(Rewritten) Ch. 80 – Xenocide Act VI; Calling Home

"Look, Mia! The bom— I mean, fireworks, are like whispers from the stars, telling stories of distant lands and magical expl— I mean, adventures!"

"Oh, I can hear them, too, Ethan! They speak a language of pure enchantment, inviting us to slaughter and mayhe— I mean, miracles and dreams beyond the horizon!"

– The Ever So Slightly Unhinged Siblings, also known as Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, also known as Mia and Ethan Rockbottom, who coincidentally became Vanguards on the same sort of day in the same sort of situation, quite far from each other.

***

Leah was smiling so hard she was worried the skin at the corners of her mouth might crack.

But what else could she do? The kids were just so fucking adorable.

"...And then Jora had to help me, 'cause there was sooo much red and green stuff! I couldn't see anything!"

"Yuh! Sam was totally lost, hihihi. But I took him by the hand, and then we got out together. And then came the blue-yellow walls! That's where I got lost. But Sam already had my hand!"

Aww. Look at that adorable blush!

"So, anyway. Um." Jora got all bashful. How was she so cute?! "Um, we decided that we'd marry! We're both seven now, after all!" She lifted her tiny hands and showed eight fingers.

Leah was glad she was using a virtual avatar as she desperately bit her shoulder so she wouldn't laugh. The half-insane grin just wouldn't leave, either.

Sam took Jora's hand and Leah just about died from the sugar overload.

"Mm. Jora can see the colors I can't, and I can see the colors Jora can't. So we gotta stick together!"

"Yuh! And marriage is the biggest stick together! Lana said so!"

Leah nodded sagely. "Yup. Sister Lana's right. But you know you have to be a little older to make it official, right?"

"Offishal?"

"Yes. Official. That's where you make a big promise in front of all your friends and family to stay with the person you've chosen for the rest of your life."

"Oh! I like that! Can we do that?"

Leah sadly shook her head. "Not yet. That's something you need to be an adult for. Do you know when you'll be an adult?"

Jora looked like her favorite show had been canceled. Leah's heart squeezed. But Sam came to the rescue. "It's when we're too old to stay here!"

Shit.

Orphans did have to grow up quickly, and Leah was most intimately familiar with that fact. But Sam's words actually hurt. Hidden behind her avatar, Leah didn't have to pretend to smile when she felt like crying.

But she still needed to keep it out of her voice. So, Leah breathed in and out, before she continued.

"Yeah. But do you know what you can be until then?"

Jora looked up hopefully with big wet eyes.

"Friends. You can be the best and tightest of friends. That'll make the marriage even more special in the end. Just like the chocolate that you put in Mr. Locky instead of gobbling it all immediately."

Jora and Sam's mouths both made a big 'O' as they absorbed that. They'd had a hard time keeping their things safe in the orphanage. So, like everyone else, they just ate everything the moment they got their hands on it, before it could disappear. But Leah had introduced them to her locker and they'd learned that saving something for later could make it extra satisfying.

Leah smiled as they both nodded at each other at exactly the same time, synchronized like an old married couple.

"Then," Sam said, "we'll wait that long."

"Yuh. It'll really be special, right?" said Jora, with a big grin.

Leah giggled and crossed her fingers. It sure was a long shot, and who knew where the children would be in eleven years? Hell, it'd be longer than they'd been alive so far. But who could say?

She would certainly make sure nobody would try to rip their orphanage apart. The smile fell from her lips behind the mask of the avatar, and a fire lit her eyes, as she thought of the collection of outside interests far too happy to interfere.

With lethal force, if necessary.

Then she heaved a small sigh and relaxed again.

"Sam, Jora, love you guys."

Sam yelled, "Adult talk keywords!" And Jora nodded like a champion.

"Yes. I need to talk to Lana and the others. I'll call again, okay? Or maybe I'll even be home before I get a chance to."

Jora jumped up and down excitedly, and Sam smiled his gap-toothed smile.

"Okay, Leah!" "Bye-bye!"

"Hug Andi for me, okay?"

"Yuh!" "Okay!"

Both kids grinned brightly and waved with opposite hands, and the silly smile was back on her face, as the littles logged off.

***

I slowly sucked down the broth remaining in the bowl. It was so ridiculously filling that consuming it was somehow hard work.

So, I'd distracted myself with learning more about geneware.

Apparently the stuff we did for Leah's class 0 robot arm inside my cerebral augment had only been the basics of the basics—the equivalent of mere scripts. Half-baked software.

Actual geneware was a mix of software, firmware, and hardware. It wouldn't just add new patterns of…thinking, for lack of a better term, to my brain, but also install new synaptic complexes. Mini-brains, sort of? They were extremely specialized and very dense on a cellular level, much more so than my human brain.

The one I was about to purchase for all things projectile guidance would be able to access my gear via the Quanta's non-electromagnetic bandwidths. Jamming-secure against anything on Earth except for advanced samurai tech, according to Tynea.

"Buy it, please."

Certainly. Here you go.

Purchased:

Total cost: 100Remaining points: 4528

The viral editors are being built, and the new geneware will be constructed and online in several minutes.

"Alright, thank you."

Shall we continue with the javelins?

"Yeah. Gimme a minute, though."

Understood.

I walked over to Leah's pod and knocked on it. A few moments later, she let the front pop open.

She looked at me and asked, "What's up, Tinea?"

I smiled at her. "Did you reach your guys?"

"Yeah! The little ones, anyway. Still gotta talk to the big ones."

I grinned at the happiness in her voice. "Alright, I won't make them wait. Say, I was going to buy that gantry you talked about. Do you already have a design prepared?"

"Sure! I'll have Ypsi send it to you. Might need a few more details?" Leah was fidgeting a little. I figured she was impatient to get back to the call.

"I'll take care of it, no worries."

I moved away from the egg, and Leah retreated again with a smile thrown my way.

A ping against my aug alerted me to her message, which opened up into a model of the gantry. It had two large articulated legs that grabbed onto the frame of the cannon with mobile grippers, holding up a squarish beam. Six smaller arms with hands were suspended from the beam's underside. Animations showed how these loaded the shells, adjusted the cannon, and pulled the triggering lanyard.

When configured for towing, the gantry would lock itself to the rear of the pod with the six arms, and use the larger legs to hold onto the coupling ring of the cannon. From there, it needed only fifteen seconds to ready and load the cannon for firing.

What else does it need? I wondered as I looked the gantry over. Sidearms, maybe? Defensive emplacements.

Oh, and I had to make sure it could get rid of any loaded-up ATVs easily.

Urgh, fun as they'd been, those things were getting more and more annoying. Fifty points… Fuck. Just toss 'em? Leah definitely doesn't need hers anymore and I'm plenty fast on my feet, especially with the Myriad getting in the way of riding.

Tynea could add rails for the ATV's turret to the top of the gantry, too.

Yeah. Time to get rid of the bikes.

AI-I got busy finishing the gantry's design with the help of Tynea, while I considered the logistics of the ATVs' disposal. We'd fought too much around the facilities to hide it. Too many explosions, and unless several storms hit in short order, the damage would be very obvious.

So, we needed to make it look like we'd left the vicinity in case our kidnappers sent somebody to investigate. No way could we leave the ATVs looking like they were ready to be used—that would imply that there was somebody to use them.

I chewed my lips.

"Tynea, the ATVs have no autopiloting functions, right? Could we use some really cheap drones to steer them for us? At least until we've crossed the swamp?" I didn't mind leaving traces there that would make it obvious that we'd left.

That is possible, yes. It would be cheaper to dispose of them, however.

Uh. "That's a thing?"

Certainly. You surrender the materials and a few points, and I teleport the ATVs off the planet to be recycled. Ypsi did in fact do just that for Leah just before you found her.

"Oh? What did they do?"

They'd launched a flare in an attempt to be rescued.

"Huh. Ah… Is the flare still active?"

Yes. It's located about fifty kilometers above Leah's head.

"Uuuh… Um. Okay. So it's moving with her? That…could be a good thing. Do you think the kidnappers have seen it and figured out what it means?"

I have no way to tell, unfortunately. I would suspect that the flare hasn't gone unnoticed by multiple parties, and that they've determined it to be Vanguard technology.

"So, probably, huh?" Could we make use of it somehow?

…

Too many factors I didn't know. How long would it last? Was it just floating about?

Well, stuff to consider later. Maybe Leah had something planned with the thing?

– Attention: The gantry's design is finalized, and the combat command geneware will complete in moments. –

"Oh!"

Shall I order the gantry?

"Yes, and add two more of Leah's weapon/turret combo, with two two hundred round magazines plus basket each, along with disposal of the ATVs." I tossed another glance at the quads. "But wait with that until we're leaving the glade, please?"

Understood.

Purchased:

Total cost: 904Remaining points: 3624

I haaaaaa…

What?

Oh. Time dilation, sort of. Not really, but close enough. And there was the clinical detachment I'd experienced the last time I'd localized within the Quanta, when AI-I was first initialized. I'd dropped into AI-I frames again, subject to the Quanta's accelerated and multi-threaded processing of reality. And Tynea was still talking at normal Tinea bandwidths.

Multiple…horizons spread across my mind. There was the altered computation of everything my physical body saw, heard, and sensed, as perceived by the Quanta. Then the sudden awareness of every networked weapon or tool within several kilometers. The Sentinels' projectile-programming facilities. Every smart bullet too, including a few in random directions that we'd fired, but that had never hit a target solid enough to destroy them. They'd run out of juice soon, though.

I'd dropped the foam gun when I dove under the little bridge for Leah, and forgot to pick it up again… Inconsequential. The time it would take me to recover the gun would be better spent killing Antithesis for points.

Curious, so very curious! Hmm. Loads of interlocking munitions. I could design entire fire plans with the new geneware, now with far less of the Quanta's computational capacity occupied. Yeah, this seemed extremely efficient and metabolically useful.

But also, Tynea was talking to me.

I created a new process who called herself Mission Control and nestled within and around the fresh combat command nodules, then removed my awareness from the new cluster of alien mini-brain-nodule-thingies and settled back into Tinea Natural.

…aaave ordered two different types of bullets. The smaller and considerably cheaper Coffin Nails are suitable against weaker single digits, and the 13mm rounds can kill the more massive Fives and Sixes. Use your new geneware to switch between the types organically.

"Gotcha. Three and a half thousand points left, huh? We sure are using those points up quickly."

Yes. Your deadliness has skyrocketed accordingly, however. You will find it much easier to earn points going forwards.

"Yeah, I figure that's true. Alright, teleport in the gantry please? Let's get the cannon hooked up and the quad's turret moved over. Oh! And we still need to look at the spears."

***