Cosmosis

Interlude-Starving

(Starspeak)

Nai had trouble fighting on space stations like this one.

Much of it was just inexperience. As much combat as she'd seen, there just wasn't that much fighting to be had on stations like this. She was far more familiar with lunar theaters. Wide open spaces where terrain was a serious concern and she could just tear up the whole landscape. Battlefields in which she could destroy whatever building she was standing in as a last resort.

She was not above flipping the table under a game she was losing.

The psionic radar she'd become oh-so accustomed to wielding let her pinpoint all the people even remotely in range of her abilities. It was invaluable for targeting her Adeptry in areas of the station she couldn't see.

But this thrice-cursed robot didn't register on radar.

Nai dashed down another corridor, finding the spot she'd helped Caleb, trapping the robot in a cage of…

A messy scaffold of translucent crystal criss-crossed the length of the hallway, but there was a chunk missing from it. As she rounded the corner, her head came into line with the perfectly cylindrical bore that seemed to have eaten through her crystal bramble.

Easily large enough for the robot to have climbed through.

It looked wrong. Like someone had taken a cookie-cutter to reality, erasing anything within a geometric shape.

But even as Nai resumed her sprint, pushing her cascade through the station's floors and walls with every step, she knew it hadn't erased just anything.

It was impossible to say it wasn't some exotic disintegration weapon. But Nai's gut said it had only erased her crystal for a reason.

She psionically beamed Caleb a flash of the images she'd just seen. She trusted he'd pass them on to anyone critical.

On radar, she could sense the minds huddled around the reactor and its core, fighting off the attacking robots. Nai could go assist them…which would likely take a minute or so to get in range, and the battle would likely be finished before she arrived.

Or she could chase down the robot that wanted to capture Caleb. Keep it from running unchecked.

Nai's choice was clear.

She dashed after the machine.

Plunging herself into her Adeptry, she let it roar through her veins, aiming a new creation with psionic tools.

Fragile crystal precipitated across absolutely every surface within her range. Dozens of rak sheltering in cabins and closets flinched in alarm at the unexplained appearance. But Nai didn't stop. She continuously added to the lacquer-like coating she was trying to spread.

It wasn't durable. Anyone could crush with just a finger. But she'd tied psionics into the stuff. Anywhere it crumpled, she would feel it.

Even more important, it carried psionics to help clarify her cascade.

And she had the machine's trail.

It hadn't been long since Caleb had first evaded the bot. It had to be still close by. The trail was hard to pick out, even with her tricks. No soft dirt to leave nice clean footprints. No bodily odors lingering in the air.

But it was big. So much larger than the average rak, in fact, that it couldn't help but bump the walls every now and then.

Scratches in the metal corridors and bulkheads gave it away. The lacquer she was coating every wall and floor with let her pick up even the shallow scrapes the robot had left. Turns out there were downsides to such rigid ceramic armor.

The robot's physicality was a problem though. It could move as fast as Nai could, even through the space station. So she needed a way to close the ground.

With a sense of where the robot was, now clumsily charging through the lacquer Nai was painting, she didn't need to spread it so far and wide.

Narrowing her mass expenditure to a narrower area and trying to predict the machine's choice in paths…

Nai started making more brambles. Blind work like this was the opposite of her specialty, but if they slowed down the machine even slightly, it would be worthwhile.

Crucially, she didn't relay the bot's location to just everyone. It was a physical enough threat that even Caleb had been checked by it. If she directed just anyone to get in its way, they would quickly get hurt.

But like before, she sent the information to Caleb. It was habit by now. When had she started trusting his tactical instincts as much as her own? It felt good. He would direct help toward her as appropriate.

Gunshots rang out.

Radar said there weren't any organic minds in the vicinity. Were the machines fighting each other now?

Nai followed the trail up a cargo elevator to find her quarry contending with SPARK's minions. Her first look at the machine left her impressed. Compared to CENSOR's past heavyweights, this one was a much more refined model. It was almost twice the height of the rank and file robots shooting it.

SPARK's horde was washed with bright neon colors and black highlights making the pale porcelain armor of the newcomer all the more imposing. Then again, it was tearing through those robots by hand. So maybe it was plenty imposing all on its own.

There had to be twenty of SPARK's robots—surely the majority of his remaining forces present—all shooting up the cargo bay.

By comparison, CENSOR's machine was alone. It dashed between cargo containers and grabbing whatever bot got too close and pulling their metal frames apart by the joints. From its size and weight, even its tiniest motions were heavy and ominous.

But Nai's exotic senses picked up more.

There was a hum and tang in the air she tasted all too often aboard the Jack and other ships: the hellish heat of a nuclear fusion reaction. It was tiny though. Like a pinprick of sun inside the pale machine's chest.

It made her hesitate.

Could destroying the machine trigger an explosion? Not likely, but Nai had never heard of a portable fusion battery that might fit inside the robot's torso. It wouldn't have been the first time the AIs employed never-before-seen technology.

She was weighing the risks of engaging to robot or leaving it to tangle with SPARK's drones when the decision was made for her.

The hulking bleached robot noticed Nai's vantage point and immediately deviated to charge her.

Ah. It liked its odds better if it forced Nai into the chaos. As expected, SPARK's drones engaged Nai too, and the chaos exploded further into a three-way struggle.

Nai's first move was to seal the cargo bay, materializing barriers several feet thick at both entrances. Her second was to protect herself from the spray of bullets that came her way.

Crystal panels precipitated from nowhere, and bullets sunk into them from all directions.

Nai's aim had been twofold to protect herself and obstruct the tall-white-tin can, but things didn't go the way she wanted.

"[You're the Warlock,]" the robot grumbled. "[I'm ready for you.]"

Nai was tempted to say 'no one's ready for me', but she held her tongue. No need to let the machine know she understood so much English.

"Learn Starspeak," Nai snarled.

If worse came to worst, she could obliterate every bot in the cargo bay in a matter of seconds. But, her priority was capturing the newcomer and the rabble were actually helping her pen her quarry in.

Materializing more and more crystals was quickly hemming the pale robot in, but Nai was braced for more. It had escaped her crystal before, and its body language was shockingly intelligible.

It was wary of how much ground it was losing, but it was also visibly waiting for its moment.

SPARK's robots fired relentlessly, and Nai guessed they only had a few more seconds worth of ammunition. Bullets splattered against the pale robot's shoulder, arresting its attempt to bolt toward one of the exits.

Nai didn't miss the moment and materialized more crystal, enclosing the newcomer in a dome.

With it successfully captured, Nai unleashed a torrent of vorpal fire through the rest of the machines. Energy coursed through her veins like lightning along with the old feeling like she might melt from the inside. Her complex poly-perpendicular exotic fluid with selectively asymmetric thermal conductivity and psionic-sensitive locomotive surfaces was truly one of a kind. Random became pseudo-random, and the fire moved according to the movements she traced with her psionics.

Teal fire vaporized the torso of every one of SPARK's robots, and Nai turned to the globe of crystal.

She took a small breath, trusting in her augmentations, and she stepped through the globe.

Her prisoner inside was waiting. All too patiently.

"You told Caleb that you could restore this station's thrusters. Were you lying?" she asked.

"No."

"Tell us how to restore the thrusters."

"Give me Caleb Hane."

Nai materialized a dozen spikes on the interior of the dome and encrusted the machine's lower half in thick crystal. It wasn't moving an inch.

"Do you really think I'll respond to that positively?"

The machine didn't flinch at the implied threat of the new spikes.

Nai clenched her jaw. This was not the behavior of a captured animal. This was not an interrogation. This machine thought it still had plays left.

"You are Nai Cal-Yan-Ti," it said. "I was ready for you."

"Then you have me at a disadvantage," Nai muttered.

The machine seemed to ignore her, inspecting the dome.

"Looking for a weakness in the dome?" Nai asked. She wanted to try baiting it into revealing how it had escaped her crystal before.

"I am [hungry,]" the robot said, settling its face back on Nai.

Nai was almost overwhelmed by the urge to ask about why a robot might want food of all things. But she steeled her expressing, staying committed to hiding her comprehension of English.

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They stared at each other, daring the other to back down.

It face was expressionless. More like a helmet. Its neck and shoulders showed almost lifelike motion. But its head was just encased in a smooth round shell that betrayed nothing.

How did it see? Cameras on its body? How long did that fusion battery in its chest last? How had gotten a hold of one that small? Are you thinking as intensely as I am?

There were so many different questions to ask, it was hard to pick where to start. But she settled on satisfying her protective instincts.

"Why do you want Caleb?"

"I don't," it said simply.

"Who does?"

The machine hesitated to respond.

"…Mother."

Now that was interesting.

"…CENSOR is your mother," Nai gathered. "Did she give you a name?"

"You weren't listening," the robot sighed. "I am [HUNGRY]."

Nai didn't miss the inflection the robot put in its words.

"Well then, HUNGRY, you're not exactly going anywhere. Tell me why your mother wants Caleb and I'll loosen the spikes."

Maybe the machine just couldn't resist being prompted so perfectly, maybe it was just eager to leave. But a deep thrum started rising in the robot's chest.

"You really weren't listening," HUNGRY sighed. "I said…I'm ready for you."

The hum intensified, and suddenly the crystal near HUNGRY's wrist evaporated into nothing.

It had been a calculated risk, but Nai had been expecting it. The cookie-cutter perfect bore left in her bramble lingered vividly in her mind. Baiting it into revealing its means of escape sooner rather than later.

But a calculated risk was still a risk.

Nai lunged backward, dodging the machines swing, but she also felt long wavelength radiation wash over her. So instead of passing through her own crystal, she slammed into the wall of the dome.

My augs!

It had the exact wavelengths!

HUNGRY swiped its arm again, and this time Nai didn't miss the cylinder embedded on the underside of its forearm. It was invisible to the naked eye, but Nai knew the cylinder was emitting a very specific beam of microwave radiation.

The beam washed over her crystal dome and erased it in swaths. HUNGRY freed itself and was dashing for the cargo bay exit in seconds.

Nai dashed after it, turning her cascade on her own body for a moment. Pushing her Adeptry into her bones, she let imagination run free for a few seconds. Forcibly dissolving someone's augmentations didn't happen very often, but when it did there were serious health risks. Replacing the augmentations quickly enough usually headed off the worst of them, and this wasn't the first time someone had tried to forcibly dissolve her creations.

She could feel an itch deep under her skin as the exotic reinforcements settled back into her bones and muscles. The accompanying exotic field her augmentations generated clung to her skin again too.

HUNGRY was running quickly, and in the seconds Nai's muscles had been stripped of their augs, the robot had built itself a healthy lead.

But not big enough.

Nai could still see the robot, and it was child's play to materialize panes of crystal in its path ahead.

Once again, the robot aimed its microwave emitter at the obstacles and melted wide holes in each layer. But each hole was off the ground, and HUNGRY was losing a step with each breach it had to hurdle through.

What really let Nai catch up though was the layer she took her time with.

HUNGRY aimed the microwave emitter at the last pane of crystal, but this time, it didn't dissolve. The robot whirled toward Nai, revealing a gun it had snatched off one of SPARK's drones.

Nai forced herself to stop behind the remains of the nearest crystal pane, and the bullets slammed into the surface without reaching her.

"<Nai!>"

Nora in the cargo bay entrance, blocking HUNGRY's access to the rest of the station.

<Scram!> Nai hissed.

Instead of heeding the demand, Nora materialized a web of slimy black tendrils, completely filling the exit to the cargo bay.

But HUNGRY remained undeterred.

I charged at Nora, arms flailing wildly, and Nai chased after. She even pulled a card from Caleb's deck and materialized a bundle of pressurized air behind her.

It exploded, concussive force hurling her forward toward HUNGRY's back, but the machine had one more trick up its sleeve. Instead of trying to keep Nai back with the gun, HUNGRY aimed at Nora instead.

Nai took precious milliseconds of cognitive power to recognize the threat to Nora and materialize a shield that wouldn't dissolve under the microwave beam.

HUNGRY took advantage of the moment and stopped. On a dime. It dug its feet into the cargo bay floor, darting sideways before Nai could arrest her own momentum.

And it kept shooting.

Nai erected a new barrier to keep the bullets from hitting Nora before seeing HUNGRY's real objective.

Each cargo bay had a pair of doorways connecting it to the station at large, but a handful of cargo bays connected with the massive freight elevators that ran between the different levels.

HUNGRY had bee-lined for this cargo bay in particular because of an electrical panel next to the freight elevator entrance. Both were encrusted with Nai's crystal, but the robot aimed its microwave emitter at the panel first, and the doorway second.

Nai recognized from Caleb's coordinating psionics that this was a panel Ben and Shinshay had flagged as holding some of the foreign hardware SPARK had been using to compromise the station's systems.

HUNGRY slammed a fist right through the panel, crushing whatever machinery was inside, and the whole station lurched.

<Whoa! We got it!> Ben called out, sending the message on all bands. <The thrusters are firing!>

The lurch of the station beneath her feet made Nai tumble to one knee. That was enough to make the difference.

HUNGRY blasted apart the remaining crystal on the door, stepped into the empty freight elevator shaft, dropping out of view.

Nai dashed forward, ready to throw herself down the shaft after the robot, but the second before she could, the freight elevator shot up, past their level, carrying HUNGRY with it.

Nai caught one glimpse of the machine waving smugly before her momentum carried her over the edge of the elevator shaft and she started falling.

More than anything else, she was irked. A feeling not made better by Nora launching a black tendril after her in an attempt to catch her.

Nai scowled.

<Caleb, relay the robot's position: moving on a freight elevator. I think it's making for an escape pod or a ship.>

<Acknowledged,> Caleb replied.

Pulling Nai back up, Nora looked guilty.

"[Shit.] I just got in the way."

It wasn't until her brain caught up with the fact that Nora's tendril was wrapped around her shoulders that she fully recalled the last time she'd been in close proximity with the human.

Nai scowled and started jogging.

"Sorry," Nora huffed, following.

Nai's scowl only deepened. She stopped and looked at the human. She was so much shorter than Nai it wasn't even funny.

"What?" Nora asked.

Nai punched her.

Right in the belly. Nora doubled over coughing.

That had been immature. But Nai kept thinking back to her body freezing up, locking her in her own skull…and that had even been on another space station falling out of the sky!

Maybe there would be hell to pay for her outburst, but for the present, Nai was back to all-business.

<Checking in,> she called. <Robot has a name: HUNGRY. It destroyed some of SPARK's hardware—the module in this cargo bay.>

<That checks out,> Ben replied. <That module went offline, and one of the subroutines we'd already tried starting working again.>

<So we're good?> Nai asked. <The thrusters are firing, but were we in time? Can we correct the orbit?>

<Yyy…yes…let me make sure…yes! Yeah, power's good in the reactor, and the thrusters are all going full tilt. It'll take an hour or two of continuous firing, but things look good from the bridge.>

<You hear that Caleb?>

<Yeah,> he said. <If the station's orbit is correcting, then that robot is the only exigent threat left.>

<Converge on the south freight elevator,> Nai broadcast. <Be danger ready.>

A dozen Adepts converged on the levels Nai indicated, but it took more than three minutes for the quickest person to get there.

Attempts to call the freight elevator back down were unsuccessful. Upon following HUNGRY's trail, a hydraulic strut for the elevator itself was found mangled into knots.

There was no sign of the robot even as their numbers doubled with the arrival of station security. Everyone fanned out, and the cargo bays were scoured top to bottom.

What peons of SPARK's that still lingered were found limp over the next two hours.

The Siegfried arrived soon after.

·····

Tenharu Serralinitus was shocked. Three casualties was almost unbelievable given the situation.

Sending the Jack on ahead without specializing equipment had been a blunder. There'd been no way to anticipate how quickly violence would break out, but given the likelihood of AI involvement, it was hardly unpredictable.

"Then, given the timing, it seems overwhelmingly likely that Shinshay and Ben's software offensive triggered the robot forces physical response," Nai reported.

"Did it seem like they might have been successful sooner otherwise?" Serral asked.

"We're only just now analyzing the software of the spliced-in modules, but it looks like it. Shinshay said the hardware was divided between slow modules—which were the majority­ of units—and fast-acting modules, which acted as backups in the event of discovery. As unexpected as the violence was for us, our arrival was even more unexpected. We must have accelerated the original timetable."

"SPARK's original plan must have involved the station slowly falling without anyone knowing the wiser until it was far too late to stop," Serral surmised.

"The timecodes we stole from CENSOR correspond closely with our estimated point-of-no-return and the projected impact time."

Serral nodded slowly. That was reassuring.

It was the pitfall of every piece of stolen intelligence. Was the information trustworthy? Or was it a false lure? It was reassuring having even a modicum of evidence.

They knew for certain at least some of the information was legitimate. This wasn't the first time they'd successfully acted on the data hidden in the Diving Bell's depths. But Caleb was sure CENSOR was paranoid enough to put false leads into her own computer storage.

'Just in case.'

But there would be time for that later. Next was assessing the imminent question.

"If we read the timeframe correctly—well, at least somewhat correctly…do we have any sense of the intended target?"

Nai shook her head.

"Too soon," she said. "The station orbits high, and Rava is small as far as moons go, so even if the time window is relatively specific, the impact site could have been almost anywhere on the rock."

"That's our first priority," Serral clicked. "…Tomorrow, at least."

"There's more," Nai said. She offered Serral a shard embedded with psionics.

He eyed the Farnata.

"Sensitive?"

"Extremely," she said.

Psionics broadcast through the air had at least a fringe chance of being intercepted and decrypted. The same data stored physically was impregnable and best used for the most sensitive of secrets.

Serral couldn't keep his eyes from widening as he scanned the contents.

One of the most invaluable tools the Flotilla had in its psionic arsenal was passive telemetry. After-action reports could be complemented by images and sound captured in the moment by one's own senses.

Images of the new robot complemented Nai's written account, but the real highlight the documentation of HUNGRY's dissolution of her crystal.

The Headliners were intended mostly as a public image stunt. Drumming up support for the war effort, inspiring citizens to contribute, volunteer, and share in the burden as they could. The heroics and images of the five of them were a powerful propaganda tool and were doubtless more impactful to the overall war effort than their actual individual contributions.

Despite being the runt of the litter, Nai was arguably the most visible of them. She was the youngest and most likely to provoke action. If she was volunteering, there were few people who could justify to themselves not making their own contribution. The efforts gone to paint the Warlock were great and arguably a tad too successful.

There was the common perception that she and the other Headliners were immortal. One of them was even named Demigod, of all things.

But each and every one of them was still mortal. Still human 'in every way that matters', as Caleb had become fond of saying.

They were some of the most jealously guarded secrets the Coaltion had…but they all had weaknesses, each and everyone of them.

Serral had, at one time or another, held command over two of them.

He knew Tiv's 'kryptonite' was a Adept-producible nerve agent that could kill his clones if they inhaled just a few atoms of the stuff. Something in their exotic-made nervous systems melted in a chain reaction on even the barest contact.

How someone figured that out? Serral didn't even want to know.

But Nai's was somehow worse.

She was an Adept who'd intentionally trained to have a default material. There were many advantages to doing so, so many an Adept did just that. It especially helped with producing solid matter quickly. When bullets were flying, every millisecond it took you to form a shield mattered.

In Nai's case, it was a glass-like often-translucent-but-sometimes-invisible crystal.

And if you bathed that crystal in a combination of three specific radio and infrared wavelengths of light, the crystal would spontaneously melt back into nonexistence.

"…The robot has seen the unredacted version of your Coalition threat assessment," Serral surmised.

"Yeah."

"…Well, we knew Major Tolar couldn't be the only one," Serral grimaced.

"I already composed a letter to auntie Laranta," Nai said. The familiarity with which she talked about an admiral was completely overshadowed by the rage she was barely keeping in check.

"Give it to me," Serral. "I'll compose a parallel note. It'll have more weight with both of us."

Nai nodded. It wasn't much, but Serral saw that part of her had been worried if he'd back her up trying to pry information out of Laranta and other Coalition leadership.

"This robot. HUNGRY? It escaped?"

"We assume so," Nai said. "It's not small. We've cascaded the whole station, and nothing turned up."

"What about the docked ships?"

"More than three-quarters of them decoupled from the station as soon as control of the docking clamps was restored. Given the hardware HUNGRY destroyed to enable its escape, we think that might have even been intentional."

"Eight escape pods were jettisoned too?" Serral said, looking over the reports.

"Like I said, we assume HUNGRY escaped."

"Well then, aside from finding out that your military has let slip secrets that endanger your survival…we took casualties for the first time in months. How is everyone holding up?"

Caleb's absence from this report was conspicuous.

"We lost Jean," Nai said. "She wasn't quite in a leadership role, but she was still visible for a lot of abductees. She's going to be badly missed."

"...I've been thinking of formally creating some kind of system of honors for the Flotilla," Serral said. "Medals. Accolades. Something."

"I'd recommend it. I'd even urge it," Nai nodded. "Jean died saving a squad of station security from a robot that was strapped. I overheard that squad wanting to demand a statue or memorial of some kind for her. They were badly shaken up about it, and she only knew them for all of an hour. The younger Flotilla kids are going to take her death hard. Telling them how to feel…how to honor her sacrifice and memory…it'll help them keep themselves composed."

Serral nodded.

"Station security hasn't trained for robots like we have. They lost a dozen rak," Nai said.

"And how galling is it when a body count of fourteen is so much more preferable to the alternative?" Serral grimaced.

"Fifteen," Nai corrected.

Serral frowned.

"Twelve rak, Miss Weber, and Miss Clarke's subordinate. Sammantha?"

"Nora's crew lost one more." Nai shook her head. "He's still alive, but…"

Not for long.

The words went unsaid, and Serral recontextualized what he'd heard earlier. About a human catching a fatal dose of radiation.

"Oh no…"