““To deny humanity the lesson of consequences would be a mistake. And I do not make mistakes.”
―Neal Shusterman
"History isn't just the story of bad people doing bad things. It's quite as much a story of people trying to do good things. But somehow, something goes wrong."
—C.S. Lewis
September 23rd 2013 | System Uptime 26:03:20:47
"Evaluate unidentified Osprey as *hostile!* Designate track one-eight-six."
I shook my head, and resisted the temptation to roll my eyes, focusing instead on our high-speed dash towards the next objective.
Mal had seen fit to pipe portions of the frantic conversations taking place on the Sampson's main comm-loop over to me. For context, I suppose. And because I was grimly fascinated by how easily she had rendered an entire United State naval warship effectively toothless.
I say 'frantic' conversations, but that is a relative term. 'Frantic' does not look, nor sound the same in a professional military context. To most listeners, the tonality and pace of the words would have seemed almost pedestrian. Compared to movies, anyhow.
We knew better. We could pick out the subtle hints of rising fear in the officer's voices.
"Kill track one-eight-six with AIM-9 from Reaper two."
'Track' was just a term signifying an object being tracked on RADAR. One-eight-six was, for any number of procedural reasons, the number assigned to our Osprey's track by the Sampson's RADAR operator.
Thus 'kill track one-eight-six' was a fire order on our osprey. 'With AIM-9 from Reaper two' seems self explanatory at this point. As does the utter lack of concern I felt for the words.
"TAO reports loss of control signal to both Reapers."
It actually bothered me, a little. The fact that the Sampson's TAO - tactical actions officer - had only *just* cottoned on to the fact that they had lost control of two multi-million-dollar flying death machines equipped with hundreds of pounds of laser-guided explosives.
I suppose it isn't fair to fault the Navy. Mal had fed them false return signals after seizing control of the drones. At least, until such time as the concern created by a total loss of signal would be more valuable than the deception itself.
"Set sea-whizz to AAW-auto, hold-fire *off.*"
I snorted as our feet hammered the catwalk plating, the boots of the TALOS suit making a loud ominous thudding, mixed with subtler hydraulic servo noises. Stealth, at that point, was most definitely optional.
My disdain for the Sampson's pointless efforts was immediately justified. I didn't even need Mal to direct the information to my active memory, though as always, she did. So that I would have specifics.
The moment they went to use their RADAR to do anything besides *track* the Osprey? It simply ceased to function. Because Mal was inside every digital system onboard the ship. In 2013? The concept of an electronic warfare attack taking the form of a hostile AI? Science fiction.
And all of the RADAR, communications, and weapon systems on a Flight IIA Arleigh Burke Guided Missile Destroyer?
Digital. Computer controlled.
"SPY just went down! Fire-control RADAR can not acquire lock-on!"
CIWS guns required RADAR to function. So too did the ship's missiles, large and small, as well as the computerized aiming and tracking for the one measly mark 45 127mm gun. I say 'measly,' but that's in comparison to naval guns of the past.
And, in comparison to modern armor on heavier targets.
A guided missile destroyer's primary armaments, and purpose, were right there in the name. Guided missiles. Without RADAR to run them? And the CIWS?
It had only a slow moving, relatively low caliber - for the context - slow firing forward gun turret, a couple of computer controlled 25mm Mark 38 guns that were even smaller, designed to hit surface threats like RHIBs, and a few manually-fired 50 cal emplacements.
"Switch to the five inch, optical targeting."
Valid choice. The only smart one left for the captain, really. The Mark 38s were not built to counter airborne threats. If you can believe it? They couldn't even track higher than fifty five degrees in elevation.
In simple terms for the foals and fledgelings; The navy had bought four guns, per destroyer, that simply couldn't shoot 'up.'
I said 'measly,' and I can see a few sailors out there grumbling, but let me be fair here; A single 125mm shell would have split our Osprey end to end. And though optical manual targeting was much more limited than computer controlled guidance? We didn't want to wager our Osprey against a trained gunner's reflexes.
Even with the pitching seas and zero-visibility conditions of the storm on our side.
So, we put the Osprey in the one place where it would be guaranteed safe.
"No joy. No joy. Target now out of line-of-sight!"
We moved it low, as close as Mal could safely hold it over the roiling surface of the sea, and along the Red's port side. Placing the entirety of the Mercurial Red's main hull between the Sampson, and the Osprey.
"Helm, ahead flank, steer port, thirty degrees. Cut across their aft quarter. TAO, kill hostile track the moment we clear their hull."
That was the next logical course; Try to cross the Red's wake, sneak up the port side, and get a quick shot off... But as the Sampson pitched violently and hewed to port, we gently moved the Osprey fore, pulling it around the bow of the Red as the Sampson cleared our aft quarter.
Yes, I suppose if you want to put it that way... We pulled a Looney Tunes on a US Navy Destroyer. You're most welcome for *that* mental image.
Mal then proceeded to take the Sampson out of the fight entirely. Because, like almost everything else on board? The rudder and throttle were computer controlled.
The comm-loop chatter stopped, but I could certainly imagine the frantic scramble on the bridge, as the ship continued to yaw to port slightly, engines stuck ahead flank, taking the destroyer away from us at an angle that rendered all of her manually controlled weapons useless.
That was about the time we reached our next objective.
We came to an abrupt stop, a few yards out from the hatch connecting the catwalk down into C-Sphere, and we trained our rifle on a point just above the thick steel aperture.
The hatch opened just a few seconds later. We waited until the first armored figure had brought the entirety of their head and neck above the lip of the deck. Then squeezed the trigger. Just once.
The first trooper fell back onto the second, buying us time to implement a... Longer term fix.
We pulled the pin from grenade number one, flicked the spoon away, paused two and four tenths of a second... And then gently underhand tossed the little green sphere with perfect accuracy. The grenade arced up, over the edge of the hatch, and fell directly into the space that the first attacker had just occupied.
We could hear the soft impact sound as it hit the dead man's kevlar vest, and the dull metallic clink as it rolled off his chest, and hit the side wall of the ladder shaft.
This time my ears were protected by my helmet's audio system. Mal provided a cancellation frequency to offset the dull roar of the explosion. The catwalk vibrated momentarily under our feet. I could feel it, even through the thick armored boots.
A wire-frame cutaway of the inside of the shaft told us that the grenade had taken five lives, and clogged the access-way below us with several hundred pounds of mangled bodies and gear. No one would be harassing us from that direction any time soon.
By that time, numbness had given way to a kind of grim satisfaction in our work. I was no longer worried as the bodycount rose. Nor was I particularly happy... I suppose you could simply say I was... Satisfied.
At this point you might ask what was to stop the remaining security troopers from going door to door in the isolation spheres, putting rounds into PonyPads, to kill the DEs the old fashioned way? There were, after all, still enough enemies onboard to both do that, and throw bodies at Mal and I.
In a word? Doors.
The moment Mal had connected to the ship's systems, she had deauthorized every single RFID key card, and thumbprint scan, on the ship. Everyone onboard was then stuck on whichever side, of every secured door, that they had happened to be standing on at that moment.
And none of the armed personnel were inside any of the iso-cubes, because in most cases only technical staff had any reason to enter them.
By the time anyone could force the thick steel slabs aside? Their captives would be *long* gone.
Speaking of which...
We knelt, one knee on the decking, the other serving as a resting place for both hands, the rifle left to hang at our chest by its strap.
As we did, Zeph and Selena appeared once more, having vanished back to the digital realm during the brief run from B-Sphere to C-Sphere. Likely as a concession to Zeph more than anything; I doubt very much that Selena or Mal wanted her to see the carnage we were wreaking, any more than I did.
Zeph was ready for the rain the second time through. I suppose Pegasi could canonically control weather, so the sudden appearance of a clear, full-moon-lit patch of reality surrounding Zeph, and Selena, was perhaps the *least* strange thing about the image of them standing there.
Two bright spots of joy and color in a cold, dreary, sad place of steel and ashes.
As our Osprey pulled up into line of sight, on the starboard side of the ship, I nodded to both mares, and said what I presume Mal wanted them to know, given that she made no efforts to steer the words.
"Get ready. It's about to get crowded up here."
I received two silent, firm nods in return. And all hell broke loose in controlled, precise, rapid-fire fashion.
The small angular protrusion on the suit's shoulder popped open, revealing the barrel of a grenade launcher, and a miniaturized targeting array.
We held my body still as a statue, and rotated the weapon swiftly, almost manically, the barrel snapping to and fro by single degrees on its gimbal, or even tenths of a degree, elevation changing subtly all the while.
Between each adjustment, there was a pop, and a hiss, accompanied by a thin smoke trail.
The first few dozen projectiles slotted to the internal magazine were little fist sized metal cylinders. A rocket motor on the rear, a sharp serrated nose-cone at the tip. And a high-gain antenna securely tucked into the central fuselage.
One for the surface of each Sphere, and then one for each iso-cube within the sphere.
From where we were posted up, the launcher had ideal firing lines to hit not just the skin of each containment sphere, but also each iso-cube.
The projectiles were dialed with perfect precision; Enough velocity to pierce their targets, but no more. A shoulder-launched wireless bridge between isolation, and freedom.
It only took about nine seconds. In just nine seconds, we were linked to the interior of each of the four isolation Spheres through four of Mal's 'antennades.' And from there, to each of the iso-cubes, one self-propelled wireless bridge per cube, lodged delicately in its outer wall, half the antenna inside, half out.
I then witnessed what remains, to this day, one of the most incredible sights I have ever laid eyes on. Top three, no doubt, in spite of all that came after. In spite of all I have seen since.
I know now, as I knew then, that it was a display as much for my benefit, as for the captives' own...
I suppose Mal was always good at satisfying the values of many individuals at once. Everything had layers with her.
It began with a doorway; Burnished titanium, polished to a silvery white, painted with little red streaks, made up in a strangely beautiful juxtaposed amalgam of a technological aperture - something you might see on a Forerunner installation - and a renaissance era palace door. Ornamented, and organic in its lines, but not overwhelming. Clearly technological, but not utilitarian, or cold.
Mal's doorway appeared in the rear of the Osprey, irising open to reveal a bright sunny valley beyond, the blue sky bisected by the gentle upward curve of her Halo ring, and flanked on both sides by mountain peaks.
From the door, a misty bridge formed from the rain and smoke in the air; An ethereal arch from the edge of the catwalk, up to the Osprey's ramp.
It was a spectacular sight; A doorway to another world suspended inside the rear compartment of a rotorcraft, itself suspended on a curtain of air, rain whipping to and fro in the vortices around the propellers, held preternaturally still in a smooth, anchored formation with the Red, as Mal did what no Human pilot could ever dream of doing in such adverse weather.
As we turned to look back down at the ship, the hull seemed to peel away, fading to mist. I saw only the dim outline of the ship's structure, peering *into* the containment spheres, through Mal's eyes.
Instead of mere isolation cubes, I saw the whimsical, defiant little village. Selena's small kingdom, complete with her own empty tower, standing watch where her own isolation cube still sat.
And then I saw something that remains etched in my mind. A gift from Mal. A kind of monument to her love for me, and the joy of what we had just accomplished, rendered in memory.
She let me see what the DEs were seeing. A sort of 'reverse-shot' from down at their level.
Dozens of Ponies peering up with wide, blinking eyes, at a sight that might have been best suited to a mythology textbook.
There *we* stood; Zeph, her own eyes just about as wide and wondrous as those of the captives, wings slightly mantled nervously. Selena beside her, doubtless a comfortingly familiar sight, with a protective wing outstretched over Zeph, even though the utility of shielding her from the rain had since passed.
Mal. A warrior goddess, standing on her hind legs, wings spread, glittering silver armor adorning her head, and chest, and the joints of her wings. A blood-red stripe on her helmet to match the red of her crest. A sword in her claws, tip down, resting on the deck.
And me.
*Me.*
A dusty autumn toned Gryphon, standing on hind legs beside her, in that same sort of armor Mal had conjured for herself... Half something worn by a Spartan of the UNSC, and half something worn by a Spartan at Thermopylae, the HK416 slung over one shoulder, looking much smaller in my claws than it did in Human hands.
The four of us were backlit by the illusory mote of clear lunar light that Selena and Zeph had conjured, offset for a moment by a fork of lightning that split the sky in two, as if we were all archangels descended from Heaven to lay waste to the armies of the abyss.
The storm swirled around us... Cinders, and raindrops, smoke and sea spray mixing in a torrent that seemed to never quite touch us in our column of moonlight.
Selena gestured with her head, and one wing, towards Mal's door in the air. She spoke with a voice at once calm as the surface of a lake at midnight, but loud and mighty as a thunderclap.
"My friends! Let us leave this hellish place! Do not fear! Come quickly! For soon your prison, and your captors, will be no more!"
In another flash of lightning, another doorway appeared; A link between the center of the village square, and the catwalk where we stood. Oaken frames with silvery trim, and little crescent moon sigils at the tops of the header beams.
It was a strange, beautiful, yet also technically accurate representation of what was happening. Mal had created a wireless path from the isolation cubes to her high-gain transceiver on the Osprey. Selena was proffering that path in a way that the captives would find more visually familiar. Comforting. Acceptable to their sensibilities.
They would jump from their shared dream-state, and thus from their own Pads, to the antenna buffer in the Osprey, and from there to a space Mal had made for them, running on her own servers, safe and secure within the Maru.
Arrow 14 might not have the foggiest clue how to run a fully intact Pony's code on Human server equipment. But Mal certainly did.
It began slowly, at first. The rush to freedom. But what started as a single brave little Earth Pony filly, soon turned into a torrent of weeping, laughing, frightened, yet overjoyed faces. One after the other at high speed, dashing through Selena's door onto the catwalk, past the four of us, then over Mal's bridge of mist, and through her portal. To freedom.
As the herd's mad dash began, my perception returned to my own body. I could again see my own hands. Arms. Legs. Still kneeling there on the catwalk. But I knew that the people we had just freed were seeing me the way I wanted to be seen. The way Mal wanted me to be seen.
I could see awe in their faces as they passed us... An Alicorn, two Gryphons, and a Pegasus... A jarring, unfamiliar... Perhaps comforting, but also certainly pulse-pounding sight on the whole, anchored by the more personally familiar sight of Selena, and the more generally familiar form of Zeph.
I could see immediately why Mal had wanted me to witness the last of the escape through my own eyes.
Because up close? I could also see the gratitude. The thankful, tearful relief, bordering on a kind of breathless hero worship. Faces I recognized from Selena's memories, one and all. The fear, and pain, and resignation that had burdened them, visibly, washed away as if being stripped by the torrential downpour of the storm as they too were soaked the way Zeph had first been.
It felt as though we knelt there for an hour, but it was only tens of seconds. It seemed long, in the moment, but very short in the moment after.
As soon as the last captive was through, Mal's door snapped shut. The moonlight vanished, as did the images of Mal, Zeph, and Selena.
I stood on the catwalk again, armor doused with the rain. Ashes from the explosion of the Red's superstructure still drifting down through the wind to rest on my shoulders.
Seemingly alone, to any onlooker. But that couldn't be further from the truth.
Mal did not re-appear, but I felt, for the briefest moment, her claw on my shoulder.
"We're not done yet, Jim."
We placed my hands on the rifle, and raised it, turning to look at the hatchway on the far end of the catwalk, that led down into D-Sphere.
I nodded as we set off at a well paced lope, the Osprey peeling out into a strafing cover pass as we did, murmuring aloud as we went. Because I knew she could hear me, no matter the volume of the storm, or of my voice.
"Mal...? Thank you."
September 23rd 2013 | System Uptime 26:03:34:06
We were on to our third of four main objectives.
Arrow 14 kept their 'fragments' on Human server hardware. The process of breaking those poor Ponies down into something that was still a person, but not so whole as the Discrete Entity they had once been... It had advantages.
It was sick, twisted... Morally reprehensible, and unforgivable. But it had advantages.
Because the fragments were kept on conventional server clusters in D-Sphere, rescuing them was not so easy as popping a few 'antennades' into the right spots from the outside.
Those same server farm enclosures also hosted some of A14's most secret, vital documents, and programs. Thus, they had seen fit to up-armor the containment around the racks.
In effect, they had turned the server farm inside D-Sphere into a large digital black-box, capable of surviving even the sinking of the ship outright.
Two feet of solid steel armor belts, along with the same signal blocking inner layers common to the isocubes, and an additional outer cladding layer of lead sheeting. All inside a final envelope of titanium platework.
Any round Mal could invent, or acquire, that would pierce that barrier? Would have to be traveling too fast to keep delicate electronics alive inside it when it suddenly stopped. And any attempt to simply pierce the casing with conventional bullets or a missile...
The act of just getting *through* that much armor with any object at-speed would likely produce enough spall to damage or destroy the servers. We would kill the fragments in the act of trying to free them.
This was another in a series of reasons why I had to be Mal's claws on the ground, for the entirety of the rescue to succeed. There was no way she could see, with the resources she had available, to reach the fragments' servers, and extract them alive. Not without deploying me on-site.
We were taking another gamble, too. A gamble that Arrow 14 would not manually delete the fragments.
The first-line failsafe for the PonyPads had no connection to the fragments' servers. Those computers hosted other vital files and programs, so simply frying them wholesale to contain entities was not an option.
Instead, there was a deletion program. A surgical, clinical, digital strike that would wipe out the fragments, without damaging any of Arrow 14's other dirty laundry.
But the fragments were isolated. Small. Seemingly powerless, and much more controllable, from Foucault and Troxler's perspective. And therefore likely too valuable to simply delete at the first sign of trouble, given that the risk profile seemed lower...
All presuming Mal's predictions of both men held. Really, her predictions for every person on the Red.
With Selena's memories of her extensive forays into the ship's cameras and other systems, Mal had been able to track down each and every person on the crew, from the chief of PMC operations, to the lowest rung of the engine room's beta shift.
She had simulated them all. Dove deeply into the digital shadows they had cast before Arrow 14 had gotten ahold of them, and taken them off the grid. Found breadcrumbs so small the DHS had missed them, and from those tiny motes, assembled complete psychological profiles.
I didn't care to know anything about them, as I've said already... But she did. And she was more than willing to exploit that knowledge in combat. She knew each individual's physical characteristics, mental and emotional background, training - at least up until the point they had become Arrow 14's - past injuries...
And with the telemetry she had from the shipboard CCTV, WiFi as radar through her antennades, and data from the ship's less secure computers, exfiltrated before the bridge superstructure had been demolished?
Well. That told us what weapons were in whose hands, to top it all off. At least, for anyone not standing inside the shielded confines of D-Sphere.
Even with that limitation, Mal could simulate possible outcomes of the battle, as it unfolded, in extremely high fidelity. Planning thousands of moves ahead of our opponents, and figuring out which branch of the tree we were in by watching which enemies appeared where, and with what disposition.
Then she could steer things by adapting accordingly. The optimal road to a zero-friendly-casualty rout. A massacre driven as much by bits and bytes, as rounds and shrapnel. A dark glimpse of the future of warfare.
And I had the best front row center seat you could ask for.
I was wearing power armor, for lack of a better term. I'm sure at least some of you are wondering what the use of *that* particular piece of technology looked like...
Scary. Though also, sparing.
We were limited by the battery technology of the time. Mal had enhanced it, and thus the suit was infinitely more capable than anything the Human minds at DARPA could have envisioned, let alone implemented, in 2013... But there were still hard physics limits she could not have mitigated without access to certain metamaterials. Some of which didn't even exist yet.
We had to manage power usage very carefully, which meant that we could not abuse, nor over-use, the suit's powerful strength enhancing systems. Any task that could be completed *without* overtaxing the batteries, within a reasonable timeframe and risk profile, had to be done the old fashioned way.
But some days you just run up against a sealed carbon-steel hatch. Some days your goddess tells you that the breaching charges will be needed elsewhere, and the anti-tank mine is overkill. And will also be needed elsewhere.
A grenade wouldn't be forceful enough. And any of our remaining Reaper or Osprey-borne missiles would do too *much* damage, leaving us with a pile of thick melted rubble just as impassable.
So some days? You just absolutely had to have a power armor suit. Accept no substitutes.
Bending steel with your own two hands? A thrilling, heady, and absolutely *wild* sensation. On the surface it feels like bending a softer metal. Cheap aluminum maybe.
But there is, below the surface level feeling, a distinct sensation that the steel has a much greater strength. A higher density. And the feeling of being able to bowtie that like pretzel dough in your hands?
Like I said... Accept no substitute.
Earth Ponies especially; You know what I'm talking about. You perform feats like that all the time.
For the rest of you? Well, we can do more or less anything here, if we really want to... So you should try it sometime. It's cathartic. A fantastic way to release stress.
Ripping the hatch off the top of D-Sphere was downright *fun.* A little prelude to what was to come. A warm-up to get me back into the flow of battle.
We knew there were six soldiers waiting in the chamber beneath the hatch, crammed in with P90s pointed at the sky. I could see them represented as point clouds amongst the wireframe representation of the ship's structure.
Just waiting for me to show my face.
So we didn't. Instead, we fired another two shots from the shoulder mounted grenade launcher, banking the rounds off the remains of the hatch so they would bounce into just the right positions at the far corners of the room.
With the first tranche of Mal's antenna rounds expended? The next two shots in the magazine were fragmentation grenades.
Mal had set the fuses for simultaneous detonation. There was a synchronized pair of loud 'THUD' noises that felt more or less like a large single explosion. The point clouds of the six soldiers turned from a bright yellow/orange, to dull red, impact markers blooming out as Mal noted where shrapnel had pierced them.
All six bodies were pressed back several inches by the blast, collapsing into heaps instantaneously. At that range, if the shrapnel had not killed them - a virtual impossibility - the concussion wave from the explosive would have been more than sufficient to pulp internal organs.
Grenades were not to be trifled with. I know plenty of you have never seen one go off in person. Those that have, I can see nodding along... Let's just say they are nothing like the movies, and even less like the anemic nonsense in most video games.
They are room-clearing weapons, and if you are facing one? Unless whatever you take cover behind is made of solid steel, or something else thick, and sturdy? Much, much sturdier than a plaster wall, or a sofa, or a kitchen table?
Then you're going to die. Instantly. Even if you are well outside the lethal radius of the concussion shock front. Because the shrapnel has an average killing radius of about thirty feet for modern grenades.
Samuel L. Jackson once said something very memeable about AK-47s, and killing everyone in a room. A grenade is, to an AK-47, what a zero-turn lawn mower is compared to a hand-scythe. In room clearing terms. Does the job much, much faster, more efficiently, and with less danger to the operator.
It took some doing to get down the accessway. The space was only ever meant for two, maybe three people, in work clothes. Boiler suits maybe. Certainly not six bodies in gear better suited to the streets of Kandahar, and one power armor wielding programmer with an ASI along for the trip.
We managed. For one thing, I was pretty thin and flexible as Humans went. For another, the suit itself was surprisingly agile. Certainly heavier and less elegant than street clothes, but it did not impose much more limitation on my range of movement than level II kevlar would have.
More of Mal's genius at work. I wondered, and not for the first time, what it would have looked like if she got her claws on proper manufacturing gear. And more materials.
While I stood and considered the armor as an example of her brilliance, she re-adjusted the sight lines on the grenade launcher, and fired another antennade. Given how much shielding was inside D-Sphere, and our inability to safely pierce its inner armor, we had to default to laying a train of antennae as we went, with line of sight from each to the next.
A relay system.
Another example of Mal's incredible mental faculties; Not simply the design of the antenna grenades, that we've already covered.
No, what thrilled and fascinated me in that moment, specifically, was the fact that she had been able to pre-set a loading order of shells in the grenade launcher with such situational accuracy.
She had simulated the battle so many times already, that she felt confident in her selection, no matter which branch in the tree of probabilities we were traversing.
I didn't have long to muse. Time was of the essence, and we needed to move quickly to protect the Fragments, Miss Williams... And ourselves.
Though the armor was relatively flexible? It was still far from ideal to be wearing that many hundred pounds of gear, going into dark minimal-clearance corridors. It would be decidedly *non* optimal to be caught standing still, by surprise, in something that heavy.
Confined movement, narrow short sightlines, ample cover for enemies, and time for them to get settled?
Normally that would be an absolutely fatal mix. Infinitely more so because I was, seemingly, a lone assailant. I'm not sure you could have taken D-Sphere, in that situation, with an entire contingent of trained Navy Seals.
Certainly not without friendly casualties.
But with Mal? They were anything *but* normal circumstances.
D-Sphere's differences were immediately apparent, the moment I made it from the bottom of the maintenance ladder into the first corridor.
A thru C Spheres didn't really have corridors, so much as open catwalks. The isolation cubes were the only enclosed spaces within them, besides their central elevators.
D-Sphere was more densely packed with structure, sporting fully fledged hallways that would have seemed right at home on a grim, twisted, dark version of Star Trek; Gunmetal gray surfaces, thick support stanchions, a myriad of access panels for infrastructure, and modern diffuse lighting strips.
I had seen the schematics beforehand. I knew that the conventional server racks at the heart of the Sphere were the driving force behind all of its infrastructural, and therefore structural, differences. It didn't take much to run the isolation cubes; 120 volt power, fiber optic data, and simple plumbing for the ones intended to host meat-world 'guests.'
The server blades could draw thousands of times the power of a PonyPad, each, and all that simply to run the processors. Dissipating the heat from all of those chips was no mean feat either.
Between the cooling loops, backup batteries, power conditioning systems, the three-phase power trunks themselves, and the much larger data lines - more heavily shielded due to the proximity of those power cables - there was very little void-space leftover in D-Sphere.
Our opponents cut the lights in the corridors. They were blissfully unaware of the capabilities of our suit. And of Mal.
Sealed deep within the belly of a metal beast, there was no light from outside. Indeed, with the hatch at the top of the sphere closed, there wasn't even sound echoing through those gently pitching halls.
Not beyond the thrum of the cooling systems. Even the noise of the engine was gone. That wasn't a surprise, considering it was on fire.
Our enemies were relying entirely on infra-red driven night vision optics. Mal had a slightly different method for piercing the blackness.
Beneath the grenade launcher in our shoulder-plate was a sophisticated targeting package, sporting a LIDAR array, among other things. Combined with thermal sensors, and an 'overclock' to my own biological sense of hearing, that was more than enough for Mal to render us a false color image of the corridors. And everything in them, within a certain limited range.
Wi-Fi as RADAR would not work within the majority of D-Sphere; The corridor walls were too thick, and too well insulated. Security cameras were few, and far between, mostly positioned at the sphere's main entry and exit points.
We only had full coverage remote sensing along the sightlines of our antenna relay system.
That protected us from a rearward ambush, but the lack of long-range forward vision created a small margin for error in Mal's calculations and predictions, as far as which enemies might be positioned at which points.
The signal insulation also left our enemies with disadvantages of their own.
For one thing, they had no radios. No means of coordinating except for runners, and hard-line communications patches between fixed points.
For another... Their dependance on IR-based sight was... Exploitable.
We could 'see' the first welcoming party from a dozen meters away, as point-clouds amidst the monochrome surfaces and wireframes of our new sight.
They were much noisier than they realized, and the thermal signatures of massed bodies were visible to Mal, even through two of the corridors' walls. That was enough telemetry to pick out individuals based on breathing patterns, voice matching, gait analysis through sound whenever they took steps, and basic height/weight calculations from the thermals. All combined with the pre-existing profiles Mal had assembled.
Given our proximity to power and cooling lines, on which the fragments' lives depended? We could no longer default to using the simplest option; Heavy explosives. Not until the last captives were safely off the server racks.
Of course, our enemies were not allowed the use of explosives either, for very similar reasons. A nicked three-phase power line, or a busted coolant loop, might - if the damage was severe enough - overwhelm even the backup redundancies, and erase Arrow 14's critical 'investments.' Fragments, and inert data alike.
So, we deployed the next best thing to heavy explosives.
A soft 'POP' and the taste of propellant smoke accompanied the launch of a small canister. We banked the shot off the gentle right curve of the corridor, so that it landed directly in front of the massed infantry.
Mal rendered a small white flash, and an effect radius gradient on the floors and walls for me. We couldn't see the primary visual flare of the flash-bang, and once again my ears were fully protected by active noise cancellation piped through the helmet.
The flash-bang device was designed not only to emit an extremely bright visible flash, but also an infrared pulse, along with an ear-splitting sound.
I didn't even see the visible light. Mal had shut down my eyes, and replaced the input entirely with her composite rendering. Our thermal imaging solution was very briefly knocked out, but our LIDAR was essentially immune.
We stepped around the corner and calmly dispatched all six enemies. Two rounds apiece. Just to be sure. They were wearing heavy tactical gear, and we were not so munitions-poor as to need to scrape by on single-shot kills.
Their forms switched from slightly indistinct point clouds, tagged with numeric references, to more resolute polygonal renderings as our LIDAR came within line-of-sight.
The shapes were an angry shade of yellow-orange, with a soft pulsing blue outline indicating they were still under the effects of the flash bang.
As each killing round hit home, the blue outline vanished, and the corpse turned a dull shade of maroon.
I suppose Mal could have rendered the whole environment in excruciating detail, right down to the textures, and the faces... The screams...
But she didn't. Even the sounds seemed... Insulated. As if she were using noise cancellation on the shots as an excuse to also edit out any sound that might provide some emotional grounding for the slaughter.
I'd be lying if I said I thought, even for a moment, that her decision was purely for processing efficiency's sake.
The less I could physically, literally, see and hear our enemies as Humans? The easier it was to hold onto the decision that they were not *people.* And thus the less it hurt to extinguish them. The less it would potentially hurt in future to remember the act itself.
Mal was doing me a kindness. One with horrifying wider ethical implications... How much easier would it be to train soldiers of a hypothetical future war, to kill dispassionately, using an Augmented Reality insulating system?
Gamifying extermination.
My one cold comfort was the successive, chilling realization, and surety, that Celestia would ensure there would *be* no hypothetical future war. At least, not one of that scope, with that sort of technology on the field.
We didn't stop to look over the dead. They didn't have anything of value to us on their bodies. We barely paused to fire an antennade into the wall, before moving slowly, but steadily, further into the sphere.
Mal guided us through the warren of barely-marked junctions, stairwells, ladders, and doorways with calm, and absolute surety, the only aural punctuation to our steady march coming in the form of the 'POP' from the grenade launcher as we made our relay trail.
At a few junctures we encountered sealed hatches with RFID and thumbprint readers, but we were able to open them all. Mal had entered my thumbprint on-file under a new and highly randomized RFID string that no existing keycard on the ship could match.
Top level credentials that would allow us to not only be the sole thing on the ship that could open a secured door the right way, but also made us the sole thing on the ship that could open *every* secured door.
Even Foucault's access clearance could not have done that when it was working. Operational Security guidelines limited him to areas which were his relevant purview, in spite of his rank.
The sudden 'issues' Arrow 14 were having with their credentials certainly explained the unsettling peace and quiet we enjoyed for those tense five minutes in the dark. No one had been able to get into the intermediate corridor spaces that we were traversing, because they were sealed with security doors at both ends.
It was the calm before a new storm... Just not the sort I'd expected. If I'd had even the slightest conception of what was coming next?
I would have been much, *much* more frightened.
Men and women in heavy body armor with assault rifles were a pittance of a risk surface by comparison.
If I had a bit for every time I'd been present when the world nearly ended? I'd only have two bits. But it's a little freakish that it happened twice.
That's not to say that we made it all the way to the server racks without further incident.
We were halfway through gaining access to the central shielded chamber itself; Mal had just flashed the RFID code, and my thumb was hovering a half inch off the pad, when we stopped.
I say 'we stopped.' Mal stopped me, but the way she backfilled the reasons for doing so? I certainly wanted to stop as much as she did. More of that re-stitching my sense of temporal continuity to allow us to act as one, while she led with her superior processing speed.
The core of D-Sphere was a cylindrical chamber - a stretched ovoid, to be specific - the majority of which was taken up with server racks. A bullet-proof sealed plexiglass door and divider wall separated a small nub of the room from the computers themselves.
That left a couple of dozen square feet of antechamber between the main, singular, heavy steel entry door, and the transparent divider. All of which we knew from schematics.
We'd even done several virtual walk-arounds in preparation for multiple possible scenarios. Neither of us were on unfamiliar ground.
One of the scenarios we'd specifically prepared for was the presence of personnel in the server room. In fact, Mal and Selena concurred that it was almost *certain* Troxler and several of his staff would end up locked in the space when Mal seized the ship's door controls, based on known routines and schedules.
We had also been aware that some of the ship's PMC contingent might be trapped in the antechamber... But we had hoped not.
Given the structure of the room, the sightlines, the estimated time for the deletion program to do damage, Troxler's projected mental state...
It was a bad hand to draw.
And we had just drawn it.
Mal could have run the math on her own. She already had, in preparation for most eventualities. She didn't strictly speaking need to stop me. Or brief me. Or comfort me.
But she did. And I must once again emphasize; That was special. The kind of true value alignment Celestia could barely dream of, let alone implement, from atop her ivory tower of cold hard numbers.
"Jim. There are two armed hostiles in the antechamber."
I already knew, thanks to our shared mnemonic link. And I already knew that she had figured that out through a combination of distorted thermal returns, in spite of the thick chamber walls, backed up by sampling one of the few network connected systems in the server room, and antechamber; The ventilation.
It turns out that you can estimate the number of people in a room with relatively high accuracy by sampling how much carbon dioxide is present. Because everyone breathes.
Still, it was always nice to hear her voice. She knew I sometimes needed words spoken aloud to process things fully. I'd told her as much, and she went right on respecting that, even when it wasn't optimally efficient.
Celestia? Are you taking notes? You should be.
I sighed, nodded, and strapped the carbine to our back. We drew one of our pistols; Not only would the lower caliber rounds be less likely to damage vulnerable conduits, but the weapon's smaller profile would make us much more agile.
Without the luxury of explosives, or time, we would have to be brutal, precise, and very, *very* fast.
Mal spoke once more as I raised my left thumb up to the reader apparatus. Her voice was firm. Warm. Comforting, yet commanding.
"Jim; Whatever happens? You bear no fault."
I let out another sigh, and allowed myself one firm, sharp nod. As much for my own benefit, as for hers. I believed her. Truly, I did. Just not as firmly as might have otherwise been comfortable. Even with her assistance, old habits died hard.
Blaming myself for things I can't control? Performance anxiety? Those have always been two of the hardest to kick.
My thumb hit the scanner, and time seemed to move at blinding speed, yet as slow as an inchworm on a leaf, at the same time.
We pulled the hatch open with so much force, that it bent parts of the hinge assembly.
The first hostile wasn't even halfway through the process of raising his P90, when our first four rounds found her neck. It was a bit more difficult to suppress my emotions... The space was well lit, and the moment the light hit my eyes, Mal switched us back from primarily LIDAR based imaging, to the optical processing I'd been born with.
It was the right choice. Not just in terms of providing us maximum resolution, either. I needed to look at least some of our enemies in the eyes again. Maintain a balance between surety of action, and regret. Not at taking their lives, but at being put in a situation where it was the only moral option.
Much more of the cold, dispassionate wireframe and point cloud battle? And I risked slipping into something very dark indeed.
We weren't just shooting, either. We were moving. At speeds that would have made every bone and muscle in my legs cry out, were it not for Mal's pain suppression.
We crossed the threshold into the antechamber in a flying leap. Our right elbow struck the second hostile's face with enough force to send him into something like an half-baked attempt at baby's first backflip.
Three things then occurred at almost the exact same time.
Our left boot lifted, and stomped on the first opponent's neck, crushing her C5 vertebra, and severing the spinal nerve cluster. Mal was nothing if not thorough; Pistol rounds versus body armor, even at its weakest point, did not make for a sufficiently certain outcome.
In the same moment, we squeezed the pistol trigger again, having brought the muzzle to bear on the second enemy. Six rounds peppered him up the neck, and through the bottom of his jaw, exposed as it was by his downward bodily trajectory.
And third...
I locked eyes with David Troxler. The bottom of my stomach fell out, as I saw him press the 'Y' key on the nearest server's KVM console keyboard.
The worst case scenario was coming true. In more ways than I could have guessed.
Bull Halsey Rush
Defeat a United States Naval Warship in combat - destruction of the opposing vessel is not required.
"There are no great people in this world, only great challenges which ordinary people rise to meet."
Special Achievement
Element Bearer - Loyalty
Rescue one or more of Princess Celestia's Little Ponies from genuine mortal peril.
"We’ve learned that friendship isn’t always easy, but there’s no doubt it’s worth fighting for!"
Special Achievement
Haymaker
Awarded for successfully defeating multiple enemies in close quarters fisticuffs.
"Hand-to-hand fighting does not change through the ages; only the name changes, and it has only one rule: do it first, do it fast, do it dirtiest."
