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Chapter 154 - The Collective
🕑 Added 2020-11-01 10:59:38 +0000 UTC"Too easy." Korenga complains with a shrug and drops the Hestia-bot she ripped in two carelessly. If it has a self-destruct mechanism installed, it must have been broken. The towering woman covered in black tattoos hasn't even entered her Black God mode yet. This means that her physical strength doesn't come from the Imagination Engine but Mataku's curse.
"There is one more down the corridor and to the right." Uten and Saten translate in unison what Senka tells them over the comms. Korenga has been learning the Imperian language, but it's not good enough to understand scientific terms. "And be more careful next time."
"What is there to be careful about?" Turning away and heading for her next target, the Black God speaks in a displeased tone. She hoped to have enemies that could fight a little, but these robots are about as flimsy as humans when faced with her might. "I don't even need to go all out."
"Well, we still don't know if they will explode." Saten explains patiently, crossing his arms to stress his seriousness.
"You may have only been lucky this time." Uten adds, following his brother's example and then nodding.
"Then I'll just have to break them all the same way I broke this one." Korenga points at the pieces of the unmoving Hestia-bot with her head. "Problem solved."
"I wish I could have such a simple disposition." The twins translate Senka's comment, then realize that they weren't supposed to do so. The Black God looms over them with a frown and looks at their faces one by one, then turns away again. Uten and Saten breathe a sigh of relief.
"Next." Korenga declares in a tone that leaves no room for argument. With a look at each other, the twins follow the Black God's lead wordlessly.
The trio walks down the corridor and reaches the bend around where Senka said the next Hestia-bot is. But when they round the corner, it's not just one robot that awaits them. Half a dozen mechanical angels turn their heads, their eye lenses focusing on the three.
In the next moment, they point their laser arms at Korenga first, judging her to be the biggest threat. Her eyes widen, followed by her lips curling up into a broad grin. This is the fun she was hoping for.
Uten and Saten duck back around the corner when Korenga turns into the Black God and gets to work. Laser shots fly and scorch the walls, and the sound of metal ripping and tearing echoes through the hallway. The bestial roar of the berserker goddess tells the twins that it's better if they stay back for now. They have no reason to compete here.
The severed head of a Hestia-bot bounces past Uten. He stares at it as it rolls down the corridor, then looks at Saten, who only gives him a shrug in response. With Korenga around, they won't have a chance to bring that cute maid with the fluffy ears a complete robot. Then again, they understand that it's better not to pine for their mother's lovers.
"There were more than expected." Saten reports to Senka over his headset while glancing around the corner to see how Korenga is doing. He witnesses her grabbing the arms of a Hestia-bot and kicking it in the chest, ripping off the limbs while cracking the inhibition field dome. "Six of them."
"Huh?" The doll girl replies with a sound of confusion. "Wait, where are you right now?"
"It says D Block, Level 5, Crossing B32 here." Uten joins the call, looking at the number on the wall across from them.
"Wait, you're one level higher than the feed I was looking at." Senka realizes in a distressed tone. The sound of rattling keys tells the twins that she must be switching to the surveillance feed on their level now. "There's one more right below you. Korenga seems about done."
"Sounds like it." With a listen, Saten agrees. The Black God's rampage has abruptly come to an end with the last breaking noise of space alloy.
"You can go down to the level below from a service hatch near you." The doll girl explains, but she sounds absentminded.
"What's the matter?" Uten asks while nodding when Saten points out the aforementioned hatch. He can tell that the revelation of there being more Hestia-bots than expected is causing her a headache.
"I'll get back to you in a moment." With this short answer, Senka switches off her comms. The twins exchange a look, then split up to get to work. Saten walks over to the hatch and tries to figure out how to open it while Uten turns around the corner.
"Over here, Korenga." He calls out to the Black God, who looks around as if hoping that one of the Hestia-bots is only playing dead and will try to attack her. She turns her head, her black eyes glaring at the little Crawling Chaos for a moment. Then she undoes her transformation as if it were nothing.
Less than a year ago, she attacked the twins in an uncontrollable rage because she thought they were aspects of Mataku. It took their mother everything in her power to keep her busy until she fell asleep at midnight. Now, the Black God appears to effortlessly switch between the cursed beast and her regular form at the snap of a finger. She can still lose control sometimes, but usually only when the Primordial Terror is involved.
"There's another one down there." Uten points at Saten, who just found the lever to open the service hatch.
"I'm not sure I'll fit." Scrutinizing the opening with narrowed eyes, Korenga ponders while rubbing her chin in a thoughtful gesture. "You two go ahead. I'll go around."
"Uten will go with you. I'll scout ahead." Not waiting for an answer, Saten drops down into the hatch fearlessly and disappears out of sight. The two left behind exchange a glance and shrug before walking in the direction of a lift that will take them down.
"I assume you never watched a horror movie in your life." Senka suddenly opens the line and comments when Saten releases the ceiling hatch and sticks his head out from it. The Hestia-bot has skated down the corridor on its wheels and appears to be searching for something.
"What do you mean?" Looking around to make sure there are no others, Saten asks.
"You never split up." The doll girl asserts in a grim tone.
"Well, if this were horror, I would be the monster." Saten replies in a whisper. With a grin, he silently lowers himself from the hatch by transforming into the true appearance of a Crawling Chaos. Slithering across the ground, he moves soundlessly and approaches the robot from behind.
Then he latches onto the humanoid robot's limbs all at once and bends them back into a hogtie before ripping them out of their sockets. Even if Korenga's strength is superior to Saten's, he's still a Crawling Chaos. He can break metal without a problem, too.
"There was only one here." Saten returns to his human form and speaks to Senka. He holds the limbless torso of the Hestia-bot up by its head and looks at its features. It's a simple design with no embellishment; everything on it serves a purpose. "What were you so concerned about?"
"I've been looking at security feeds all over the ship. They're multiplying." Comes the doll girl's alarming reply. "I think it's dumb that the security cameras don't cover everything."
"It would be too easy then, wouldn't it?" With a wry smile, Saten lifts the robot higher to look at its face. The mask-like plate covering it lacks all features, but it still follows basic human anatomy with its bilateral symmetry and a pair of camera lenses behind eye-shaped slits. "When I look at it this closely, it does seem kind of cute."
In the next moment, the Hestia-bot explodes.
So far, we haven't been able to capture a single one of the mechanical Fatas. Aurelia realized on the first encounter that her golden weapons are unable to penetrate the torso but can still cut the wings and legs. She can incapacitate them, but finding that they have no more options may lead to self-destruction - if they have such a function, that is. I'd rather not find out.
Instead, we encountered about seven of them so far. Rewera is leading in the score, having taken out four with her bare hands. Aurelia disarmed one, and I finished it off. And finally, Kamii got two.
I already knew that the little dark elf has become incredibly skilled in combat, but watching her dodging laser shots coming down the corridor had me on edge. Still, she made it all the way across by herself and ripped through each Hestia-bot with a single swing of her cursed arm.
Even now, I don't fully understand the principle behind her power. It appears that every hit doubles her impact force, but I remember seeing it resetting after she missed a swing, struck something inanimate, or didn't hit anything for a while. How come she can do it with these robots then? Once we're done here, I'll have to ask her about it, as she seems to have figured out the rules of her power.
"Hm." Aurelia makes when we follow Tokomaha's clone toward the next target. The Golden Queen must be frustrated about not being able to help much, though I think our combination attack is fine. We can fight side by side, which is already more than I can hope for when we consider our enemies.
Suddenly, the whole ship shakes from an impact or an explosion. An alarm starts blaring, pulling me out of my peaceful thoughts. We don't experience a shockwave, so the detonation must have occurred either far enough away or was sectioned off by blast doors.
"What happened?!" I ask into my headset.
"There was an explosion in D Block. I lost contact with Saten." The doll girl's answer makes my heart drop. Even if they're my children, and I know that they're powerful individually, a sudden explosion and losing contact with him still worries me.
"Damage report." Still, I bring myself to ask about the status of the ship first. If we have sustained massive hull damage, we might lose air, putting all those who can't survive in space without a suit in immediate danger.
"Luckily, the ship's armored hallways held, and the shockwave has dispersed throughout D Block. No hull breach detected." In a professional tone, Senka gives me the readings. "Saten was right there, though."
"What about Uten and Korenga?" After a short pause, I inquire about the other two who were with him. I doubt anything can happen to Korenga as long as she's in Black God mode, although an explosion that can't destroy this ship most likely can't damage her normal form either.
"They split up before it happened. Uten and Korenga are now on their way to the explosion site and should be able to report the situation soon." When I hear that my other son is safe, I breathe a sigh of relief. "Ah, they-"
Senka's voice is interrupted by static that completely drowns her out. I glance at my companions, who were listening in on the conversation, then take off the headset and use the doll girl's telepathy to talk to her.
"What happened to the comms?" I ask in my mind, but before I can get an answer, the corridor lights switch off and turn back on in red. It's the emergency illumination in case the ship loses power.
"Somebody is jamming the channels!" Senka replies in a distressed tone. I can imagine her stitched hands flying across the keyboard to figure out the issue, much like when she was checking the engine error.
"What do you mean, somebody?"
"Something!"
"That's not an answer!"
Suddenly, the alarm noise from the speakers is replaced by static that fills the hallway. It rises to an ear-splitting pitch before disappearing altogether. For a moment, there's silence, and I exchange a look with Kamii. Then, a female artificial intelligence voice speaks in the pleasant tone of an announcer.
"We are the Collective. Your ship is already under our control. Surrender, and your termination shall be painless." The voice declares as if speaking about the weather. Her proposal means death in either case, so we should ignore it.
"That must be the contingency plan of the Venus Fleet." Senka explains in my mind, most likely saying what Exla is telling her. "In the first place, their fleet should look like an alien force to anybody who doesn't know that the Old Humans are fakes. This act is only solidifying that impression."
"So, the ship is under their control. They could vent everybody out into space then." That explanation is as good as any to me; I need to know what we can do.
"Abandon ship." The doll girl responds as if having heard my unposed question. I can tell that it's not her usual sarcasm but spoken in utter seriousness. The artificial intelligence of the Venus Fleet is vastly more powerful than any number of human brains combined. "Ah, Exla says she's doing something about it."
I blink my eyes a few times. For a moment, I was utterly convinced by my own train of thoughts, but that just derailed it.
"What did you say?" I ask in an incredulous tone that must be showing on my face, as Kamii tilts her head questioningly. Then, she seems to realize something.
"What's going on?" The little dark elf's voice suddenly joins our mental call, and I stare at her wide-eyed. Aurelia watches us with an eyebrow raised, unsure what to make of my pantomime.
"Before you ask, she's initiated. And so are Asoko and Hestia." Senka quickly explains before continuing with the more pressing matter at hand. "Exla said, 'I'll take care of this, senpai' with a confident smile."
"That's alright, then." Kamii remarks, and any hint of worry disappears from her face. When I see her put her trust in Exla this quickly, I realize what I've been doing. How could I forget that the cloud girl is the Old Human with the greatest mental capacity among her kind? Only because she hasn't been able to show off her powers recently doesn't mean she's out of her depth now.
"What should we do then?" Rather, what can we do? If it involves technology, there's no way I can contribute. All I know is fighting using a direct approach, making the best use of my imagination and Crawling Chaos body.
"I think this Collective took over a section of the ship and used its material to build a replicator to create an army of those robots. When they decided they had enough physical defenses, they hacked our system." Senka speaks in a slightly absentminded tone. She must be typing on her keyboard at the same time, trying to push back the Venus Fleet AI's encroachment on the ship's life support systems. "The most likely location is the cloning halls of D Block. Uten and Saten reported many enemies on their way there. Rolan's group went the exact opposite direction and has only encountered three enemies. Asoko was second closest to them and caught five and destroyed eight. You had seven on your end. What you can do is try to find this replicator and destroy it."
"Understood." Kamii replies immediately, seemingly unconcerned about the dangers we may be facing.
"How could we have overlooked it until things got this bad?" I vent, knowing that there's no point in complaining about what's done. We went into this whole journey to the Sun quite unprepared for what our enemies had in store. It's only natural that this is what we get.
"Well, if it's any consolation to you, I think I have found our engine problem." The doll girl says, followed by an audible sigh even though we're communicating telepathically. She had to get that one in there, didn't she?
"Let me guess. The Venus Fleet AI already infiltrated us in our last battle. We're only seeing its effect now." It's not even a surprise to me anymore. After all, I can believe it when Sintress says that her solid light barrier is perfect. That means the infiltrators must have come from the scouting fleet we fought before.
"One hundred points to you. Now that we know the source, time to take it out." Senka is trying to sound encouraging, but her voice feels sarcastic to me. Surely, things aren't as simple as her statement makes them seem, and she's implying that.
"Where is Tahiri?" Changing the topic, I ask about the God of Storm since I haven't heard from her for a while. She checked the circuits for broken places across the ship before, so she may have even traveled through the replicator at one point.
"She hasn't come back yet..." The doll girl trails off, having realized that something is wrong about that. Electricity moves at nearly the speed of light, so even if Tahiri did a comprehensive check of every single panel and switchboard, she should be done many times over.
If she entered an inhibition field while inside a cable in the wall, she would have been turned into her human form. I shudder to imagine what that would mean if she were in a place her body couldn't fit. And in that case, I would most likely not find her remains in a long time.
I close my eyes and spread out my consciousness across the entire ship. Passively, I can feel life forces well, but when I concentrate, it becomes much keener. I count the forty-eight maids in the quarters around the command module and those who stayed on the bridge, Kleihn and Sintress's two children in the engineering bay, Rolan's party, Asoko sweeping through the corridors, and Korenga and Uten next to Saten.
I can tell that Saten lost a lot of his mass in that explosion. It must have taken him by utter surprise to be able to do that much damage to him. After all, with the dragon template, he should have been able to withstand a blast that can't even damage the ship's structure. When I meet him, I'll have to chastise him about letting down his guard in a combat zone.
Of course, I can't sense the presence of the Hestia-bots or the location of the replicator. When I go deeper, maybe I can use the bacteria in the air to feel movements caused by the machines. I've tried seeing all of life before, and it was an overwhelming sensational overload. But I'm still growing, and my limits are yet to be seen.
Just as I'm about to focus, I feel a lone presence far inside D Block. It's none other than Tahiri, staying in fetal position unmoving but alive. Maybe she passed through an inhibition field and was turned into her human form inside a cramped space. It's even possible that the entire area surrounding the replicator is packed with inhibition field generators - if they haven't yet implemented Alverost's prototype.
Whatever the case, rescuing Tahiri is my priority now.
"Tell Asoko to head for D Block and join Korenga and the twins. I assume you don't have a line to Rolan and his crew, so tell Tokomaha to send a clone. He should return to the engineering bay." Our focus should be to stop the physical encroachment of the artificial intelligence. Even if they can take over through the software, we can always restore things as long as the hardware is safe. The worst-case scenario would be if the engine was tampered with physically. "We'll head there as well."
Senka replies in the affirmative, and our connection is ended. She most likely realized from my tone that I know that Tahiri is, if not safe, at least alive, so she didn't comment on it further.
"Now, tell me what is happening." Aurelia demands to know when she senses that I'm back in the physical realm.
"Well, you heard the announcement. The Venus Fleet has taken over part of the Queen Pelomyx and is trying to gain full control. Exla will take care of the internal part. We're going to clean out the enemies in the ship." I summarize our telepathic conversation. Kamii was listening in, so she doesn't require an explanation. And for Rewera, this all goes over her head, so she will simply follow me.
"Destroy the enemies. Understood." The Golden Queen replies with a sneer. She, of all people, shouldn't act arrogant now that she knows the best she can do is incapacitate the Hestia-bots. But Aurelia wouldn't be Aurelia if she didn't put up a tough front even under these circumstances.
From now on, we need to worry about the enemies self-destructing. That it hasn't happened earlier means they only do it under certain circumstances. We don't know what those are until we ask Saten, who was hit by one such explosion. Therefore, we should disable the enemies entirely for the time being. I'm worried that Asoko, who captured several Hestia-bots, may get exploded from within, but I'm sure she has taken the necessary precautions.
With these thoughts, we set off in the direction of D Block while taking care of any robots we encounter on the way. I believe in Arcelia and Sigurd, and Rolan's party to keep the engineering bay safe. Exla and Sintress have the bridge, so I don't need to worry about that place. In the end, we should be fine as long as nothing unforeseen happens.
Tahiri is hiding naked in a small crevice between two machines in a hall with many glass vats. They're all empty now, but she can tell that they were used to grow living beings when this was still Alverost's ship.
In the center of the hall, a machine that seems to be pouring out a mercury-like substance is eating away at everything in its surroundings and adding the matter to itself. From an opening, winged metal puppets are emerging one by one with an increasingly shorter delay.
The replicator is growing at an increasing rate. The larger its size, the more mercury pours out to consume the Queen Pelomyx. Tahiri can tell that if this threat isn't rooted out entirely, it will return like cancer. That silvery liquid must be the origin of it all, not the growing machine itself.
The God of Storm doesn't know much about technology. When she was traveling through the ship's electronics and passed through this place before, she didn't think of it as anything out of the ordinary back then. After all, it was connected to the ship's energy grid and didn't do anything.
But the second time she checked the ship after Chaos returned, she came through once and realized that this place had come to life. Her mistake was to check it out again on her own instead of immediately reporting it. When she exited the circuits to take a look with her physical body, an inhibition field covering the entire hall was activated at that same moment. Whether out of pure chance or with the goal to capture her, the machine prevented her from using her powers.
However, she managed to emerge in a spot where it couldn't see her, so she could hide herself in time. She has been sitting in the fetal position, trying to breathe as little as possible while the machines walked past her one after the other.
It's frustrating for a god to be hiding like this. But she knows that without her powers, she's nothing more than a fragile human. Chaos has taught her that survival matters more than misguided honor; as long as one lives, one can strike back again. If she died here, she wouldn't be able to lie with Chaos again.
The fact that she's thinking about such things in her precarious situation causes Tahiri to smile wryly. Before she met Chaos, she had never feared a thing. She lived life to her heart's content, killed those who opposed her, and enjoyed her status as a god of Adanak. The existence of other powerful gods was unimportant to her. She was the wind, the storm; nobody could stop her.
Only when Tahiri met Chaos did she begin to fear losing something. Whether that was her dignity as a god, her children, or her very life, she could no longer do as she pleased without worrying about the consequences.
It's her own fault for getting into this situation, so she has to get herself out of it even if she can't use her powers. However, the only way leads past the increasingly more frequently passing winged metal puppets. If she's found, that will be the end of her.
Waiting for help to arrive isn't like Tahiri. Who knows when Chaos or anybody else who can save her will come? The likelihood of getting discovered rises with time, and eventually, the replicator will spread to her position. The sooner she makes her move, the better.
Peeking out from her hiding spot, the depowered God of Storm looks for an opportunity to make a run for it. Just then, one of the winged robots rolls past her on its wheeled feet, causing Tahiri to freeze. She hears the wheels come to a squeaking stop, and her eyes turn to look in its direction.
The metal puppet has turned around. Even though it has no real eyes, Tahiri can feel its mechanical gaze on her skin, prickling like a freezing gale. It takes not even a moment to identify the naked woman as an enemy and raises its arm cannon.
