Salvation

by voroshilov

Confrontation

There was no time wasting once the Retaliator exited the Rift. Without Penumbra even having to give the order, Ablazed Glory began to take them in. It was a good thing for it, too, Penumbra’s curiosity had been replaced by a more angry form. Someone, somewhere down the line had lied to her and - to put it mildly - she did not like being lied to.

She wasn’t furious - of course not - it was not something anyone had any right to be furious about, not yet at least. She actually hoped Emperor Nicholas had lied to her, then she wouldn’t be so angry anymore. She already hated Nicholas, knowing full well he had lied to her in the past and used her for his own goals. Any anger or hatred that would come from being lied to was like a drop in an ocean when it came to him, so it wouldn’t matter.

Something seemed off the moment they crossed the threshold of the planet’s open crust, which Ablazed Glory saw fit to mention aloud, “something doesn’t feel right.”

She was right. Though Penumbra had no idea what it was, there was definitely a newly wrong feeling about Cradle. It hadn’t felt at all similar the last time they had arrived, so why was there a change? Everything seemed to be functioning as it had been before, so why did Penumbra feel concern creeping up her spine?

The two WarSynths who had guarded the control room were gone, with the door firmly closed behind them. When the Retaliator landed, and the two alicorns disembarked, the sense of unease rose even further. Penumbra closed in one the door, Ablazed Glory covering her back in an almost telepathically synchronised tactical display.

As she had suspected, the door was firmly locked.

She reached out with her magic, more than confident Ablazed Glory would have her back should something go wrong. Expecting a simple mechanical lock, she was met with a complex tangle of helices of matter-data lattices, more than a mere puzzle. Whatever had locked the door - and Penumbra had her suspicions - had not wanted anything getting inside.

Unfortunately for them, however, they had not counted on Penumbra taking their lock as a personal challenge. When Penumbra was challenged to a game of intellect, she never lost. Maybe she wouldn’t win - but she would never allow the challenge to end if that was the case.

The lattices had a beginning, revealing a complex system of formulae and inter-woven data that would have to be unravelled for her to pass through. The formation of the lock was a truly remarkable thing, how it eschewed the mechanical for the mathematical whilst also retaining its strength was a perfect testament to the Assembly’s way of thought. The sheer simplicity of folding the matter-data over itself like steel was brilliant, something Penumbra would not have come up with - though the time for fawning over locks had been put on the backburner.

Whilst the lock was fascinating, it was also strong, very strong. She had somewhat of a knack for picking locks, mostly because she could use magic to entirely replace the unreliability of a mechanical pick. Her knack, however, would not so much help her here. She would need a mathematical mind to proceed.

Fortunately, she had that too.

Breaking down each individual point of the matter-data lattice was simple - simple enough anyway. She would, in essence, need to solve the formulae and reconcile the data. The difficult part came with the difficulties each formulae and strands of data presented. The very first point was almost a cake-walk, the second had her stuck for three seconds - a long time for one calculation.

The big problem that came with matter-data was how dense it was. If it were only a few hundred, even a few thousand calculations, then she would be fine. Instead, it was tens of millions, all for just one tiny lock. She prided herself on her processing power - to use Assembly speak - but even hers paled in comparison to what the weakest Assembly construct could bring to bear.

There was a lot of work ahead of her, that she knew, but a lot of that work could be broken down into simple chunks. She was relying on being in the lock for a few minutes at most, any more and she would probably have to have Ablazed Glory smash it. Or, chance a teleportation beyond it, which carried immense risks.

A eureka moment came to her a few seconds later. The data stream was not encoded at a quantum level, rather by a pre-coded pattern based system. Put simply, there was a pattern and Penumbra could exploit it. It was unusual for the Assembly - in fact, it was very improbable - but Penumbra was happy to take any advantage that came to her, even one that she knew shouldn’t have.

The lattice quickly unravelled, the pattern practically allowing her to bypass it. Before her magical eyes, the complex tangle of matter-data vanished, the lock shut down and the door was good to open.

Open it did, with Ablazed Glory bursting through to provide the necessary cover as Penumbra withdrew from the lock and regained her focus. There was darkness indoors, not even the consoles active, with the only light either coming from without or from Ablazed Glory’s body. There were no WarSynths present, as there had been, and Exultation-001 was nowhere to be found.

If Cradle’s AI was still around, it could be accessed from the control room. Which, fortunately, wasn’t too far from where they were. Unfortunately, it was secured by a number of doors that were likely not only locked, but locked far less shoddily than the main entrance had been. She felt a cold, shivering sensation run up the spine in her neck: something was definitely wrong and something bad was soon going to happen.

WarSynths did not evacuate. That was the rule. WarSynths did not evacuate because they were expendable, they were to cover evacuations from facilities or to ensure facilities remained functioning on a mechanical level. If they had evacuated - which their absence suggested - then something severe had happened since their previous visit. Four thousand years and the Shield World had been untouched, who could have gotten to it in a day?

Another question was raised as Penumbra began work on the next locked door: where was Exultation-001? As custodian of the Shield World, it should have been everywhere at once. At the very least, it should have attempted to stop her breaking the previous lock. If it had not wanted her inside, then it should have activated its defences and brought them to bear. If it had wished, it could have destroyed the Retaliator the moment it exited the Rift. So why didn’t it?

Penumbra’s mind, separated into two in the magical world, worked overtime to break the lock. The lattice should have been far more dense, encoded to a point that Penumbra could barely recognise it. However, it was even less secure than the previous had been. It came apart in less than half a minute, Penumbra having not even needed to separate herself after all.

There was just one more door, through a hall that Ablazed Glory scouted. The hall, once abuzz with WarSynths, was empty, eerily so. It was as though she had stepped into a tomb - a feeling which she had had enough of when she left the Throne World. The door wasn’t even locked, opening it being a simple matter of Ablazed Glory kicking it.

The control room was similarly empty, every one of the consoles offline. Worse, Exultation-001 was deactivated. Penumbra attempted to reboot the command console, calling upon her knowledge of the Assembly’s language and technology to find the on button, but to no avail.

Exultation-001 had deactivated itself. As an AI, a non-sapient one at that, shutting down was not a task Exultation-001 should have been able to perform on its own. Unless in immense danger, with orders from a higher classification of mind, or a specific section of its programming detailing a prerogative to deactivate in such a situation, Exultation-001 would be active until it failed. Clearly, it had not failed, given the fact the locks had been constructed of a matter-data stream.

Something had killed Exultation-001.