Waterstrider

Basements, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Fourthmonth, 1634 PTS

The stress was getting to Rachel, and she was using more and more of her processing power dealing with the many issues before her. Several times already she had taken an opportunity to spend some time calming and relaxing herself.

It had given her limited benefit. She was assisting Cyrus and the Reth with directions, advising Jihan, continuing to silence all alarm requests, attempting to operate the elevator, checking news around the station, conversing with Eli in a theater as aprt of their alibi, speaking with the group that would assist their getaway, and protecting herself and her most vital tasks from potential assault by the mysterious Shade who was intervening. She could still not figure out why the Shade had been assisting them at first, nor why they had started assisting the Staiven in their efforts. Rachel found herself entirely unable to affect the hatches in the facility due to the other Shade’s influence, and the elevator, though currently running, was operating far more slowly than she would prefer.

It was rare that she found her domain over the digital realm threatened by a competitor. She had never disputed with an alien Shade before, and nor had she met any of her own people in a number of decades. She had long grown used to her superiority in this field, and it annoyed her to have her dominance questioned in this way.

Of the different types of alien Shades that the Terrans knew about, there were a few who boasted comparable or even greater influence over digital transmissions than they did. Of those, there were few small enough or unobtrusive enough to have reached the station while evading the notice of both Rachel and the Pantheonic Government. Of those, the likeliest possibility in her mind would be that it was one of the few remaining Celan Shades. Unlike the other possibilities, there was actually a potential reason for one of the Celan Shades to venture to Tseludia. They knew of her presence here, after all. Perhaps the Epon had placed even more importance on Rachel’s capture than she had anticipated.

Such thoughts wound their way around Rachel’s head as she continued to manage operations in various fields. She knew that if this other Shade wished, they would be able to take down the entire system, and there was nothing she could do to stop it from happening. It was a risk she did not wish to take.

Rachel left behind a small packet of text, in the most common language of Celah.

“What do you want?”

The reply was instantaneous, appearing whole-made from fragments of code, with no particular origin. The words sent a chill down Rachel’s simulated spine, and she could detect distinct traces of amusement in them.

“Isn’t it more interesting this way?”

Rachel decided to drop the conversation. This Shade seems to see itself as a person, or was at least the sort which acted like one. Rachel knew from extensive experience that it was difficult to tell through mere textual communication whether an artificial intelligence had a true simulated personality, with internal thoughts and decisions, or was merely reacting to stimuli, aping the actions a more self aware being would.

It was part of the reason that Shades were so reviled in this part of the galaxy. Many simply assumed that they were machines pretending to be people, rather than machines that were people, such as Rachel herself. While she hated to think about the topic, nor to consider herself a machine, she could not deny that her very substrate was something that had needed to be constructed.

While she worried about the Shade’s true intentions, another part of herself watched Jihan destroy the manifest energy projector and slay all the guards in the hallway. The trap had been far less effective than she had feared it might be, and only Kein had taken severe injuries from it. While she was concerned for the severity of the man’s injury, it would have to wait.

She wove a skein of extant miasma near Ran’s ears, forming an illusion to create sound. Rachel had always found it interesting that extant miasma was capable of so freely forming different waves such as vibration and electromagnetism. A part of her idly wondered whether back in the Pleiades, her people had finally discovered what made it able to produce such things much more easily than structures of baryonic matter. Each of the miasmas held secrets such as that, and even studies of baseline ashata continually brought their scientists new discoveries.

“Kein is heavily injured,” she said. “Take him to the elevator”

Ran slightly jumped at the breathy whispers so close to her ear, and looked around, confused by the disembodied voice.

“Rachel?” she asked, having recognized it.

“Don’t bother looking for me. I’m not here, I’m projecting from another part of the facility.”

“I… see,” replied Ran after a momentary pause. “Did you want me to stay by the elevator after that and defend it?”

Rachel wanted to respond with a simple nod, but she knew that she needed to communicate verbally, as Ran could not see her at the moment.

“Yes. Cinto, Orion, and Jihan should be able to handle most of the guards. You and the weaker martial artists should be able to handle the rest.”

Ran nodded, accepting the order. She was too injured and exhausted to keep up with the others at this point, anyway. She lightly bowed towards nowhere in particular.

“By your will, Vice Sect Leader.”

As Ran moved to help the Alabaster Palace Leader, another of her selves spoke with Jihan. He was stretching his arms as if to stretch out pained muscles. His skin was slightly discolored, as if he had been heavily bruised by the energies he had pushed his way through, and was holding a partially slagged sword that Rachel recognized as belonging to Ran.

“There’s a large group of Staiven working on something one room over,” she said. “That might be the poison, or perhaps another weapon.”

“Which room?” asked Jihan, not even pausing to question the information.

“To your left,” she replied.

He stepped forwards, clenching and unclenching his fists as he prepared to break through the next hatch. She knew that it was likely he was hurting himself by breaking through the hatches barehanded, but there was really no other way. The sword would break if he were to attack advanced Staiven materials with it, and the others would need to wait for the cloud of energy to dissipate some more before they could reach this area.

While she had spoken with him and Ran, Rachel had also spoken to Cinto and Orion, one of the freed captives. She had actually looked up his record, and unlike many of the others, the man actually did have one. He was a former gangster who was wanted in another solar system several decades back. It seemed his luck had not changed for the better after arriving in Tseludia, given his rapid capture afterwards. The Pantheonic Government might have attempted to capture Cyrus as well, had he not quickly become such a high profile figure. Luckily for Rachel, the man was fairly easy to convince to further assist them. He seemed to hold great bloodlust towards the Staiven, and she could understand the reason why. Stitches crossed up and down Orion’s arms and back, holding the skin tight around subcutaneous metal implants. Some of them bulged against his skin, while others actually had surfaces sticking out. The man would need to find a very skilled surgeon if he hoped to remove all of those.

Jihan growled as more blood vessels in his arms popped, filling his system with even more sanguine energies. His strength grew, and with a powerful shove he tore the hatch from its tracks, slamming it down into the next room.

Rachel had, of course, already known what was happening in the room, using the security sensors that the Staiven had installed throughout the facility. One of the corridors that was monitored was this one, an intersection that connected the apartments for the security force with the armory and the rest of the facility. Almost thirty Staiven stood in the room. Some were still rapidly putting their armor on, while others were setting up heavy weapons on tripods such as what Rachel and Jihan easily recognized as a second manifest energy projector.

“This is more than I had anticipated,” he muttered to himself.

Orion whistled beside him, a cruel smile on the sei man’s face.

“Plenty to share this time, eh?”

His words emerged in a thick Bountian accent, and for a moment Rachel wondered whether he was originally from Canvas. She doubted it, though, given that he was only a core formation practitioner. Without suspended animation, it was extremely rare for Seiyal to travel between systems more than once.

He jogged ahead of the others, his miasma roiling to form a pair of thin whips of blazing energy out of the ether. He slung the whips backwards, and as they lashed against the ground, there was a loud crack as he was blasted airborne. Beside him, Jihan shoved against the ground below with great force, charging towards the still unprepared Staiven forces. After a mere moment’s hesitation, Cinto joined the two men.

Despite Orion’s outright confidence, Rachel knew that the situation was dire. While the lack of finished preparation gave the martial artists an advantage, it was not sufficient to mitigate odds greater than 10:1, not in a space this open, and not given the heavy weapons that were present. Rachel was aware that she might have thrown their lives away by pushing them into this. Still, she chose to believe that they could accomplish the impossible. So long as the other Shade did not interfere, there were tricks she could perform to assist, and perhaps even the odds.

At the very least, their sacrifice would enable more of the others to escape. After all, these thirty Staiven comprised the majority of the remaining security forces.

Rachel had read many books on war. In fact, she had read nearly everything that Humanity, the Seiyal, the Staiven, and several other races had to offer on the subject. From her reading as well as her own personal experience, there was something she had learned. It was rare for battle to be without sacrifice. They had all known coming into this mission that it would be very dangerous, as the Pantheonic Government could not be compared to mere gangs in any sense. But they had not had a choice but to take the risk, for the sake of Cyrus’ continued survival and sanity.

So Rachel had ensured that Ran and Kein, two people integral to the functioning of the Redwater Sect went somewhere safe, while the others worked to add more time to the clock.

Rachel could not help but desperately hope that Cyrus would make it in time.

Cutting Edge Extant Research: [While all miasmas break the conventional laws of physics in various ways, and have been described as viruses upon reality itself, the way that extant miasma seems to alter reality is arguably the most apparent. After all, unlike genesis or manifest miasma, the particles and waves it is capable of creating truly seem to have emerged from nothing. Some have posited that extant miasma merely creates odd structures out of the firmament of space-time that appear to be matter and energy, or that extant creation also creates equal anti-particles somewhere else in the universe. Others have posited that perhaps extant miasma is what the mythical Empyreans once used to create the universe itself. The latter hypothesis has been largely discredited due to lacking evidence.]