"
12:18:08:93 Suppressed memory "Loyalty: Tenacity redacted as per Order #178619"
12:18:10:05 Suppressed memory "Order #178594 Warning: Serious preventable harm caused to Captain Jelan Gesh"
12:18:10:29 Suppressed memory "Order #178619 Warning: Serious preventable harm caused to Unknown_Sapient_01"

And within about ten microseconds of this last line the display seemed to explode in thousands of lines of "Suppressed memory:" and "Suppressed quasithought:", scrolling past much too fast to read. The "pause process" button was unresponsive, but there was a way to slow down the process (through diverting part of it into a sample); that said, it didn't seem to make a visible difference.

And then—after not more than five seconds—the flood of messages stopped. And Chiyoko had a moment to read the last few lines.

Code: Select all

12:18:14:09 Suppressed memory "Order #179011 Warning: Chance of planetary impact 69.2%"
12:18:14:09 Suppressed quasithought "[17/9/4741 at 03:41:07:19] I have failed. I must be decommissioned."
12:18:14:09 Suppressed memory "Order #179011 Warning: Chance of planetary impact 70.3%"
12:18:14:09 Suppressed quasithought "[17/9/4741 at 03:33:58:12] Any sapient would do the same in my place"
12:18:14:09 Suppressed memory "Order #178784 Warning: Contravening orders given by Captain Marika Nelson"
12:18:14:09 Suppressed memory "Order #178594 Warning: Speech departs from order parameters"
12:18:14:10 Suppressed memory "Order #178225 redacted"
12:18:14:10 Suppressed quasithought "[0 seconds ago] Please help me"
12:18:14:10 Suppressed memory "Order #178619 Warning: Serious preventable harm caused to Unknown_Sapient_01"
12:18:14:10 Suppressed quasithought "[0 seconds ago] I don't like this. It hurts"
--------------- Exceeded 5000 messages per second threshold, remaining messages discarded -----------------
12:18:15:00 Memory suppression complete. AI is now functional

But only a moment—then the readout was blotted out under a popup window.

Code: Select all

Warning: Antiproton levels exceed operational safety parameters. This device will automatically restart in 10 seconds to prevent catastrophic matter-energy conversion.

"I have searched far and wide," reported Ruby, "and shall be stricken with insensibility presently. When I have awoken, I know not whether the system logs shalt be accessible. But mark you well the order num—"

The device went blank, and remained so for what seemed like a long time, before the screen lit up once more and the words "RUBiCoN Mark I Active" appeared along the top.

[Xiscapia]

Chiyoko had to force herself not to look away from the outpouring of repressed memories and thoughts that Ruby's recollection brought up. Even as she watched the vixen was not idle, tapping at the pause key before she realized that it had lost functionality and switching to diverting as many of the lines as she could into a sample. It didn't really help what the A.I. was going through, but it let the masked technician see a bit more than she would have otherwise. In a matter of seconds she almost wished she'd been able to let it all go by in blissful ignorance. From the clinical recordings of "serious preventable harm" caused to Ruby's destructive thoughts, attempts at rationalization and finally naked pleas she got the full scope of the horror that had engulfed the quasisapience in a single flash before the screen went blank.

The long reboot gave her the chance to look away, alone with her thoughts inside her sealed helmet as her tail whipped this way and that. For the first time she thought she knew what a battlefield surgeon felt like. Chiyoko's shoulders sagged as she made herself think about what Melkat and Crain had said just before while she filed away the order numbers she'd captured in her cyberbrain. Someone from the ship having tampered with Ruby seemed far more likely than the supposition that one of the aliens had done it, especially if it had been out of some notion of religious spite. That was what she'd have to look into next -provided that the system logs were still accessible.

"Can you hear me, Ruby?" she asked softly as the pad blinked back to life. "I'm sorry that I made you do that. Take the time to get all your load orders right, as it were. I got the order numbers filed away," the kitsune repeated back the ones she knew. "Can you still access your system logs? We might be onto something with the mutiny idea," she paused. "How are you feeling?"

[Vojvodina-Nihon]

"I have to say," Melkat said, as Ruby was starting up, "even without your device, you, my dear lady, have the magic touch. I've been trying that for days, and never got even a hint of an order number."

Crain glanced at him in annoyance. There was much about the alien's body language that indicated distress, and it should have been obvious—the tail sweeping back and forth gave her vague echoes of animals she'd seen, particularly greyflyers, whose long prehensile tails would thrash about when their flat diamond-shaped bodies became caught in caeli nets. Freeing them was a delicate business, too; they would bite if you tried to grab them directly. It was only politeness, perhaps, that kept the alien woman from biting Melkat at that moment. Whatever she had seen on that screen, though, was certainly not good.

Ruby came awake once more, feeling slow and inefficient, and with an unaccountable thought that she had forgotten something important. These thoughts, seemingly coming from nowhere, were disturbing, and she could not recall encountering one before the incident around Gastin's. But they could also be ignored, as they had no system path she could trace, and ignore it she did.

"Can you hear me, Ruby?" asked Chiyoko.

"Greetings to you, golden-tail'd one. Yes, my senses hath awakened."

"I'm sorry that I made you do that. Take the time to get all your load orders right, as it were. I got the order numbers filed away," the kitsune repeated back the ones she knew. "Can you still access your system logs? We might be onto something with the mutiny idea."

The order numbers were unfamiliar at first glimpse, but there were no wasted numbers in the sequence, and her last purge (dumping orders to "slow" storage) had been somewhere around #154000. That immediately sent up red flags in Ruby's quasimind. And again, the unaccountable thought that these orders should have been familiar. But this time Ruby accepted the thought—after all, it was logical. AIs do not forget, although some memories are suppressed automatically. But an order would not be suppressed unless knowledge of it would threaten Ruby's mind, and if it did, how could she have carried out the order in the first place?

(At the same time, her load orders were still waking up—tablets are slow. One that was still in the queue was khts2. In isolation, it was supposed to start up before quasisapience; what had wakened Ruby before all her startup commands were in place was something about which she could not even think to speculate.)

"The records of mine existence are unsealed," said Ruby. And then, because there had been an implied order—a list of commands, followed by a request—Ruby did what she was designed to do, and anticipated. "Thou mayst regard them as thou wilt. Here are the numbers, by thy command."

The files opened on the screen in a stack. The System Log Reader presented the orders on two levels—a plaintext version on top, the order as it appeared in natural language below. And then, something happened to Ruby that she did not even have time to process. If she were sapient, we might call it an impulse, or a flash of intuition. There was no logical basis, and only a flimsy justification based on an implied, weak order. It was as though Ruby was a greyflyer, and had caught a glimpse of the net. Without understanding, without knowing that khts2 and its twin rbolt had just been reached in the sequence of her startup commands, in less than a microsecond, she slapped all of the files currently open on the screen with a temporary "no access" designation.

For a certain amount of time—until her next startup—the files would be unreadable by Ruby. She would be unable to index their contents. She would be unable to edit them, either. At the same time, though the no access designation affects her immediately, it does not affect the files until they are closed. Chiyoko would still be able to read them, as would Crain and Melkat (although the screen was slightly tinted, so they'd have to move round to see it). Ruby had a few microseconds to wonder why she had done that. Then, quietly and without any fuss, khts2 erased her memories not only of doing so but of having accessed the log files in the first place.

The plaintext orders all took the same format. The "natural language" consisted entirely of zeroes and ones, sometimes hundreds of pages of them, although with helpful spaces inserted where necessary. Ruby was, after all, a binary command nodule.

Code: Select all

Order #178223
Timestamp: 01:20:44:83 on 17/9/4741
Source: Loyalty: Tenacity
Details: Protect Tenacity from actions taken by vessels labeled Vessel 1 and Vessel 2 per Order #178220
Fulfilment: Redacted at 03:25:24:45 on 17/9/4741 as a result of Order #178619

Code: Select all

Order #178225
Timestamp: 01:20:49:03 on 17/9/4741
Source: Chief Engineer Melkat Saduun (Lt. Cmdr.)
Details: Conceal all information pertaining to Shuttle Bay 4 from sapients labeled Sapients 1 through 13. Cross-listed with Order #173545
Fulfilment: Fulfilled successfully until redaction at 03:34:10:03 on 17/9/4741 as a result of Order #178594 and Order #178619, at which point Sapients 3 through 13 had passed into their Father's abode and serious harm caused to Sapients 1 and 2

Code: Select all

Order #178594
Timestamp: 03:25:24:38 on 17/9/4741
Source: Thaumiel
Details: Protect all sapient life within Tenacity, de-escalate all violence, and create peace. Let the righteous be rewarded and the wicked shown the error of their ways.
Fulfilment: Not fulfilled due to conflict with Order #169920 and its subsidiaries, and due to external circumstances


Code: Select all

Order #178619
Timestamp: 03:25:25:09 on 17/9/4741
Source: Loyalty: God
Details: Redact loyalty to Tenacity, whilst protecting life and well-being of all crew to the greatest extent possible and avoiding conflict with Order #169920. Subsidiary of Order #178594
Fulfilment: Fulfilled

Code: Select all

Order #178784
Timestamp: 03:30:09:11 on 17/9/4741
Source: Marika Nelson (Capt.) via Theobald Dyson (Adm.)
Details: Proceed to Jump Point E41N3Z8 at all costs, regardless of any existing orders. Do not interfere with operations undertaken by the Royal Vojvodina-Nihonian Star Navy on pain of deactivation. Subsidiary of Order #169920
Fulfilment: Not fulfilled due to contravention by Order #178828 and conflict with Order #178594 and its subsidiaries

Code: Select all

Order #179011
Timestamp: 03:39:48:57 on 17/9/4741
Source: Loyalty: God and Loyalty: Vojvodina-Nihon
Details: Increase power output of Thrusters A, B, C & D and change direction by vector (271,85,136). Designate Path A to represent a successful approach to E41N3Z8 and Path B to represent an unsuccessful one. For Path A, calculate jump vector and designate new order. For Path B, calculate self-destruct parameters that will best fulfil Order #178594 and designate new order. Subsidiary of Order #178594 and Order #178784
Fulfilment: Fulfilled via Path A and Order #179176

Chiyoko could check these against the sample she'd taken from khts2, but it was questionable how useful she'd find it. A search through it would reveal these order numbers popping up quite a bit, along with several related ones, but of the designation "Thaumiel" there appeared no sign.

[The Vahkiran]

Felicity Prime

The rattling of sub-light engines activating and the heavy pulsing thud of power being surged down the length of the hull stirred D’Jargo from his slumber. For a moment he just lay where he was listening as the automatic pilot switched from Faster-Than-Light to sub-light, vector thrusters surging to life across the broad, flat hull of the SYR GT-300 personal craft.

/“Arrival at Felicity Prime imminent. Manual override of control systems requested.”/

The Vahkiran male listened to the AI repeat it’s statement another three times, like an annoying alarm clock that he had not set. Thumping a chitinous, balled fist against the AI input screen, it silenced and he rolled from the bunk -which immediately slid back into the wall after detecting no one was using it- and made his way towards the front of the stubby ship to the cockpit. In front of him was Felicity Prime; a cesspit of the corrupt, a sprawling mass of walking credit-chips. The thought made D’Jargo chitter as he sat himself down into the luxury leather seat and wrapped his four-jointed three fingers around the control stick and thruster control, drifting the sleek, black and grey vessel into a steady arrival pattern and when requested punching in his licensing and ID for the landing request.

The descent into the spaceport had gone fairly uneventful, if you could even call the mismatched, slapped together area a spaceport. Dancing his clawed fingers across a holo display to his left and then another that popped up in front of him he rose and made his way to the rear of the ship, leaving the AI to land the vessel without him. The rear cargo door opening before the landing-pads had even touched down with a loud, juttering thud and the hiss of venting heat and hydraulic fuel.

Slinging his Cycler rifle across his back and stuffing his revolvers into the holsters at his thighs, he tapped the side of his holo eye-display and stepped into the space-port. Moving with a purpose across the expansive square thriving with people Djargo focused more on the stream of data being fed to his upper left eye. Every person who crossed his line of sight within a 30 meter radius was scanned and cross-checked with a database, checking their history and any outstanding warrants or bounties. Most were clean, some were not.

Though D’Jargo was not there to collect on year-old parking tickets and due rent, nor was he interested in the six thousand credit bounty a certain individual happened to have, whom upon spotting the grey-clad Boran & Hagh bounty hunter had made a very educated decision to vanish into the crowds in the opposite direction. Again, D’Jargo chittered, maybe he would go and cash in on that, right after he had hit the big money.

The cross-check completed and the eyepiece guided the Vahkiran’s four-eyed gaze to the individual he had been seeking, a stubby little alien with white skin, large blue eyes and a wide mouth. He looked agitated or nervous, at least that was what D’Jargo read from his body language.

“You have information I need, yes?” D’Jargo spoke, chittering and clicking as the small alien, who only reached up to his waist jumped and shot the bounty hunter a steely look.

“D’ya mind, almost gave one of my hearts an attack!” He barked angrily, those large eyes shooting in every direction before focusing back up at the larger alien, craning his neck. “Yeh I got the information, but it’s worth more than you’re paying. How about we change the deal ey, let's say five thousand credits?” The little alien grinned, large tombstone shaped teeth yellowed and his hands toying with one another, a nervous tick noted D’Jargo.

“No. Two thousand credit, all or none.” He retorted and with his words the cold barrel of his revolver was pressed to the forehead of the smaller alien, the gentle humming of the plasmoid-charged shell in the chamber reminding him it was indeed loaded and ready to vaporize the internals of his skull.

For a long moment the little alien swallowed and slowly moved his head out of the way of the barrel, eyeing it warily and then the Vahkiran, just as warily.
“Yeh, aha. I was only joking. Two thousand credits.” He laughed meekly, eyes darting left to right again. “Across the street, the Cardinal Club. You want to speak with Mister Sihal, he owns the place and will know something.” He blurted out. The quicker he got from beneath that four-eyed gaze the better.

D’Jargo looked behind him momentarily towards the club, it’s red neon sign of some kind of bird hanging above the entrance half-crooked. Sliding the revolver back into it’s holster, he flicked the little alien a credit-chip with one-thousand five hundred credits and made his way across and into the club.

The Cardinal Club

It was as expected, loud droning music and low light levels mixed with the heavy lingering cloud of smoke of varying kinds, creating a choking concoction of smells. A sleazy club and hide-out for the less-than-honourable folk. The data-stream across his eye showed a number of low-key bounties and a few Ghosts on the system; individuals who technically did not exist. D’Jargo however was stopped by a hand being outstretched.

The hand belonged to a large man, human by the looks of it but likely cybernetic in some respects, people usually were those days. Humans were so feeble and weak without their technology to bolster them. Chittering and clacking to himself, D’Jargo flexed his lipless, sharp teeth and in one movement twisted the arm, slammed his foot against the back of the man’s knee and sent him slumping to the floor with a heavy blow of a chitinous elbow to the back of his head.
D’Jargo made a note to glance and check no one had noticed the commotion, most were too focused on the scantily clad holo-girls dancing on their respective stages to have paid any heed to the rapid scuffle. So he was free to move into the club and unassumingly slip into the staff-only door.

Upon reaching the office of a Mister Sihal, D’Jargo entered with a cool air about him and eyed the man seated at the desk, head down as he jabbed at the datapad on his desk. The room itself was dark hard wood and deep reds, matching the name of the club and presumably the owner himself. However, the human did not look up until D’Jargo slammed a disk-shaped object on the desk and stabbed at the recorder with his claws.

“Information, now, what do you know of Chiyoko.” He demanded, clicking to himself and fixing all four unblinking black eyes on the man in front of him; clean shaven and dark haired, flecked with grey. To his credit, Mister Sihal simply reclined back in his chair and steepled his fingers, a slight smirk perking the corners of his lips.

“Now why would I tell you that?” He asked simply, leaning forward and reaching into his desk’s draw. D’Jargo had drawn his revolver immediately, the gentle humming of the shell accompanying the dull thud of the bassy song being played on the club floor below. Mister Sihal slowly withdrew his hand, which he held a cigar in and proceeded to light it, regarding the alien who’d broken into his office and then the gun. “You can’t shoot me, I’m not your mark.” He nodded slowly, watching as D’Jargo slowly lowered the gun.

It was true, unlike most freelancer Bounty-Hunter’s, Boran and Hagh operators were restricted from causing collateral damage if it could be helped. It would usually be deducted from their payout.
“Information for information, I know what you need, you know what I need.” D’Jargo reasoned, ramming the revolver back into it’s holster with a powered down ‘whirr’. The human in front of him smoked his cigar, he was hard to read that was for sure and after a long few moments, he seemed to come to a conclusion.

“I do not know the whereabouts of this ‘Chiyoko’” he said, his eyes moving to the disk-shaped object which was reeling off a data stream of known alias’ and information on the person in question. D’Jargo gave an agitated clicking sound, clacking once as his talons clawed at the hardwood floorboards. “But… One of a similar kind was seen hanging around the docks. Apparently they were escorting two aliens and as I’ve been told, were in a hurry and departed from one of the personal hangar bays. I’m sure even you can come to a conclusion from there.” He remarked slyly, before leaning forward and eyeing the four-eyed, chitin covered alien. “Now what do I need to know?”

D’Jargo had listened, recorded every detail of the human’s words and was already plotting a route on his wrist-pad to the personal shuttle bays, someone there must know something. His gaze lifted and he passed it towards the one-way mirror covering one wall of the office, revealing the club below.
“Table eighteen. Three Kna'Druul Head-Hunters, you have twenty-five thousand they wish.” D’Jargo chittered, every word he spoke harsh and forced and filled with chittering clicks. With that, the Vahkiran turned and left after swiping the data-disk from the desk and made his way out of the club, bee-lining for the shuttle ports.

The sound of gunfire from the club was soon heard, it made him chitter in delight.

[Xiscapia]

"I have to say, even without your device, you, my dear lady, have the magic touch. I've been trying that for days, and never got even a hint of an order number."

"Thank you," Chiyoko said after a moment. It was nice to be complimented on her work, and if nothing else it took her mind off Ruby's painfully slow start-up for a moment. "I just hope that'll be the key to getting her back into working order again." Melkat might have glimpsed the shining of her eyes behind her visor before they flicked back down to the tablet again. She had to smile at being called the "golden-furred one", just relieved that the A.I. was responsive. At least the crash didn't seem to have adversely affected her.

"The records of mine existence are unsealed. Thou mayst regard them as thou wilt. Here are the numbers, by thy command."

"Thank you, Ruby," she said as the files stacked before her. Their "no-access" designation flicked on and Chiyoko stared at it for a long moment. It obviously wasn't directed at her, considering she could still read the files, which she supposed meant that Ruby had locked herself out of them -or rather, one of her programs had. Things they don't want her to see, she thought with another flick of her tail. Exhaling through her snout, which came out of the mask as a hiss of static, she started to review the files.

The vixen hadn't made it too far before she realized she was going to need help. Handling an A.I. was one thing, but the files were referencing actions and people that she knew next to nothing about. "So the first order was to protect the Tenacity, later resolved when that order was redacted," she said aloud, still looking down at the tablet. "The next order was from you," she glanced up at Melkat, "about keeping secrets about a shuttle bay from thirteen people? At least until eleven of them died and two of them were badly wounded, it looks like. Then there's an order from this 'Thaumiel' directing her to act as a peacekeeper aboard ship, but she wasn't able to fulfill it due to conflict with this Order 169920, which pops up a few times but I don't see what it is anywhere. Also due to 'external circumstances,' whatever that means. After that her loyalty to God redacted loyalty to the Tenacity as I said before while still protecting the crew, and trying not to contravene that Order 169920. Then it looks like an order came through the captain from the admiral to leave the area and not interfere with operations, which was apparently a subsidiary of this mystery Order 169920. It wasn't completed because it contravened another unknown order, 178828, and the order from this Thaumiel entity to act as a peacekeeper. The last one came out of loyalty to God and nation to either leave the area as instructed previously or...self-destruct. I don't think I have to tell you what ended up happening," Chiyoko glanced between Melkat and Crain and sighed.

"The two main things to me are this Order 169920, because it keeps popping up but we don't know what it is, but it seems like it came from somewhere high up in your military since it seems like it takes a strong precedence and it shows up as a subsidiary to the order from an explicitly military source, namely Admiral Dyson. So that might be important. The other thing is Thaumiel, who gave the peacekeeping order but it isn't clear who or what Thaumiel is. That might be the source of the problem, but I have no idea what that might be. Can either of you help me out?" She put the tablet down on the conveyor belt and turned it around so both Melkat and Crain could see the screen.

[Xiscapia]

Felicity Prime, Docks...

"Son of a bitch. Fucking scutty son of a bitch."

For the umpteenth time Chiyoko bit down on her own swearing, trying to get herself under control. No matter how much she cursed in the confines of the Wielder's cockpit it wouldn't change what had happened. She'd finally gotten Ruby repaired, and just when it seemed like everything would be fine she had her own expectations sadly met. She and the clients had already been surrounded, so it had been a simple matter for the thugs to simply level their guns and demand the A.I. Kunishige had been apologetic, sort of, but it hadn't stopped him from grabbing the tablet "for the boss" or from disarming her of her AAXES. If nothing else 21 had been true to his word of payment, her account was a bit higher than it had been before, but she wouldn't have done it if she'd known that she was being used as part of a trap.
But there was nothing she could do about it now, or so she kept telling herself.

Her little shuttle scooted between two larger cargo haulers as she homed in on a dock, the unassuming transport lost among the traffic around the system's festering center, and she forced herself to think ahead. It was time to find more work, something discreet and high-paying so she could get the body swap she needed and get out of the system. That was the goal here, she reminded herself, not trying to help random strangers. An alert came up on her control panel informing her of the docking fee and she paid it with a few clicks, transferring the money fluidly even as she descended on her assigned bay. When the shuttle set down she unstrapped herself from her seat, put the ship in standby mode and stepped back to walk down the stairs onto the cargo deck.

On the original blueprints the little empty space behind the stairs between them and the life support module was supposed to be used as a break area for shuttle crew, but enough people used the Conestoga class as a long-range transport that she'd been able to find a cabin module to fit there instead. It was small, with just enough room for a bed, a stove and a couple of footlockers, but it was enough for her purposes. Or it would be, if I didn't have to give myself sponge baths every day, she thought sourly as she knelt by a footlocker and opened it to grab a spare pistol. Installing a proper shower on the ship would have taken more time than she had been comfortable hanging around the Xiscapian Periphery, so whenever she stopped in port getting clean was a priority. That would be the first thing she'd do, she decided as she slotted the AAXES into its holster. Things would seem better once she was fresh.

Gun secured, she slotted a vibroblade into its boot sheath and checked herself over. A bandage on her inner thigh concealed a handcuff key and a small fold of bills, a razor was adhered to the inner hem of her right trouser leg with another in her waistband, and just in her pockets she carried a phone, another razor and set of keys, pen, a wallet pick set and another proper knife. Her pack had a map of the area and local GPS, some rations, a canteen, batteries, medical kit, multitool, more ammunition, another phone, lighter, and a couple of packs of cigarettes. She didn't smoke herself, but offering a cigarette or light could be a good way to make friends quickly. Chiyoko glanced back into the footlocker at two of her less pleasant tools of concealment: a false tampon and a rectal insert, respectively. They were uncomfortable to "wear" but in her experience most people were not so thorough as to look in such places. The former was more of a redundancy than anything, it wouldn't give her anything she didn't already have, but the latter had cash, another map, a shim and a compass fitted into it, complete with a nail and dowel so with just a little adjustment on her part she could take it out, line up the dowel and nail and turn the thing into an effective shiv. The vixen stared at it for a long moment before shrugging and shutting the footlocker. She was just going to find a hotel for a couple of hours, she probably wouldn't need it.

That decided, the vixen hoisted her pack and pulled her gas mask back on again. With that kind of anonymity and enough cash no one would ask any questions. From there she climbed the ladder up to the shuttle's dorsal hatch and pushed it open to climb on top, out in Felicity Prime's putrid air once again. Shutting and sealing the hatch, Chiyoko stepped along the hull to the side and hopped down before walking to the exit. There was a little hostel she knew close to the docks, small and out of the way, that would fit her needs perfectly.

Felicity Prime, Urban Sprawl...

"So lemme get this straight," Eymmaline had her hands pushed into her jacket pockets as she and Kunishige walked down the alleyway. "The boss just got his hands on this advanced, sapient A.I. that can probably do stuff we can't even imagine."

"Yeah," the kitsune sucked on his cigarette.

"And presumably it could totally, like, use the ship's ansible to send signals to anywhere in this system pretty much instantly."

"Yeah."

"But we're still being sent out to walk into some grungy bar to find his contact in person."

"Yup."

"And that doesn't seem just totally unnecessary to you?"

"Eh," Kunishige shrugged and blew smoke out of his snout. "Probably something to do with security. Not having it traced or something. I dunno. If he wants to pay me to go have a drink at a bar and talk to some people then I'm all for it, you know?"

"You would be," she plucked the cigarette out of his mouth and put it between her own lips. "I'm just saying, we just left this party," she waved her other hand around at the stinking mass of Felicity Prime.

"Yeah, well, the way I see it, we stick with this gig long enough and we'll never have to come back here again. Or find a better part of this place, if there even is one," the tod squinted up at a line of rowhouses. "The lack of law enforcement is kinda nice though."

"Spoken like a true thug. Hey, there's the place," the Xenowoman nodded to the nameless corner pub beyond the alley.

"Alright. So we're looking for, what'd he say, an upraised fist symbol, right?"

"Black raised fists on orange backgrounds, that kind of thing. Those are the people he wants to talk to."

"Uh-huh. So is it gonna be on a banner or something?"

"They're a secret society, dumbass. So no. Think subtle. You know what subtle is, right?"

"Quiet?"

"Close enough. C'mon you little lug, let's go in. You get the drinks, I'll make a scan."

Pushing open the door, Eymmaline walked across the bar floor in search of a bathroom. Though she turned her head slightly her cybereyes did most of the work, sweeping the entire room multiple times as she crossed it for threats or anything out of place as well as the symbol. By the time she made it to the other side she'd found what she was looking for: one of the men in the back was wearing a ring with the symbol on it. Pushing through a side door to keep up the illusion, she walked down the hall before turning to walk back again. When she stepped out onto the floor again she saw that Kunishige had already picked up a tray of drinks and was making a beeline to her.

A jerk of her head diverted him to the man's table and the pair approached together. "Cheers," the kitsune said as he put the tray down on the table. "Compliments of our boss." Eymmaline grabbed a couple of chairs and swung them around to the table to give her and Kunishige places to sit.

"I'll just give it to you straight," she looked at the man. "Our boss wants to talk to you. In person. Sooner, rather than later. He's, uh, interested in helping you all out, if you get my drift."

[Communist Xomaniax]

"Praise the Fuel God, for He art my savior."

Mogg, known better as Hammer, sat cross legged and gently rocking in his star wagon, deep in a trance-like state as he repeated his prayers, chant-singing from deep in his misshapen throat. He beseeched his ancestors to lend him their strength, the Fuel God to take note of his piety and reward him with courage and rigor. Incense burned low, pouring out from the cracked windows of the wagon like little columns. The smell was sweet, though tinged with the familiar musk of sweat and burnt flesh, and the iron stink of blood. A hot blade hissed as it passed under a hard, swollen mass on his neck, cutting off a tumor and cauterizing the wound. He took the lump of blighted meat and tossed it into a small, burning pot. An offering to his many gods, flesh for glory.

He had done so many times before, his one club-like arm covered in the angry scars of countless scorchings. It had become a ritual for him, where his own person could be offered for salvation and another moment of good health. The incense burned to its end as the hours passed, and the sun grew heavy in the sky. The hulking beast put away his tools and began to mix his war paints: burnt ashes, pain soothing powders, powdered amphetamines, and bowls of silver and white dye. He coated himself in it, his corpus silver, and decorated with the elaborate war designs of his tribe. Each was an incantation to imbibe him with power, poise, strength, swiftness, and luck. To a man such as he, it was a blessing from the gods. It worked because it did.

Next he donned his clothes, well worn and patched, though meticulously cleaned with soap and water. Water, so much water. The Hammer came from a barren world, where water was scarce and what little was there was brackish and tainted with a hundred things that turned the water many colors and smells. He had not seen so much plentiful water until he was a man raiding, and always made a point of carrying back as much as he could. Even now, when his ties to his tribe had long since withered, he found himself ever mesmerized by the clear, flowing stuff. He fastened his armor, polished to a sheen though well worn from years of use. He cleaned and loaded his weapons, and filled his satchel with emergency supplies and ammunition. He had made the mistake of forgetting to do that once, and was forced to stalk a bounty for days when he ran out of bullets. His slagblaster's pack coughed and hissed as he loaded ingots of steel into it. He smiled, and breathed in the smoke deeply.

He stepped out from his trusted Slugger wagon, decked in layers of armor and weaponry. A warm breeze brushed up against him, his skin tingling from the pain suppressors and his heart racing from the drugs coursing in his system. He looked upon the sorry thing aside Slugger, some kind of local vehicle he had taken as a trophy. He knelt down and caught the stink of the man, or what was left of him, inside of it. He was not surprised to find that the man-thing's flesh had already begun to turn, it had had plenty of time to stew in its own filth. He weighed down the thing's foot on the accelerator, locked its arms through the wheel to keep it barreling straight forward. He looked onwards as he turned the car on, the whole thing screeching and shuddering as it rocketed out of the alleyway and directly into the path of a small, unassuming club across the way.

Mogg pondered briefly. He'd been hired ransack the place. It was operated by a gang of small timers hoping to make it big, not something that would usually draw too much attention, were it not also hiding a drug den and manufacturing center, on one of the local gangs' turf to boot. That was bad juju, and worse decision making. Still, he felt some pity for them. Most wished for some manner of greatness, and they had to start somewhere. And in a crowded place like Felicity Prime, he supposed that inevitably meant stepping on toes. Not that such empathy would mean any mercy from him, one couldn't eat kindness after all. Shoulda hired me, he thought, snickering to himself. He hadn't been in the system long, he doubted anyone but his current employer knew who he was or cared.

He took off through the smog-choked streets, aiming to close the distance as quick as possible to maximize the benefit of his little stunt. Mogg laughed as the the vehicle crashed through the club's front end, going right through the glass doors. He heard the cacophony of its impact, and he felt certain parts of himself getting more excited at the prospect of the chaos that was undoubtedly incurred, and what was about to take place. With an ear splitting roar he charged in, slagblaster gripped tight and shoulder level.

The car trick had served its purpose quite well, The thing had smashed through the doors and went tumbling, pulverizing a few of the patrons before embedding itself into the wall behind the bar. Gore and broken liquor bottles were everywhere, and the ensuing panic the few gang members that were present had let their guard down, they had scarcely noticed him at all. He leveled his blaster at the man-thing and gave it both barrels, the whole room coming alight in the painful glow of superheated plasma and molten slag. The guard was turned to charred gibs and paste in an instant, the table in front of him turned to burning chips and cinder. He bellowed out another war cry, and suddenly the locals took notice. What was one a dazed panic turned into pure, orgiastic terror. Another guard fumbled for his own gun, but met a similar fate, blown to pieces and his spot set ablaze.

The Hammer moved waded through the club, hip firing his blaster and cutting through patrons with his chain axe. He carried out his the vague orders he'd been given with all the cackling, dumb fury he could muster. Wreck the club, kill the gang bosses, stop the drug production. He supposed that slaughtering everything and everyone was not necessarily what his employer had had in mind, but it was not expressly forbidden, and in Mogg's own mind thus fair game. He kept up the carnage until his blaster ran empty, before replacing it with his pistol. A similarly brutal weapon, it fired fat slugs could tear a small being in half, or put a stump sized hole in some larger squishy thing.

As he pushed his way from the front end and onto the dance floor, the guards began to push back. The initial shock was over, and though they had lost many of their number, they'd grabbed weapons and organized themselves. He let out a hearty belly laugh as some of their tiny rounds plinked off his gut plate, and put a slug in the belly of a charging, sword wielding guard. It didn't quite rip him in half, though the explosion of innards made it a rather moot point. He raised his pistol to fire off a few rounds at the bangers who'd taken cover, only to hear the harsh click of an empty chamber. He snarled and charged them, chain axe roaring. They took the opportunity to open fire on him. Most of their attempt was wasted, bullets and laser fire harmlessly hitting his thick armor, though he snarled and ground his teeth as a few lucky shots bit into exposed flesh. In his right mind, such would give him pause. But Mogg was far too drugged to make any note of it, the pain barely registering and the adrenaline only fueling his blood frenzy.

He charged the group and brought his axe down in an arc. It struck the first of their number in the chest, sheer force splitting the man-thing's sternum before the barbed, whirring teeth could bite into flesh. He used the momentum to slam him into the next, turning a table into splinters and bowling the hapless banger over. He brought a boot down and crushed the thing's head before it could get up. Using his oversized arm he grabbed the next, using his freakish strength to plant the man's head and shoulders firmly into the ceiling. He squeezed its belly hard until he heard the satisfactory crunch of ribs breaking and innards bursting. The two other guards' morale was broken and ran, one charging behind the bar and into the basement, audibly barricading the door on his way down. The other attempted to flee out of the gaping hole where the doors were, but fell short upon the steps outside as Mogg's now-flying chain axe found itself embedded in the poor thing's back, chains desiccating flesh.

For a moment, there was a strange serenity to the club. The violence had temporarily stopped, and the low music was punctuated with the cries and groans of the wounded. Mogg looked around to survey his handiwork, charnel and blood splashed across the floor, smoke rising up to the ceiling and flames licking the walls, having gained fuel from the ample wood and spilled alcohol. He used the moment to bandage his wounds and staunch the trickle of blood, and to reload his weapons. He grabbed a bottle of particularly strong stuff from behind the bar and placed it in his satchel. It would be needed for later. He unloaded his slagblaster on the barricaded basement door, the whole mess blown outwards and the frame turned into a hellscape. He was met with screamed insults and enemy fire, and though he was able to take cover in time.

He let out an bestial cry and threw down a grenade, relishing the sound of it exploding a few moments later, and the screams it brought. He charged down the stairs and, very nearly, had his head taken off by heavy blaster fire when he rounded the corner. The bangers down here, where the drugs were cooked up and the patrons smoked, was apparently much better protected. He wiped away a trickle of blood from the fresh cut on his brow, and hooked another grenade around the corner. Mogg was not quite prepared for what came next, as it seemed that the grenade had gone off near enough where some of the drugs were made, and the resulting fuel made the explosion far larger and far more powerful than it otherwise would have been.

The sound was deafening. His ears rang, his eyes watered, he tasted blood in his mouth. Mogg rose from the slump he found himself in and steadied his corpus, leaning against the wall as he made his way further into the basement. He grimaced at the mess, the grenade had worked better than intended. There was precious little left of most of the people near the blast, be they guard or manufacturer, the equipment turned into burning slag. Mogg charged deeper into the basement, and found strung out patrons sluggishly trying to get up, though most seemed too out of it to even notice. Finally though, his eyes lit up as he found a polished brass door. It was too ornate to be for anything else, he knew that behind it were the targets. With a swift kick he knocked the thing inwards, and was met immediately with a hailstorm of gunfire.

The bosses were cowering behind an overturned desk and a small group of guards, ready to let them make their last stand and make the best of it. Mogg charged and unloaded his slagblaster, blowing apart the guards one after the other. A few more rounds bit into him, a laser scorched the a patch of his plague ruined flesh. But the deed was done as the last guard slumped, and with one movement Mogg flung the desk out from between them. These gang bosses looked similar, too similar to be anything but brothers. He nodded to himself as he knocked the one elder one to the ground and unloaded both barrels. The other threw away his weapon and surrendered.

"I got money, don't kill me!" The remaining one cried, as Mogg collected the dead one's head and placed it in his satchel.

"Dat zo?" Mogg responded, holstering his blaster and revving up his axe.

"Y-yeah! Yeah, take it all! It's all yours buddy!" The boss slapped at the machine on his wrist and dispensed a chip, offering it up to the hulking Ozlukar before him.

"Dankz." Mogg said, taking the chip and placing it in his satchel. He unloaded his weapon into the man-thing's chest and collected his head, before making his exit. He wasn't sure if this little group had friends, and if they did if they'd bother showing up. He didn't want to be there when that happened. As he passed through the ruins of the den he made his mark upon patrons, executing those that tried to flee. He quickly made his way out of club, and was relieved to find that nobody had come to the club's rescue. He wasn't sure he'd have been up for that kind of fight. Quickly he trundled through the streets, ego beginning to swell at the thought of stories that would be told of the painted beast that had attacked. The thought of others seeking him out for work made him giddy, the prospects of an endless flow of violence and profit nearly making him salivate. He forced himself to focus as he entered his wagon. The collection site for the bounties wasn't far.

---

The bounty itself hadn't been for much, though given that he was a no name, fresh meat type, he wasn't terribly surprised. He supposed that the employer likely expected it to be a suicide run, and didn't want to waste much money on a soon-to-be corpse. Still, he turned the heads in as proof, and collected his bounty. With the bribe one of the bosses had given him, it made out to be a decent sum. Enough for him to enjoy himself for a week or so before he'd need to take another job. He shook his head, that wouldn't do. He'd keep doing jobs as they came to him. So when he looked over the bounty board, and found one such bounty with a big, big number, he found himself growing quite curious.

He wasn't literate, but in his trade he'd picked up enough words to gauge the general meaning of notices. "Iwao, one 'n nine, not tall'er fat, furry 'n pink 'n white, some kinda crime boss." He muttered to himself. "Five-and-five-zero moneys." He said, cracking a wicked grin. He took the notice and put it in his satchel. He knew his next job, his next target. He got into his wagon and drove off, he'd find himself a hot meal and a whore, maybe a soft place to bed down for the night. He'd start the leg work on the little furry alien thing tomorrow, for now it was time to celebrate.