First Contact

Chapter 235: (The War)

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

Look at it. I mean, just look at it.

>RSC has shared OrionSpur.hol

It looks like Tannhuser Gate and the Orion Shoulder all over again.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Everyone's in the wrong positions.

The Fantasy LARPers, masters of nanite enhanced warfare who have honest to Digital Omnimessiah elven queens holding court, are fighting the Lanaktallan. We've got a Darth in Lanaktallan space. The Imperium of Wrath were fighting the Dwellerspawn and are now slamming the Precursor forces in the Long Dark. We've got Old Metal fighting someone new at the Base Systems. We've got New Metal and Mixed Metal all over the place.

It's a complete mess.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

It's only the Terran gift for warfare that's kept this from falling apart. Now they're red-dotted.

If the Terrans pull back till the red-dotting is fixed, the whole thing will collapse.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

You know that's not going to happen.

Since the knowledge of the SUDS red-dotting got out, Terran volunteering has gone up by 19.34%, with over 30% of the volunteers requesting combat arms positions.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TNVARU GESTALT

I don't understand that. They don't have to die, they haven't had to die in thousands of years, why are they volunteering to die en-masse in a war they don't even have to fight? You guys can fight it.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

Because they don't have to.

That's why they do it.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

It's more than that. You have to understand their history. You have to look at through their eyes to understand it.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

AKLTAK GESTALT

So how can it be fixed? The Terran forces are all over the place.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

They're going to have to dig in and rotate the units out, but that'll put two-thirds of the military forces in transit and if anything else happens then it all goes to hell.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TNVARU GESTALT

Like the SUDS red-dotting?

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

Touche.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

Do we have any idea where the corruption is coming from?

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CYBERNETIC ORGANISM CONENSUS

No. We just know it's coming from the Spur Base, but the problem is, the signal goes through the Long Dark and we're not sure what's in there that has Daxin and the Imperium Forces all excited out there.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Could it be that Queen signal we felt? Could that be corrupting it?

Man, this is like that nightmare that the seer channels keep having.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TERRASOLMILINT

What nightmares?

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

It's weird.

You'll think I'm just being my worry-wart self.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CONFEDMILINT

If it's on the seer channel, let's hear it.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

All right, fine.

The chat room is empty except for Treana'ad, Rigel, and me.

Rigel is singing, a low sad song, and we can hear the peeping of her ducks and goslings.

Rigel says goodbye and we see come up.

Treana'ad says he'll find us as soon as he can find a new FTL travel method.

I tell him I love him and will miss him.

Treana'ad vanishes and comes up.

I walk around our chat room, fussily arranging things and dusting them off, then walk to the door.

I stare at it for a long moment, then turn off the lights.

comes up.

The seers all wake up screaming.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Chromium Saint Peter, sis, how long have you been having that dream?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

About a week.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TERRASOLMILINT

About when the corruption started.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

Yeah. That's why I got all weirded out when we found out about it.

If it wasn't for our younger members, I'd say we should have never explored coreward. We should have moved to the Cygnus Arm.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

Well, I'm glad you did.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

AKLTAK GESTALT

Same here

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TNVARU RULE 34

Same here.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TNVARU GESTALT

Wait, did my name change?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CLONE WORLDS CONSORTIUM

That'll happen. Don't sweat it.

We've managed to overcome some of the corruption, we've got our hashes back again and can run off Born Whole clones.

But...

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TERRASOLMILINT

But what?

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CLONE WORLDS CONSORTIUM

Anything hooked up to a SUDS is suffering hash corruption.

Even our Born Whole salted rainbow tables are going bad.

Which means we can't update the standard hashes.

The Born Whole system though, it's working fine.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

Which means that it's the SUDS system itself. The Born Whole system uses an entirely different dedicated channel built after the Great Glassing.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

Can you switch the SUDS system to the Born Whole system?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CLONE WORLDS CONSORTIUM

Um, that's an embarassing subject.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

AKLTAK GESTALT

How?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CLONE WORLDS CONSORTIUM

We might have planet-cracked the guy who developed the Born Whole system and was probably the last guy who knew how the SUDS system worked.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Digital Omnimessiah curse Legion. Eons dead and he still puts his thumb in our eyes.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CLONE WORLDS CONSORTIUM

He's alive, remember. We just don't know what he's doing.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Fine. Eight thousand years after the war and he's still laughing at us.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

Hey, has anyone heard from Bubble Bass lately?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

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DIGITIAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

See? He doesn't even take the bait any more.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

>TERRASOLMILINT HAS LEFT THE CHAT

MANTID FREE WORLDS

OK. That's weird.

This is getting weird.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

UNITED FEDERATION OF PLANETS

Hey, has anyone else noticed something weird?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

We were just talking about all kinds of weird stuff.

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UNITED FEDERATION OF PLANETS

We're having some weird character class overlay overruns. We've got a few players who are getting SUDS scorched like Admiral Pikark did a year ago.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

WAIT! You had a guy get scorched?

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UNITED FEDERATION OF PLANETS

Yes. A player dual-classed with combined memory, took advantage of an IRL exploit and loaded up the memories of two different classes. Scorched his SUDS.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CYBERNETIC ORGANISM CONSENSUS

Let us see the file.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

UNITED FEDERATION OF PLANETS

Sure.

>UPF TRANSFER REQUEST: PIKARK.NTF

There.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CYBERNETIC ORGANISM CONSENSUS

DASS, look at this. Doesn't that look the same?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

It's damn close. Real close.

Hang on.

>DASS SHARES FILE: DOKIDOKI.NTF

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CYBERNETIC ORGANISM CONSENSUS

She still had her SUDS, huh?

Wow, that looks like a 0.1.a version.

Look at this, same kind of corruption. Let me check her Combine combat records.

>CYBORG whistles

Over three hundred mat-trans drops before she went crazy.

Damn, she was on Anthill for the entire duration.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Oh my loving Digitial Omnimessiah, that poor girl.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

If you overlay this, you see a lot of the same damage.

Whoops, hang on. I've found something. Let me strip out the...

Dammit, I can't do it.

CLONE, can you strip this time/date stamp from this section of the SUDS holographic file?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CLONE WORLDS CONSORTIUM

Wow. The time/date corruption is bad. Who is this?

Staff Sergeant John Kwrawsh Danver, 1st Infantry Division, combat medic, power armor.

Wow, it's a complete memory.

Yeah, I can unhash it, barely. It'll be weird though.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Play it in here. Let's see if we can figure out what's going on.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CYBERNETIC ORGANISM CONSENSUS

OK, I've got it. Isolated.

Running

9879babedfca8765123.mem

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The sky was the color of bruised flesh, low hanging clouds lit by the sun and the fire of the city burning behind him. Lightning snarled in the clouds, lighting up the dueling specks that reached out to one another with shafts of light and burning fury. Dust hung in the air as the artillery pounded the battlescreens and, where battlescreens weren't, the ground itself. The mud between the two forces was thick, red, and artillery impacts sent mud fountaining up into the air, suspended on legs of orange and red fire. Here and there the mud fountained up purple with black squares. Trees flickered in and out of existence, sometimes with troops moving through them slowly to ambush one another at point blank range, other times on fire as thermobaric rounds blew them into flaming chunks, other times the cellular walls collapsing from tactical use Rainbow Herbicide weapons, still other times swept away by the thermal shockwaves of atomic weapons.

Panting heavily/shivering in his compromised over/underheating armor SSG Danver dragged/carried two power armor close air support suits backwards forwards toward the flickering psychic screens, one with each hand, the legs and the power assist system in his own armor whining. The suit legs kept clipping through the ground, leaving thick furrows in the mud as the cracked and damaged warsteel heels dragged through the mud. The two had gotten hit by a direct Thwoop and spiralled out of the air to slam into the mud.

A creature from nightmares, slimy skin, four spider legs on a swollen and hair abdomen that was covered by thick warsteel armor, an upper torso of a bull and the sneering face of a balding human with pinchers extending from the mouth that was open in a scream of rage. It was missing its attendant but still intended on ripping Danver apart so it could rip open his skull with the mandibles and to him.

It screeched, the upper torso leaning forward.

THWOOP

The psychic blast hit him square, his psychic shielding flaring purple but holding. Danver felt his stomach twist as he saw the warsteel on his arms crack slightly. He let go of the one he was dragging with his right hand and raised up his arm.

The leaned forward again, part of its torso flashing between black warsteel and an plaid pattern of black and purple squares.

THWOOP

The creature screeched in glee, lurching through the mud, one arm blown away, the other with a snarling psychic blade it raised up.

Danver screamed in hate and fired his forearm mounted stubber, the 10mm shells streaking red as they left the barrel. The first two exploded on the creatures psychic battlescreen, the third caused a shower of purple sparks as it destroyed the psychic battlescreen, the last of them slammed into the creature's body, shattering warsteel loricated platemail, exploding out gray tissue.

Danver head its deathscream in his head as it collapsed, fat popping as flame ate at the interior of the and shook his head to clear it of the psychic howl of death. He reached back down and dragged the two CAS troops back, managing to get to the psychic shield reinforced battlescreen, feeling it tickle and tingle as it washed over him.

A pair of russet mantid, clad in body armor, their helmets bulging with psychic shielding boosters, ran forward and grabbed the two CAS, rolling them onto the grav-stretcher.

Danver swallowed thickly, past the fear, and raced back out across the mud, running for a warborg that was face down in the mud, the four Spodders that had managed to drop him already shredded by the fifties.

The world went shot with static, the skies crumbling and streaking downward in lines, purple and black squares covering the terrain, the trees and bushes flickering, sometimes wreathed in flame, sometimes intact, sometimes reduced to skeletal branches.

Sergeant Danvers jumped out of the back of the ambulance, landing on the ground, and sprinted toward the two downed CAS troops. One was still firing his drum-fed railgun, hosing high-v submunitions at the oncoming bestial creatures clad in warsteel armor.

The sky was the color of bruised flesh.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

TuRn iT oFf PlEaSe HeLp HeLp HeLp I cAn SeE wItH aLl mY eYeS wE dOnT nEeD eYeS tO sEe In ThIs PlAcE tUrN iT oFf

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

>UNEXPECTED TERMINATION OF FILE

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CYBERNETIC ORGANISM CONSENSUS

Anyone recognize that place?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CONFEDMILINT

First Infantry Division is at Belvak-8 for force integration. They're integrating the Second Telkan Marine Division among others. WE haven't heard anything bad from them. We'll check the hypercom array, see what we get.

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DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

That looked more like a drug induced nightmare than a real memory.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CYBERNETIC ORGANISM CONSENSUS

The thing is, if you use the time/date stamp, it wasn't a real memory.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Everything was jumbled up to me. All I could hear was enraged bellowing and screaming back and forth in a thousand thousand different voices.

What do you mean it wasn't a real memory?

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CYBERNETIC ORGANISM CONSENSUS

Because you had me stop before it played out. It was five different memories layered on top of one another.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

UNITED FEDERATION OF PLANETS

All taking place at the same time, but hadn't happened yet.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CYBERNETIC ORGANISM CONSENSUS

How did you guess?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

UNITED FEDERATION OF PLANETS

The Mirrorverse War. We had a few times that players from their game got combined with players from our games, giving them dual memories of wildly different events that according to their neural pathways happened at the same time.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

Mirrorverse War?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

I'll explain it later, dear one. It's really confusing and only happened to UPF.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

AKLTAK GESTALT

You'll tell me, right?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Yes, we'll tell you and Tnvaru too.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CONFEDMILINT

The codes from their hypercom look good. Too good. I don't like this.

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DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

Let me check. I know a few tricks.

...

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.....

You're right. It's been compromised. That hash I had them reply to should have crashed the system and forced them to send a soft reset confirmation signal.

Belvak-8 is under attack or has been taken by enemy forces.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CYBERNETIC ORGANISM CONSENSUS

No. Not yet. But whoever is out there is still trying to take it.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CONFEDMILINT

We're going to have to redeploy our forces.

CYB, send the notification, I need to talk to all force leaders.

Make sure the Imperium and Combine forces are alive.

And prepare yourselves.

There will be an immortal there.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

You mean Daxin.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CONFEDMILINT

Yes.

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TNVARU GESTALT

Yay! We love Daxin!

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---