(Rewritten) Ch. 122 – Sonde

"New things, boy, they can scare ya somethin’ fierce. Makes ya feel lost, like yer brain don’t know which way’s up. Folks don’t take to it easy, no sir, an’ they act up when it happens.

You’re no different, an’ don’t fool yourself thinkin’ you are. Ain’t nobody likes feelin’ that way.

But let me tell ya somethin’: you gotta stop an’ listen to what yer mind’s sayin’, what yer words are doin’. Check yourself, boy. Learn ta get hold of it ‘fore it gets hold of you. That’s the way ya figure out how ta handle them scary new things right."

– Aunt 'Auntie Care' Carroll, giving advice to her young shadow, June 2056

****

Present day, during a quiet moment at the Saint Viktor Orphanage

Sister Lana once again sat on her bed and stared at the picture of the French woman with that long, luxurious red hair. For the hundredth time. An exact copy of Leah's hair, combined with one of a few specific body shapes chosen for their…remarkableness.

She had a sinking feeling that she knew exactly what that meant. Anxiety sucked at her belly. Her fingers shook slightly and her breathing was uneven.

"It's not the only explanation, Lana," she whispered unsteadily to herself.

No. No, it wasn't the only explanation, or even anywhere near the most likely. Just the one she was most intimately familiar with.

And also one that would really fit the kind of establishment the beautiful stranger seemed to be hanging around in the picture.

Sister Lana's shoulders shook as old terror scrabbled up her ribcage and strangled her throat. Bent over, she silently cried into her palms, hidden in her room behind locked doors where no one would be able to see.

As it always did, it took an hour before she regained her equilibrium enough that she believed it when she told herself that she could trust her friends and coworkers.

But, once she was ready to face everyone again, she got up and carefully crossed out another day on a calendar that went back ten years. Ten years of freedom for Lana, ten years of a promise kept, and the little ritual helped her heart remember that.

***

Aerial combat really was completely different.

Well, sort of. I'd had dream training in aerial maneuvering—controlled falling, really—so I did actually know how to move in a practical sense. And the organic flight-computer connected to my lower spine certainly helped with its lightning-fast calculations and corrections to my profile.

I still had to think about my strategy. On the ground, I was experienced. I knew where to move and why, just based on the nature of the threat I was facing. Trained instincts.

But up here? I had to think about energy management and momentum ten seconds into the future. It was far more efficient to gain height by circling upwards on my wings, sticking to low thrust settings and riding the rising heat from Leah's fires like a glider rode thermals, than it was to blast up a thousand meters on jets that didn't have that much fuel anyway.

I'd also be able to lure the model Elevens into dive-bombing me, and this was advantageous—I'd be forcing them to convert altitude into speed that wouldn't be useful to them; I'd handily win through raw maneuverability with minimal energy expenditure, no matter how fast they passed me.

Their kinetic energy would go wasted with nothing to show for it but a pair of bombs sticking in their backs, and they'd be out of position to go after Leah's mechs even if they survived the bombs.

It took me accidentally trapping and killing the first one in just such a maneuver for me to realize that this was in fact, my best strategy. Now my brain was going mental on an entirely new set of ideas and modes of operation.

I circled my way up in comfortable spirals, splitting my attention between the remaining half-dozen Elevens a kilometer above me, and the battlefield just a little more than one kilometer below me.

The Elevens were the biggest, most direct danger. They were large and heavy, served as fast transport for smaller models, and could squash our spider mechs just by dropping on them.

Leah had two ways of defeating them: her one-oh-five, which had a bit of a slow fire-rate and locked her in place, and the Dakka's twin twenty-mil, rotary autocannons. Those would allow her to continue moving, but she'd have to hose down the sky with hundreds of expensive Class II rounds each. Or get a lucky shot against a flapping bird, two kilometers up, from a moving platform, but luck wasn't known for its economic viability.

I could get things done for a lot less points, and being up here would help me control the rest of the battlefield, too.

Cloud cover's starting to close Leah's, uh, hole though, I thought, glancing at the ragged edges of the gray cloudbase. Might need another shell before I've finished killing them all.

That meant I'd need to secure space for Leah to stop and gun the sky again.

Her three spiders were constantly moving to use the sight-blocking ramps of shredded alien bodies to hide from the Fives all around. They would riddle her electrolaser defenses with too many projectiles to deflect. Only the artillery bugs, the model Fifteens, could throw their spring-loaded spike wheels across the obstructions. These explosively released their payload as soon as the structural integrity of the ball was injured, but the mechs were too fast and easily outran the death balls.

A group of thirty Fives moved to cut off Leah several corners down the corridor. That'd be enough for a massed volley that would force Leah to stay in cover. Which would let the artillery bugs finally hit her…

I commanded the Myriad bobbing along behind Leah to release a cloud of Javelins and sent them hurtling ahead. They screamed past the bends in the fleshy canyon, just a meter above the ground, and passed the Fives in seconds, where their flaming rears were pointed right at the walking clods of alien cactus.

A smile played over my lips as I pictured the pain my missiles would deliver in moments. But there was too much to do, too many things to think about.

Can't let myself get enthralled by gorgeous mayhem, right now.

So, for the first time ever, I sank into the Quanta with conscious intent.

Time dilated as I dipped beneath the turbulent waves of hormonal emotions, into the cool currents of logic. Solidity and intrinsic existence were washed from me, traded for measured curiosity, decisive certainty, and a widened horizon.

I watched the Javelins core each of the model Fives, shredding their bodies with ultra-violence, but the chaotic joy of havoc skipped across the surface of my consciousness and left my thoughts undisturbed.

Leah's mech pulsed an automated situation change packet of data at me, and I unpacked it with virtual fingers representing decoding algorithms. Her sensors had picked up the initial motions of three of the Elevens preparing to dive bomb us as soon as I would intersect a line drawn between them and Leah's Dakka.

I filed it away; I had a dilated hour before I would need to take action.

Once again I considered the battlefield in its entirety, and many things jumped out at me. Tactical mistakes we'd made and their repercussions, weaknesses in the tactics of the Antithesis, decisions and solutions that would see us safe and gone and the aliens wrecked.

I snagged on a simple realization that I'd somehow missed before: I'd not been using the Quanta correctly. I'd thought the mental tabs were the point of its design, the pinnacle of its capabilities, and the jailbroken quasi-selves that of its successor models. But these were just the means by which this line of augmentations achieved their designer's intent. They were meant to be mini-Tyneas. But unlike the Class XII AI, the organic computer was completely and utterly open to me. My Quanta was me, in a way that Tynea wasn't, couldn't be.

Mission Control, Combat Command, and Logistics all were facets of me, but their…jurisdictions limited them. They weren't equipped to really take advantage of being me. They didn't have the power to make autonomous decisions, and that meant I wasn't truly using the Quanta.

I couldn't just unlock them either. They were untrained and lacked…wisdom? Experience. It would take constant supervision to prevent collateral.

Hmm. Upgrades to the Quanta would perhaps solve that with new functions…but threaten the integrity of the buds. Maids and butlers I want not.

I would create a new bud instead, to analyze and categorize all of my experiences and decisions. It…she, would—first and foremost—learn. Unlike my previous tabs, I wouldn't specify her jurisdiction, but rather reinforce a natural inclination to learn, analyze, and adapt. She would grow up and eventually use what she learned, and she wouldn't have to ask for permission.

The calm curiosity of Quanta-space rose in me; what would she teach me about myself? How would her decisions compare to my own, hormone-driven as they were, sometimes? Would she force me to confront aspects of myself I preferred to ignore? I hoped so.

If she was part of the Quanta, that is, me, would she do only what I would, or would she find a new path? What would it mean for our priorities to be linked, as the Quanta's design dictated?

Without a specific purpose, she'd just be active around the clock, unlike my other buds. She'd develop very quickly, wouldn't she? Then she needed a suitable name quickly.

She'd be a learner, an analyzer, and probably, eventually a teacher to my other buds. A chronicler and actor.

Ah. She'd be an explorer, too, somebody who'd discover unfamiliar sides of myself. A pioneer of Tinea's psychology?

A probe.

Sonde. German for probe, and it has a pretty ring to it.

I launched the mental tab, named it Sonde, and let it loose. It immediately jumped at my memories and began sorting the data it gathered, building nodes and correlations. It wasn't even a bud yet, more an organic machine-learning algorithm, fueled by the only emotion the Quanta allows itself: curiosity.

There'll probably be some panicky panting once I move beyond the Quanta again, huh? I…don't really trust myself enough to give an uncontrolled shard of myself free run like that. Going to have to make some time and space for a personal self-confrontation, or I'll end up canceling the project.

I left Sonde to her—it, really, at this stage, but I had a feeling that assigning her pieces of an identity would anchor her and strengthen her development of one—flitting about, and turned my attention back towards the battlefield, where only split-seconds had passed.

My position in the sky really did give me a plethora of options.

The Antithesis were clustering up in big pools, whirling about and extending tentacles of groups that probed for unchallenged routes towards Leah's spider mechs. They'd make great targets for bombs, and I was in a great spot to deliver some. I wanted more throw weight in my warheads, and those in greater volumes, than the Myriad had offered.

There were also the huge artillery grasshoppers, and they'd spread out enough that more surgical strikes were appropriate. The Myriad's micro-missiles would be perfect, if they had a little extra heft.

Bombs and missiles to take care of the hordes were good, but such weapons took time to prepare, fire, and hit the target. I also needed a way to deliver a lot of pain instantaneously.

My trusty hunting rifle had served that purpose, and the Sentinel on my tail still did, but I figured I should upgrade to something a little upsized.

I sent Tynea my varied set of requirements, and she answered with a set of diagrams.

***