The games I bought were single-player puzzle/adventure games. The first one I'm playing is a noir-ish murder mystery, set on Tare before computers, let alone the interface. It works as a really interesting history lesson for me, and is letting me dip my toe into the virtual worlds so many Tarens consider daily entertainment. In the game I look down at myself and I'm this six-foot guy. I reach out a hand and I'm missing my little finger. It's very disorienting, and is only the tip of Tare's virtual entertainments, and probably as full-on as I can manage at the moment. I'm still way too big a wuss to try any of the games which are in-skin. Sight and sound is more than enough.
Otherwise, full squad hand-to-hand training. I concentrated hard, and Mara said nice things about the effort I was putting in, but the gulf between me and First Squad is so monumental. At the same time, I'm better than I was. If I went back to Earth and some random thug tried to attack me I might have a chance of tripping him and making him fall down.
Thursday, May 29
Great Wall of Astroturf
I was nearly late for my session with Thirteenth Squad (thanks to my new game, which is very engrossing). The captain of Thirteenth is called Teer Alare, and he's this absolute baby-face. He looks about fifteen – taller than me, but like he's not old enough to shave. I could totally picture him sitting in front of the TV with Jules, playing
Halo
or some stupid skateboarding game. I was half expecting him to be wearing a goofy grin, and for every second word he used to be 'cool', but he was curtly professional and started us out at a spanking pace.
Thirteenth is a big hitting squad, so we were in the highly shielded training room, starting on the second person – a very grim-faced girl named Dry – when KOTIS went to full alert. Everyone went still, waiting, then a broadcast message appeared in the interface (red words in the mid-distance of my field of vision): "Massive at the Dohl Array."
Before any of us could react, Grif, the captain of Second Squad, brought me into a mission channel with his squad, and began rapidly adding squads. Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, Tenth, Eleventh and Thirteenth. Most of them were on their sleep shifts, more than a few only just struggling to consciousness. Everyone else was in the spaces or on Muina.
"Gather at Green Lock," Grif said. "We'll be going through the spaces to Gorra, possibly collecting Sixth on the way, and then using transports to the Array. No delay."
That seemed to mean run. Alare gave his squad a hand signal, cast me a glance to make sure I understood, and it was a quick dash down a couple of corridors, a short elevator ride, another dash along a major travelator with lots of greysuits and pinksuits hopping hastily off it out of our way, then another elevator and another corridor. The elevators made it easier, giving me a chance to catch my breath. Everyone else was barely breathing quicker.
Eighth Squad went 'no connection' before we were halfway there, and Fifth just as we arrived. All of Second Squad was waiting by the gate, along with a mixed crowd of partial squads.
"Thirteenth, go straight through," Grif said as we came up. "Further briefing once we're at Gorra. Devlin, you're with Fourth."
I promptly sat down on a seat I suspect had been deliberately left empty for me, and hoped I wasn't too red in the face. A greysuit came disconcertingly out of nowhere and gave me a once-over. They can monitor my heartbeat, temperature, various chemical levels and so forth using the interface, but the greysuits are very fond of peering into my eyes and asking me whether I feel lethargic. Thirteenth went through, and then Fourth arrived all in a group.
Ruuel nodded at Grif, gave me a five-second glance which I interpreted as 'usual formation', and headed into the gate-lock. Auron paused beside me, offering me one of his shy smiles, and I stood and went in with him. The location of the gate appeared as a triangle in the interface and we went through without pause, not even waiting for the gate-lock to close.
Ruuel gave typically abbreviated orders once we were all through. "Auron, your sole role will be moving Devlin. Stay unenhanced for greater flexibility. Eyse, paired with Auron. Steady speed."
Auron lifted me off the ground with Levitation, and they began jogging at something just short of an all-out run. I'd never been on the Gorra rotation – it was five spaces long, but they were still empty from the last time they'd been cleared – and then we were in Gorra's near-space which looked, unsurprisingly, just like Unara's near-space. Tarens don't go in for a great deal of architectural experimentation. We were through into a gate-lock about twenty minutes after setting out, which is pretty impressive time for reaching the other side of the planet.
We beat Eighth Squad, which confused me considerably until they arrived with Sixth. They'd detoured once they'd reached Gorra's near-space and gone into the rotation Sixth was scheduled to clear, collecting them. Gorra had a KOTIS facility, barely, and we went straight to two tanz which were being prepped for us. These were flat things about three times the length of a bus, very similar to the transport I'd ridden in with Sa Lents to Unara: wedge-arrowhead airplanes.
My transport had Second, Fourth, Sixth and Eighth, and the other Fifth, Tenth, Eleventh and Thirteenth. There was a brief wait until we were all seated and the pre-flight routine underway before beginning our briefing, but there was already tons of massive news on the interface. I started out by looking Dohl Array up in the encyclopaedia.
'Dohl Teva' in Taren, and I'm not quite sure if 'array' is the right word to translate to. It's a gigantic series of underwater farms. Huge flexible clear tubes lifting from the ocean floor, bending and twisting in currents, their insides filled with different sorts of seaweeds and plants tended and harvested by drones. The ocean in the area is relatively shallow, and very clear and the place is one of the mainstays of food production on Tare. There are several fly-speck islands nearby given over to processing, and one slightly larger one, Kalane, with a population of nearly ten thousand. Tiny by Tare's standards.
Tsur Selkie and a couple of bluesuits were brought into the mission channel as Second Squad arrived, and Selkie began the briefing as soon as all squads were seated
"First sighting was of swoops, and air units were detailed. While they were en route, a drone mechanic made this report."
A recording was relayed direct into the channel, a woman's shaking voice: "This is Gensen XY, Dohl East Axis. There's a – I don't even have the words to describe it. Some kind of creature in the Array. Forwarding images from our external monitors."
I could see why the woman didn't want to try describing it. The closest I can manage is a giant piece of black Astroturf – smooth on one side, all bristly on the other. But big in a way which was beyond things like football fields and more into golf courses. It was shaped like a frilly almond, swirling and twisting an impossible ballet through the vertical farms, the wake of its passing making them sway and wrench about madly. Occasionally a vein-like network of blue lines would light up across its non-bristly side and it looked quite beautiful. It reminded me a little of a smaller Ionoth First had killed on the Unstable Rotation.
The Astroturf wrapped itself around one of the vertical farms, like a carpet giving free hugs. And then the image changed to a shot of what was obviously the inside of the farm tube as it was squeezed and crushed, and a thousand wriggly black things tried to get inside, only to draw away.
"The aerial units made a surface sighting after dispatching the swoops," Selkie went on, "and an evaluation strike was ordered."
We were relayed an image of dark, oily-looking water and I searched for the massive only to realise
everything
was the massive. It was floating just under the surface. Two small wedge-shaped ships which moved rather like hummingbirds drifted into view, and one dropped abruptly down low, bolts of light peppering the darkness below. Puffs of steam rose from the water, and at first the only response was a sudden crowding of blue light to the area, then the whole vast surface of the massive roiled and bucked, tossing water into the air. The ship was already darting away, and the other one had released a more Earth-type weapon – some kind of missile – which hurtled toward it...then wobbled, paused, and reversed direction, shooting directly back the way it came. By the time it had exploded in mid-air, the massive had sunk out of sight.
"Drones from the Array were redeployed to track, but the next sighting was again from the air." Selkie gave us another image log. This was of a small island, a miniature pile of white blocks standing perched on a spar of rock poking out of the sea. I'd barely taken that in when a wall of black rose out of the ocean, reminding me of a waterfall in reverse, or a whale breaching insanely high. It came down on the island, covering it completely, and contracted as it had around the vertical farm.
"Therouk Island," Selkie said, clipped voice moving inexorably onward. "Processing, and residential. Two hundred and seventy-four on site. The structure began fracturing immediately. Currently eighty-nine alive. Most deaths have been from crushing."
He followed this with another log, one which I really wish I hadn't watched. It was from a person on the island, trapped uncomfortably in a partially collapsed room, describing in a horrified tone the noises above him, grinding, scraping. And then black tentacles broke through the ceiling above and wrapped around him and pulled him upward and he was screaming in agony and struggling and there was nothing at all to be done.
Nils, who was sitting behind me, leaned forward and squeezed my shoulder. I smiled at him, glad to be sitting down, and tried not to show how sick I felt. I was hardly the only one. Par had gone quite grey. I doubt any of the Setari watched that without their stomach clenching.
"Air units attempted to draw it off, strafing with energy attacks, but it responded only by tightening its grip on the structure. The majority of survivors are gathered in a reinforced vault on the lowest level, with a handful of others scattered throughout. While evaluation is underway Charal, Palanty, and Eyse will attempt retrieval. Other assignments pending evaluation. Visual range in eight. Environmental conditions deteriorating."
"Eat something," Grif added.
Jeh Omai, Ketzaren's friend from Second, handed me a molasses bar and for a short while everyone just ate, had a few mouthfuls of water, and cycled through the four toilets at the back of the half-empty transport. Sonn was assigned as my secondary babysitter, and Grif, Ruuel and Halla enhanced and sat studying the logs.
We reached the massive way too quickly, barely an hour after the alert was sounded. Not soon enough for another four people on Therouk Island. I started to look at the public media channels and saw that the other islands in the area were all frantically evacuating – escalating into wild panic on the largest, Kalane – and one was broadcasting an open link to a girl trapped alone in her room on Therouk, injured and begging for help. That was too hard, and I switched to watching the transport's external feed, of ocean and sky paling into late afternoon, and a huge front of black storm clouds not quite in the direction we were flying.
"Third level monitoring established for the survivors," Grif said, as the faint hum of the tanz changed. "Destination ship incoming, primary contact Vichie. Charal, you're coordinator."
Charal of Second, who is a quiet guy with eyes which droop down giving him a mournful look, nodded once and then he, Palanty of Fifth, and Mori dropped out of the main mission channel. KOTIS is still not willing to test teleportation enhanced – it's apparently a very reliable talent so long as the person teleporting has seen or can see the location – but the potential consequences of it distorting are so great they'd rather not risk testing it with me. In this situation, I could guess that they weren't entirely certain if the massive would have any impact, but the greater risk was exhaustion, trying to move over eighty people as quickly as possible.
As the three teleporters vanished, the two ships slowed to a hover. "All to the roof," Grif said, as exits to either side and in the ceiling opened.
It was chilly with a light wind outside, and I'm never really going to get used to floating high in the air. Therouk Island was not quite directly below us, much closer than I'd expected, and looked as if it had been wrapped in wet leather. Then Par set us both down on the reassuringly broad and almost flat roof of the transport and I had to switch back to using the transport's external feed to see what was going on.
No surprise that Ruuel was primarily responsible for evaluation. He stayed floating off to one side, gazing down at the massive for a short eternity of unbroken contemplation. When he started speaking it was the same focused, exacting tone he uses for just about everything official.
"Electricity will be useless. Other elementals should all be effective, with Ice our best approach. In addition to repelling projectiles, the outer side is strongly absorbent of elemental attacks. We need to force it to lift if we're to have any chance. No apparent central brain or weak point. Status on retrievals?"
"Still working on primary group." Grif began breaking the available Setari into three groups: the main attack force, a group of close-range or electric-focused talents who would be hunting any 'escort' Ionoth, and the Devlin handlers who would make sure I didn't fall off the transport or get eaten by a straying swoop. Beyond the evaluation, they weren't using me to enhance anyone yet, and spent some time on technical details of which telekinetics would be carting who about, and what the order of enhancement would be.
"Primary group retrieved," Grif said, after tote-duty was settled.
"Air support unit en route to your location," Selkie put in. "We've isolated an intact upper chamber with active visual feed. Placement of charges at that point should achieve considerable damage, but it's critical that we prevent it fleeing once injured."