Chapter 151 – The Deus Ex Machina Protocol; Act IV

"Finally, the avalanche ends with the deposition phase, the most deadly of all. As the avalanche slows against obstacles and flattened terrain, its mass compresses more and more, often forming a hard debris field. Survivability drops drastically with this stage due to burial and compaction."

– Jenny lies half-buried under a beanbag, still and solemn, a cardboard gravestone propped against her side. Her plush bunny rests beside her in a shoebox coffin. "De-brie-silent-s field," she whispers into the muffled dark. "We'll find you when the snow melts. Or when Sister Lana stops vacuuming her bedroom."

⁂

Because the Quanta was part of my brain, the mere intention to add the Auxiliant's high-definition cameras to my own HUD was enough for the organic supercomputer to inject the datastream into my visual cortex. The clear, if borrowed, bird's-eye was a relief.

The Quanta sent make-ready signals through the medical ports to the cannonettes on my shoulders, complete with the desired ammunition load. Through the new view, I watched their panels slide open and expose the bare mechanisms of the little guns, only to fold back around them protectively as they extended outward on the fine, robotic arms of their gimbals.

The tiny munition factories integrated into the seat of the pauldrons, now visible with the panels withdrawn, blinked into action between one moment and the next. Streams of dusted materials flowed from the plug-tank sockets and into ten parallel spaces where magnetic fields forced them into specific shapes even as eye-bleedingly bright lasers melted each speck so that it would bond with its neighbor.

I wondered, for a moment, just how strong the magnetic fields had to be to supply enough pressure to heated and therefore mostly non-magnetic metal, and more, how they were contained so thoroughly that my antennae didn't pick up even a whisper of leaking flux.

The peak of Class II technology, huh? Magical, indeed.

But the next moment, fangs clamped down on my kneecap and pain overloaded sensitive nerve bundles where they weren't meant to be touched. For the first time I could remember in three decades, pain actually made me scream, and my leg kicked in reflex.

My eyeballs ached as adrenaline tugged on damaged pupils. I shivered, when the thing's fangs dislodged as my knee pressed deeper into its jaws. They scratched more bone on the way out, stung like hot pokers, and my brain snorted the go-go-go juice all over again.

My foot, whipping through the water, split the current violently and revealed the body of the Three even as its spine broke across my tibia. The indistinct colors of my muffler's rainbows shattered prettily around me, whirling and twirling in a mad mess I couldn't make sense of with my deformed sight. Something in me grinned with manic amusement as the alien's head flopped around like a drunk with a concussion.

The cannonettes on my shoulders twitched downwards and punched a hundred holes through its brain before the corpse even had time to vacate my leg. My eardrums tore and a tortured tinnitus scored my mind from the firing's nasty whine. I giggled as I realized I'd lost my hearing protection somewhere between the sky falling and a steam explosion, deliriously glad my antennae had fixed mufflers.

The white lines of ionized air trailing the darts burned negative shadows even into my damaged vision, so bright my eyeballs itched. Droplets fell into the plasmatic lines and sizzled as they ate holes into them.

There was a kind of mangled beauty to the moment, something that really, really spoke to the poetic priestess of violence in me.

It just forced a wider, ever more unhinged grin onto my face.

Water. I looked down, and the black wet was opaque. The question of more unseen fangs morphed into a skewed certainty in my mind. It even blocks my antennae.

"Diver's torches, Tynea," I requested via brain comms.

Purchased:

Total cost: 5Remaining points: 201573

Here you go, dear. The unexpected, cutesy address wrenched my entire emotional gestalt sideways. I couldn't help but giggle and blush. Yet it came out strained, pressurized by the bloodied battle rictus of a mask I wore as I caught the item out of the air.

Four grenade-looking rounds on a modified stripper clip-slash-dispenser rail with a button to be thumbed.

Use the Sentinel to deploy at a range of up to four hundred meters, Tynea explained, or actuate the button to drop a flare at your feet. Pre-program a course for each, or unlock added wire guidance.

Right. The water would block radio transmissions. No matter—I didn't need fancy maneuvers anyway.

I clicked the dispenser and the first round dropped free, its superfluous propelling charge automatically decoupling. It plopped into the current, immediately started scurrying ahead, and lit up white.

A Three was there with its maw wide open, in arm's reach, flexing like a shark. It twitched sideways, quick as a snake, and swallowed the flare like bait. My flying cannon twitched over just as fast.

The next moment, the alien's head exploded in gore as the twenty mil dumbfire round tore through it.

I laughed with the kind of drugged mania that found anything funny when the flare continued to burn inside its stomach and illuminated the corpse from within, clearly visible through the Auxiliant's cameras. A second shot ruined the glowing nest seeds, too.

Three more clicks dumped the remaining flares in the water as I began wading through the current and used the hovering gun to take potshots at any Antithesis that entered my zone of awareness. The sudden lull gave me the time to remember that my Auxiliant did have alternative sensors that let me see through water and that, strictly speaking, I didn't actually need the flares, but…they made such good bait.

And they were funny. I couldn't help giggling every time one of the approaching Antithefeesh got distracted by them.

Like moths to the flame. I laughed harder.

My best guess put me at about thirty minutes away from Leah, and really, I wanted to be sprinting the entire way and get there right now, but I held myself back. It just wasn't smart to run head first into the unknown, and I did have a perfectly good rhythm going here. It even gave me time to buy extra medical nanites to quicken my healing, and plenty of nutrients to recover my stamina.

I just couldn't stop fidgeting incessantly, not with the oppressive black dogging my steps and the heavy deluge smashing onto my shoulders with the thunder of a waterfall.

The area was unrecognizable, topographically. I thought I knew where I should be, roughly, but it didn't match anywhere on the maps I'd saved to my Quanta's memory banks. The scouring of the land's topography did look consistent with an exceptionally heavy storm surge, though, and my aviation brain's estimated an error of only a few dozen meters maximum for where I'd fallen. I wasn't too worried about possibly being lost and even less about walking in the wrong direction.

But things felt unreal and unhinged. My human hearing was coming back in fits of warbling, atonal tinnitus, mixed with the loud beating of my heart pumping blood through my arteries.

It should have been disorienting, and it was, but not in the way my brain was ready for. My antennae read the air just fine, and my sense of mass told me exactly where down pointed. But from the damage my eyes and ears had suffered, deep-seated experience expected an uncompromising fight against terrible vertigo and loss of direction. It shoved the go-go-go down my limbs and kept my head on a restless swivel, but…I was fine?

I'd even been fortunate enough that my bum leg had recovered to usability before I was forced to land again. It'd need more time to properly fill out, and it didn't have the strength of my healthy leg, but even a little samurai strength was more than I could have managed as Aden.

I'd just have to be careful not to tire out the leg too fast.

⁂

Even ensconced in her piloting pod, Leah found herself sweating from the emotional strain of not checking the Hatchets' tremor sensors more than every twenty seconds while she finalized her warspider purchasing plans. The drumming of the rain didn't make it any easier.

Leah groaned to herself. Fucking hella trauma fuck shit.

One of the Dakka's twenty mil rotary cannons spun up again and minced another pack of Threes running along the rocky slope, and the gunfire vibrations triggered her brand new sensor-checking reflexes again.

Nothing suspicious.

"I feel fucking pathetic, Ypsilon," Leah whispered into the intimate quiet of her pod, "just completely brainwashed into being afraid. Even with the damn Memory Seal."

Don't, Leah, the AI's adult persona answered. It's just your brain having rewired itself for improved survival from a situation you weren't ready to face. The Memory Seal may have kept you functional, but it didn't do anything to help you prepare for more battle.

"Yeah, sure. Still makes me feel like shit."

Therapy will help. I promise.

Leah sighed. "...I know. But that's then, and now's crap. Fuck," she continued, forcefully shaking out her hands to get rid of the anxious tremor. "It just hit me worse than I'd thought."

It seems so, yes. If I thought you had the time to work through it, I'd offer my help. But events do not appear to allow for it, unfortunately.

As if prompted by Ypsilon's words, the picket line alarm started beeping. Leah's cameras twitched over, but…there was nothing she could see, not through the rain. She flicked to thermo and then EM.

Nothing.

False alarm? Leah's newest mental glitch didn't think so.

I strongly recommend that you buy the Sim Cell immediately.

Leah froze, then confirmed the purchase faster than she ever had confirmed a purchase before. Ypsilon never told her what to do. Never even implied it.

Unlocked:

Total cost: 3078Remaining points: 198495Remaining tokens: Tinea 2, Leah 2

Purchased:

Total cost: 48002 ptsRemaining points: 150493

A new Hatchet popped into existence, bouncing on its legs. Its body was shaped much like Daddy-Long-Legs, with the abdomen bigger than the Dakka's, but instead of weapons it had a variety of panels folded backwards, including huge wireframes that gave it the appearance of possessing dragonfly wings. Just enough surface area to make it scramble for traction against the stormy winds.

Meanwhile, it connected itself to every other Warforge Technologies product in the area, synchronized with the tactical computers in Leah's other walkers, analyzed the situation, recognized where the commander's attention was directed, and found the details on the triggered perimeter alarms. It pointed its sensors at the breach.

The Sim Cell's analysis played out on Leah's screen:

Visual processors tracked individual raindrops to locate unexplained disturbances in their trajectories close to the ground. Hidden shapes, swept and confirmed by ranging lasers.

Terrain simulation algorithms noticed odd depressions in the soil that were washing away too quickly to be natural. Footsteps, studied through uncommonly fine cameras.

Tactical subunits identified the developing pattern and compared it to older data in Leah's other machines. A pack of stealthed Twenty-Ones was approaching.

Firing solutions were formulated and tested in simulations, and the best one selected.

Cannons were readied. Daddy-Long-Leg's one-oh-five main armament rose in its gimbal, traversed across with the frank directness of machine precision, loaded high-explosive, and signaled readiness. The Dakka's double twin rotary cannons followed suit.

The aliens reacted to the weaponry's sudden motion by darting forwards, closing space at several meters per second.

Leah stared wide-eyed at the revealed silhouettes painted across her screen, and reflexively twitched every virtual trigger muscle she had.

⁂