Elder Cultivator

The threat of a crisis came over Circuit Chewer as she observed the computer in front of her. She wanted to say that what she saw was impossible, but she wouldn't put it past certain sorts of humans. The kind that left bits of unshielded wiring strewn about.

Circuit Chewer looked at the monstrosity in front of her, but there was no doubting it. This thing used nonstandard connection ports. She immediately began to direct her people to scout the room for any leads. If they couldn't find anything, she could only hope she correctly surmised how the connector worked. It was likely they would have to deal with an overload of current. Quite possibly the signal would be unintelligible by their devices, but they had to try. If they collected sufficient garbage, Ace might be able to make use of it.

The only problem was prompting it to transmit. If they couldn't properly interface with it, they would get nothing more than a garbled handshake protocol.

But they didn't have to worry about that, because they found it. A device the size of a human palm, excessive in mass and form factor. It fit the shape of the necessary connector. The only problem? It had to be close to the mass of tens of thousands of average void ants. An infiltration squad of a few hundred simply couldn't lift it. Even if some of them were a bit larger, they were probably still short by an order of magnitude.

Problems such as this could be solved. Void ants were capable of great communal feats, and with proper training they had solutions for a variety of issues. First, levers. Humans always kept around small devices of various sorts. Here, a screwdriver was within the lifting capacity of the infiltration squad. All they had to do was maneuver one end beneath the connective device, then prop up increasingly higher stacks of random clutter.

That would slide the device ever closer to its final destination. The only thing they had to be careful of was-

It fell off of the desk and clattered to the floor. The mission was doomed. Unless they could repurpose some good portion of the local wiring into a pulley system… there were some overhead lights they might be able to connect to for such a purpose but finding unnecessary wiring might be tougher.

Then a human walked in. A young man. He looked around the room, finally spotting the device. The void ants were hiding behind the extremely obvious stack of random small objects. The human approached. Circuit Chewer prepared to spring forward, her legs touching those next to her so that they would react with her. Another step closer. The young man bent down.

"I can't believe Carl left the drive on the edge of the desk again. He knows how delicate it is!" His energy swept over the device in his hand. Then he sighed in relief. "It looks fine. Probably." His energy swept over the void ants. "Someone should clean up this junk… but it's not going to be me."

Circuit Chewer didn't relax for ten minutes after the human left. It could have been an ambush. He even put the device closer to the computer they meant to connect it to. They could be watching from somewhere. However, the cameras should have been tampered with. Primitive designs that could easily be fooled by standard viruses- no unique connectors like the drive they found.

They void ants moved as quickly as they felt safe to maneuver the drive the rest of the way, with an emphasis on staying away from the edge. Fortunately, it did have an unreasonably short connector wire. Given its weight, it was likely that it would damage the port if it had to directly hang from it. It was easily half a kilogram.

Once the team connected the drive, they had a problem. The computer itself required a password. The drive didn't have any secondary connectors that they could use. But wait! Circuit Chewer had overlooked the most basic thing. The human interface devices all used standard connections. If the underlying architecture was at least similar enough to other devices, they had the ability to bypass the software. Pre-programmed into void ant carryable devices, of course.

Ultimately, the security of the unique connectors was overcome by the need to have keyboards. They got ninety percent of the way there, but then…

"Authorized energy signature required."

Did the bypass not work? How problematic. How could they… well, yes, of course. Circuit Chewer sent some of her people to chase down that young man. It wasn't certain if he was authorized- though he was able to enter the room with ease. This "Carl", however, seemed potentially important yet at the same time sloppy. Connecting the two should be easy enough, and void ants were quite capable of carrying around wisps of energy. Normally they ate it, so it required a bit more skill to hold onto them for longer than a few moments, but that was well within the infiltration squad's capabilities.

Circuit Chewer didn't go herself, because she had to make sure that nobody noticed their intrusion. If someone came and found the computer in a state that was requesting access, they might grow suspicious. Unfortunately, it didn't seem possible to reverse course.

Dozens of small problems added up, but ultimately they were manageable. None of them were actually meant to stop void ants. And the standard wards hadn't been viable at any point after the void ants returned to the upper realms. Humans had taught them how formations worked, and the wards were probably many centuries older than that, from whenever the eradication had taken place.

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Pieces fell into place one at a time. Data was copied onto the drive- unfortunately even with the alternate access points they didn't have the flexibility in their prepared devices to try to copy through different ports.

They were able to leave behind a virus that would cause a catastrophic failure of all connected parts of the computer the next time it was accessed- leaving it a mystery precisely when the intrusion happened. Getting the drive out of the room was a lengthy project that took hours, during which they risked detection the whole time.

Pulleys and levers and slopes and unscrewing the entrance to a vent and stealing wires from nearby rooms and so many steps went into what they had to do. Circuit Chewer wished they could just break things, but manually reviewing the data on site would be impossible. They would ultimately destroy what was stored locally, but they needed to know what it was and where else it might be found. Project Apocalypse simply couldn't be allowed to be unleashed.

At least not on the Alliance. If the Exalted Quadrant had all their computers compromised somehow, it wouldn't be that big of a deal. It wasn't Circuit Chewer's job to decide on such an attack vector, though. Also, the Alliance had already done most of that but subtly.

The drive ended up sitting in the vent, coiled in random bits of wire salvaged from cords that shouldn't be missed right away. They were slowly dragging it along, but getting it out of the facility undetected would be impossible. Circuit Chewer had already sent a small squad ahead to report on the situation. They would need more void ants, or someone with hands. Potentially both.

Until then, they would be scavenging the local area and covering up the presence of the missing drive with their own. Nobody should know where it had gone unless they literally began tearing apart the facility. That had to be good enough.

-----

The Heartbound Palace had clearly not given up on their offensive measures against the Alliance. Aveksen had somehow become a specialist in the field of mental fortification and infiltration. Maybe not the greatest specialist in just a few decades, but wherever there was potential tampering he found himself called upon. Maybe because Bear Hug liked him. Then again, Velvet knew he existed so that was probably also relevant.

As far as protecting hiveminds went, Aveksen had it down. Careful reviews of new members was appropriate anyway, but it was also beneficial to have people in smaller groups at first for another reason. It helped shorten the adjustment period while avoiding mental shock for normal integrations. Obviously all of the original hivemind integrations couldn't avoid the mental shock, but that didn't mean people had to experience it every time.

Ultimately, however, it was a small factor that was used as something of an excuse. Security was important. An entire planetful of people being harmed was something absolutely worth taking more precautions for.

Obviously the Heartbound Palace had attempted different methods of infiltration. Their sleeper agents had grown more and more sophisticated. However, the Alliance had one method to detect them that was extremely consistent. Not other mental cultivators- there were risks with such a thing. Instead, they used a pure tech solution- brain scans. It wouldn't reveal anything about people that it shouldn't, but it would reveal any sort of mental tampering. There were various signs, depending on whether memories had been destroyed by damaging cells or through other means. Though there wouldn't be lingering traces of energy, it would always end up with a divergence from normal neuron connection patterns. It was possible even the Heartbound Palace didn't know quite what they did, but the Alliance knew it well enough.

What did Aveksen have to do with any of this? He certainly wasn't a machine. However, he did have a measure of insight that could pick out people who might be influenced somewhat reliably. He wasn't the only or final check, just one of many metrics the Alliance used. He also couldn't explain quite how it worked- but that was normal for cultivators. Sometimes, they just developed specific intuition, and he had interacted with several of those who had been the first problems.

Today, Aveksen was part of a delegation that was meeting between two planets. Both were longtime members of the Alliance, but they were negotiating specific trade details. He was one of many hivemind members present. He was quite glad he didn't have to hide his thoughts from them, because it was a tiresome process. Indeed, it would be bad if he did because they wouldn't be able to properly react.

There was no proof that anything would happen. Aveksen wasn't even completely sure what tipped them off. Somewhere around three quarters of the time, situations like this didn't result in any sort of incident in the end. That estimate included potential deterrence.

It wasn't strange, though. It would be weirder to predict where he needed to be with high accuracy. Not every suspicion turned into trouble.

Today, everyone was feeding Aveksen the vibes they got from various guests. He let that wash over him. Detailed assessments were a bit too much, but a feeling that one guy was suspicious turned into a certainty that he happened to be having an affair with another member of the delegation. Not something that the observers needed to deal with.

People who had been missing for some time, or who had integrated from the great powers, were highest on the suspicion list. The latter was a bit uncomfortable, but there was simply the largest chance they had been tampered with somehow beyond their knowledge.

Yet even if things were fine for a decade, suspicion never really faded. Aveksen hated that. Especially when it had a good reason. They really needed to do something about the Heartbound Palace. Maybe they could actually catch a disciple and not just brainwashed agents.

A different man caught Aveksen's eye. The way he looked at one of the members of the opposing delegation, eyes going from complete lack of recognition to sudden awareness. At the moment, he hadn't understood quite what it was- but that was what tipped him off. He barely even had time to take a step closer before the man pulled out a blade, swinging it at an unprepared target.