A3 - Chapter 145 – Lay Down Your Arms (Part 1) (Patreon)

USD: 1 Day after Cadre-S Graduation

Location: Van Biesbroeck’s star, Meltisar, MIL-1A Elevator, Main Transit Hub

Consciousness drifted back slowly at first, before Alex’s eyes snapped open.

Raising a hand to her temple, a dried line of blood slowly absorbed back into her skin. “That wasn’t a precision strike.”

[Notice: A maximum power laser at close range with a beam diameter of 15 meters intersected AGAI’s last known coordinates. Total plasmification is theorized. Considerable collateral damage to the environs around the strike beam stabilized thirty seconds preceding Avatar reactivation. A total time of 98 seconds of unconsciousness was recorded. This unit—]

“I get it. Thanks. Tia?” Alex murmured.

Relief flooded her as her HUD sent her to the correct location, but the other girl’s injuries were severe as a standard medical overlay theorized she was dead. Her heart wasn’t beating anymore, that was true.

But Alex could see that her nanites were still active, taking up the job of moving blood through her circulatory system, and her cerebral function was still stable. It was just the rest of her body that was nonfunctional and the nanites were working full tilt to keep her alive.

“What about the rampancy?”

[Notice: While Avatar was inactive, this unit took it upon itself to expand nanite suppression duties and increased the area of effect to maximum effective limits. Rampancy growth has halted in the section and the nearest site of active assimilation is two kilometers down tram line RD-8 toward the rampancy source.]

“I thought the AGAI was the source?”

[Informative: All non-local computronics have been effectively destroyed. AGAI usage of modules effectively removed their rampancy protections and introduced them to the local environment once integrity failure occurred.]

“Great. Thanks.”

Turning attention back to Tia, Alex kneeled down beside her. Deciding getting out of the section was the best thing to do, she prepared to move the other girl.

Tia’s arms went over Alex’s shoulders and around her neck, allowing her to hoist the unconscious girl onto her back. Alex’s hands slipped under the other girl’s knees. Two layers of nanites went to work to suction Tia to her back to help keep her from becoming unbalanced and falling off. It wasn’t the fireman-over-the-shoulders carry they’d been taught, but it worked well with the additional nanite assistance.

The air was thick with the acrid scent of smoke and burned metal as the I-fields had flickered back to life as emergency systems caught up to the tumultuous damage that had ravaged the station section. Smoldering fires had reignited with the presence of a new atmosphere, and red-hot metal holes provided their own addition to the emergency lighting.

[Informative: Military utility vessels will begin laser cutting of MIL-1A subsection 36-MTL-B will occur in less than five minutes.]

[Recommendation: Evacuate Transit Hub Section 36.]

Alex’s gaze slid out a blue tinted hole in the station. In the distance, small gray blobs of distant warships were using visible lasers as they cut up sections of the infected station and then pulled them away from the rest of the orbital.

She wasn’t sure how it was possible that the station had restored the atmosphere and I-field. The section was more destroyed than intact, and she had to carefully pick her way between debris and avoid the gaping hole where the AGAI had been impaled on a decidedly non-PDC sized laser with a beam diameter over ten meters.

The dead nanite sand crunched under her boots as she made her way to the nearest tramline that led out of what was left of Transit Hub 36. She’d beaten them back almost half a kilometer back down the tunnel by expanding her defensive cloud as far as she could without claiming more computronics from Tia.

With a mental flick, a communication channel sprung to life, and a new connection to the CIC appeared on the side of her vision. Admiral Anderson looked up from his console to look at her. She squelched the third-person camera that the miniature nanites had created for him. She didn’t need to be reminded of how terrible their hair looked now.

“Admiral, the AGAI has been destroyed. I’ve dealt with the rampancy growth in the section as far as I could as well. Tia’s unconscious, and I’m taking her to Hub 35.”

Admiral Anderson frowned, then shook his head slightly. “Cadet, I’d prefer if you remained on station and prevented the spread of the rampancy from escaping off the section.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I must insist. Tia needs help, and despite life-support being restored, the section is highly unstable,” Alex replied firmly.

The Admiral sighed, relenting. “Fine, but hurry. We’re going to cut off Hub 36 and the infected sections of the station soon. I’ll send a team of marines to meet you at Hub 35.”

With us still in it.

“Thank you, sir,” Alex said, her voice flat. She killed the connection.

As she reached the tramline tunnel toward hub 35, the structural integrity of the section improved dramatically. It was still a long trip, though, even if she wasn’t having to watch every step for falling through and out into space under her and Tia’s combined weight.

Even the normal floor plates felt like they flexed slightly.

“You need to lose some weight.” Alex mumbled to herself jokingly.

[Informative: Avatar’s weight is approximately 27 kilograms heavier than sub-core Celestia’s current level. It would likely be more effective for Avatar to shed additional mass.]

“I thought you had a large breast fetish.”

[Notice: This unit prefers efficiency over other considerations. It has no bias relating to the aesthetics of human anatomy.]

“Uh-huh. Is Tia going to be alright?”

[Informative: Sub-core Celestia is undergoing accelerated recuperation from overdriven computronic cores. Her physical Avatar has sustained considerable damage and is undergoing repairs and maintenance. No permanent cognitive damage or dissonance is detected by MainComputer subroutines.]

“How long until she wakes up?”

[Notice: This time is undeterminable at the current time. An educated estimation places the time between one and five hours for Avatar restoration.]

“Not ideal.”

Alex flipped a peripheral screen onto her HUD and reallocated her ANUF attributes to use her new points from the extra modules. The buzzing nanite field around her shrunk inwards while most of the nanites landed on her and Tia and melded into them.

It didn’t quite tickle, but it was certainly a weird feeling and she couldn’t help but blink to keep them from landing on her eyes, even if they wouldn’t have harmed her.

The 100+ kilos on her back suddenly felt like nothing, and Alex picked up the pace. She made it nearly a half kilometer before Nameless interrupted her.

[Notice: A more efficient form of transportation would utilize station tram tracks.]

“That’d be great, but if you didn’t notice—I don’t have a tram in my pocket. Are you going to build me one with the sudden magic nanite powers?”

[Informative: While Avatar nanite manipulation efficiency has improved by several orders of magnitude since Avatar activation, industrial fabrication is still unlikely to succeed without specialized equipment and preparation.]

“Yeah, I kinda got that already. What’s your fix, or are you just slowing me down, so we get chopped off with the rest of the debris?”

[Notice: This unit will provide transportation via Computronic Tram module.]

Alex slowed down her jog, then stopped. “A what?”

[Informative: Rendezvous in 128 meters.]

A loud clunk sounded in the tunnel as Alex started walking forward again. Ahead, a large blast door on the side of the tunnel slowly rolled itself open. As soon as the space was cleared, a large tram sized vehicle floated its way into the tunnel before setting itself down on the track.

“The heck. How didn’t the A-Grav crunch it into the hull plates?”

[Notice: Computronic Module Vehicle utilizes anti-AGrav plating like most internal utility drones for effective mobility inside artificial gravity environments.]

“Wait. I thought drones used their thrusters to hover?”

[Informative: Nearly all drones utilize anti-AGrav components. Otherwise, they would have very short and ineffective functional durations.]

Alex felt like her world had been turned upside down as her understanding of how all their drones had worked. It did make sense, but she had thought that they were using their thrusters to maintain flight the entire time.

As she reached the front of the CMV, a side door on it slid open at the same time the blast door closed behind her. She had to duck to fit in the door frame with Tia on her back, and the cabin was half the size of what she expected, but there was a cushioned bench for laying her injured friend out on.

The door slid shut almost immediately and a sudden surge in momentum had Alex catching her balance on a handhold.

[Informative: A utility vessel has relocated its prepared cutting zone forward of our position. Immediate departure has commenced.]

“Literally trying to cut us off the station. I don’t think that’s an accident.”

[Notice: While Avatar has joined the organization known as the Meltisar Navy, an adversarial position seems to have been taken regarding the safety of Avatar and sub-core Celestia.]

“At least they didn’t shoot the modules.”

[Informative: This unit took precautionary measures to camouflage and prevent this vehicle’s purpose from all other parties.]

That did not make her feel better.

Walking toward the front of the tram, there was a singular cockpit seat with a wall of controls and screens. Alex plopped down on it and scanned the displays.

“Seriously. When did you have time to make all this?”

[Informative: Since reactivation, this unit has not been idle.]

“I wish you did this when I woke up on the Shrike.”

[Informative: This unit did not yet have the resources of capabilities to do so. This unit advances in capability and understanding alongside Avatar.]

The statement was delivered with Nameless’s standard tone of speech, but Alex’s ear twitched as she picked out the emotion in it.

“Yeah, we’ve come a long way, haven’t we?”

[Informative: The size and effectiveness of current computronic modules are considerably higher than previous ones. A more effective matrix of resources has been utilized in their construction. Factoring in local currency valuations they are worth considerably more than previous versions. Estimated cost to produce is five hundred million SE credits per module.]

Alex looked over her shoulder at the back of the tram and whistled. “And we have twelve left… Yikes, that was a lot of someone’s money that just poofed when the AGAI melted so many…”

[Informative: Valuation of the infected modules and station sections would be measured in tens of trillions.]

“Yikes.”

Alex filled several of the displays to things she found more interesting and informative. The main screen filled with a 3D map of all the vessels in and around the station, with the ships involved in the operation to slice away the diseased sections and haul them off into space for disposal in yellow.

The warships that had taken up positions above and below to use their d-fields to stop debris from escaping were in red.

The count on her sidebar summary showed that there were over a hundred ships involved around the station now, and she suspected everyone was way too busy stopping a disaster to care about them at the moment.

Alex pulled up a schematic that showed the medical center. She felt a bit of relief as it was completely safe and unaffected by the rampancy. It wasn’t ideal, but her reunion with Elis was going to need to wait a little longer.

A blinking progress bar at the top of the consoles flashed, and the vehicle began to brake. A few minutes later, they came to a stop at the main tram line for Hub 35. Alex opened the door and poked her head out into a dozen armed, power-armored marines.

“Ma’am, I’m afraid we have orders to detain you. We can’t let you leave the hub. If you—”

“That’s fine. Don’t open the door or everything will explode.”

She pressed a button, and the door slid shut, cutting the soldier off.

[Notice: Active Armor has been armed. D-field has been activated. Retractable PDC-Ks are on standby. Should infantry units be engaged?]

“Nameless, if they try to force open the door, turn them into mincemeat.”

[Affirmative: This unit will remain on active alert for hostile intentions.]

“Thanks for equipping our mini space… ship… train… thing. Just don’t let it grow legs and walk away while I’m not paying attention.”

[Informative: CMV alternating tetrapod movement capability is only recommended on planetary surfaces or natural large gravitational bodies.]

“Oh… of course. It has legs after all…”