Never Fade Away: This Fyre (ch. 46) (Patreon)

"...Reports coming in say that what prisoners the Bluebloods have taken are being moved somewhere, no…"

"…watch out for the prosthetics, humans put rockets in them…"

"…taken most of the City Center and Westbrook, Watson's bird country now…"

"…Spirits look at what they put in their oceans…"

"…cifica and the Voodoo Boys got fucked after they started landing in the stadium…"

"…are we sure humans are the only sapient race on this planet? These look like something else…"

"…cking signal interference.. darlin's if you can hear me I gotta move soon, here's Battle of New Orleans by Jimmy Horton to keep ya compa-"

*Crash*

"NORA GET DOWN!"

~

If I had to summarize microbots in a handful of words, I would call them more practical nanomachines. As the name implied, they were small, vaguely diamond shaped robots -- a round sphere in the center with two hexagonal antennas at opposite ends that, among other things, allowed each microbots to communicate with the rest of the… swarm, I suppose. There were a few reasons I found them more practical than nanomachines - they were larger, for one thing, around the size of a grain of rice. And while they couldn't do everything that nanomachines could, they could do most of those things and could even do them better.

But, the real practicality of them came from how easy they were to produce. Not only was there no need for specialty equipment to produce them, not that that would have been an issue for me given I was using a Fabricator, they required no particularly rare materials to make and they were easy to maintain.

The antennas were linked to my neural implant, the most basic of implants that literally everyone had, and connected to it like it was a phone call. Only instead of thinking what words I wanted to say, I thought about what shape I wanted them to take.

By themselves, they would be incredibly useful. With a small swarm of them, I could form cover on demand. Create a chair to sit on, or a bridge to fill a gap, or I could even rise into the air and fly with enough of them. They were only limited by energy consumption and imagination.

However, it was when they were combined with my other technology - as much as I could in the time I had to work with - that they began to become something truly incredible.

Because what was technology but machines turning power into a desired effect or outcome? Microbots, as they were, couldn't do exactly what I wanted, but working in conjunction with my PYM particles, I could meet the microbots halfway. Which is how three tiers of the small machines were born.

Tier Ones, or 'T1s' were the 'simple' microbots. They would make up the vast majority of whatever they were being shaped into.

T2s were the advanced microbots. They were the ones that I shoved extra tech into to produce a wider variety of effects and abilities.

T3s were the specialized microbots. Ones created for a specific, dedicated purpose.

When I put them all together? I could create anything. A Fabricator? A Recycler? A GN Drive? A PYM Particle harvester? The designs wouldn't be one to one with the current blueprints, but I could mimic that technology with an updated blueprint. I had been considering shoving an entire factory in my spine, but in theory, I could just make one on demand with enough microbots. And my only regret was that I wouldn't have enough time to craft such blueprints due to the ongoing alien invasion.

I raised a hand and thousands of microbots began to take shape, becoming a solid rectangle. With a thought, the internal structure of the rectangle shifted, forming a web of hexagons for structural integrity. Then, with another thought, I shifted the surface, making the porous structure suddenly air tight. Vacuum sealed. I ran a finger over the surface, finding it unyielding until I wanted to push through. Pulling the finger back, I turned the microbots into a dense cube.

The rectangle became a square, and every single microbot fell into position with my optics telling me that it had a packing efficiency of ninety eight percent. Room for improvement, but it was nearly perfect for what I needed.

My power just gave me the key to my next step, I realized, even as blood dripped freely from my nose. This was exactly what I needed to get everyone off of this rock. Wiping my nose on my forearm, and only really managing to smear blood on it, I looked to the Fabricator that was spotting out microbots by the hundred. For this plan of mine to work, I was going to need a lot of them. After grabbing a rag to clean up my face, I looked over at the Auto-Doc that was working on David.

He was completely encased in a cylinder, but a display screen showed the progress of the surgery. I recalled Lucy's look as I gazed at it, feeling a pang of guilt as David was rapidly chroming back up to the levels that he was at before Arasaka got their hands on him. Only he was doing it purely with implants that I had designed.

His flash cloned limbs were replaced with cybernetics -- sleek black carbonized metal, but the rest of his body wouldn't have been able to handle the raw power behind them. So the bones in his torso were all taken out and replaced with lithium infused titanium carbonite -- making them nigh indestructible, while his muscles were all carved away and replaced with metallic fibers that produced far greater strength than what biology was capable of.

Not to mention all of the other implants that he was chipping in. The ones that I gave him.

Microgenerators, a Kerenzikov, a Kerenzikov Boost System, a Reflex Tuner, a Synaptic Accelerator, Tyrosine Injector, Visual Cortex Support, Biomonitor, Isometric Stabilizer, Cellular Adapter, Nano-plating, Pain Editor… it was a lot. A whole lot. Back before David was captured by Arasaka, he had been heavily chromed up. Not quite a full on borg like Adam Smasher, but he had been around seventy percent metal.

By the time the surgery would be done, he'd be closer to ninety percent chrome.

Placing a hand on the cylinder that had the dozen surgical implements that were bit by bit taking David apart to rebuild him… "I hope you don't need it," I told him, stepping away. The surgery itself would take about eight hours total, while the estimated recovery time would be another week. Though, knowing David, he would cut that down to a day at most. Meaning that I needed to take care of the alien ships overhead before he got out of surgery. Otherwise, he'd insist on helping.

With that, I headed to the exit of the container, but before I left, I glanced over my shoulder to see hundreds of eyes all pinned on me. They were as safe as they could be in here. "Don't even think about it," I warned them all, knowing damn well what was going through their heads. And based on the number of scowls I received, that just confirmed that they were waiting for an opportunity to jump out and join the fray. "If I see a single one of you…" I trailed off, leaving the threat unspoken.

I imagine there would be some rather choice words said behind my back, but so long as they were safe as they shit talked, I didn't care. Hitting the button, I was taken through the airlock before I was doused with PYM particles.

And, as soon as I materialized to my full size, I heard a loud explosion ring out as heat washed over my face. I grunted, taking cover to get a read on my surroundings -- we weren't at the manor, anymore. It looked like we were in some station, and a quick look around showed that Lucy was nowhere to be seen. However, there were a number of people that were looking at me with wide eyes, all of them sitting on the floor and crouching behind cover. A safe zone, I ventured, turning my attention to the entrance where the sounds of combat were coming from.

A defensive position had been set up, but I could see that it was already on its last legs as another explosion blew a hole into it. Through the flash of fire and smoke, I saw Lucy -- her monowire in hand as she flung it out, wrapping around the head of an alien before sliding through it. Bullets shot forward, and I took in enough of the situation to know that it wasn't winnable.

My microbots lurched forward, flowing like water to create cover from the exposed entrenchments. The microbots flowed around everyone's feet, springing up at the very last moment as the aliens attempted to make another breach. As the cover formed, the Tier 2 microbots activated one of their functions and a thin layer of hard light, the same as what  my bubble shield was made of, protected the microbots and extended past those that were hiding behind the cover.

As they took form, my prosthetic shifted to the laser minigun function and I began firing at the entrance. With every step that I took, the aliens were forced to take one back. The hallway they were entering from was filled with corpses -- alien and human alike. Droplets of red and blue floated in the air, the red emergency lights flashing. If it wasn't for my optics, I'd say the darkness was near impenetrable. At the very least, I knew that the power was still knocked back.

"I'm back," I told Lucy, approaching the hallway as I had the bubble shield project out from the moving wall of microbots. With it, I could keep walking forward as the shots bounced harmlessly off of the shield, all the while I fired continuously back at them. "What's the sitch?"

"Two more ships arrived, and they started hammering wherever there's human forces concentrated. Like the safe zones," Lucy answered, and because of the near zero gravity, the sweat that had built up couldn't quite drip from her face. I noticed that there were a number of dismembered aliens. The handful of surviving soldiers were watching me with expressions akin to awe. I was less than impressed in return.

Some of them had quality implants. They shouldn't have fallen back this much.

"Have they taken any?" I asked her, reaching the end of the hallway to see a fortified position. The aliens had set up cover and I saw that they were sticking to the floor. Mag boots? In a semicircle, there were three mechs, whose arm counted cannons started hammering the shield, making orange sparks fly as the GN Drive in the Tier 3 microbots started to churn to maintain the shield.

"Two. They killed everyone who didn't surrender," Lucy answered, sounding tired. "There are about seven left." The math worked out to roughly three thousand people per safe zone. That was… workable.

I took in a deep breath before my Sandevistan fired off and I felt every single nerve ending in my body jolt as if struck by lightning as time slowed to a crawl. The shots that the aliens fired, however, still moved with deadly swiftness as I was forced to side step them as I emerged from the bubble shield. My vibroblade emerged from my wrist as I breached the alien position. As I sliced through the first one, I reached out with my Ping, trying to find their systems.

Before, Ping had just slid off of the aliens' systems, unable to recognize them as a valid target, but with my newfound ability, I knew what I was looking for. However, the alien's systems were… weird, for a lack of a better word. Which made sense, considering that they were aliens, but their connection to their net was fundamentally different from ours. Simply because you could turn that connection off.

You couldn't do that as a human. If you had so much as a neural port, you were constantly connected to the net and short of taking it out, you couldn't escape it. Which made it odd when I saw a shared connection between the aliens -- a comms channel, most likely, yet it was so oddly isolated. Almost as if they were all closed systems that had… what amounted to cups tied to string as a way to communicate.

Hacking seemed a little less viable than I thought, driving my blade into the chassis of one of the mechs, disabling it.

However, being able to touch their systems did let me do one thing. I could hear them communicate as the Skeleton Key finally knew how to chew through their encryption. It wasn't graceful either -- I would need to feed it a lot of data so that it could develop the tools needed to slip through the alien ICE. Whereas before, it was a scalpel, now it acted as a sledgehammer.

"Target Black, Target Black at designation 022," I heard the aliens speak as time sped back up, the initial forces dealt with. Their language wasn't any less odd, but now the chirps and clicks made sense to me where they hadn't before. "Requesting immediate payload on position." I heard, looking around the area to see that more aliens were gathering up, some falling back. But I was struck by how their comms channel seemed more and more odd as I examined it.

The signal itself was sparse in terms of data. It was literally just communications, making it virtually impossible to hack any deeper.

"Target Black confirmed. Payload underway," another voice answered and my gut clenched. "Evacuate the area in thirty."

I didn't like the sound of that, so I fired up my Sandevistan and time slowed to a crawl. My microbots surged up, flowing over the walls at a sluggish pace. I darted back into the hallway, to see that the people were clustered together, but there were still a lot of them. Too many for me to cover with the number of microbots that I had available to me. Gritting my teeth, I cracked open a canister at my waist before I threw it down at my feet.

The canister cracked open, revealing a pinprick of concentrated PYM particles before it unleashed waves of red energy that moved quickly even to my dilated sense of time.

Blood erupted from my nose as time resumed its normal speed and in a flash of light, hundreds upon hundreds of people suddenly shrunk down before they were pulled into the canister. My brain throbbed, telling me that I had really pushed the line, but I still had a handful of short bursts before I stepped too far over it. The people panicked as they were pulled into the canister, where they would be held until I could let them out, preferably on Earth.

Gathering them up, I darted to Lucy just in time for the microbots to form a small dome around her. A split second later, I learned what the payload was.

The safe zone exploded -- partly through the bombardment that came from the ships above, but mostly due to the immediate depressurization that resulted from it. Everything in the safe zone exploded upwards, and it would have taken us too if the microbots didn't ground me and Lucy. She clung to my side as I shifted through visualizations in my optics, seeing the hallway was gone, along with that entire section of the habitat. All of it had been connected without any kind of airlock.

They had killed themselves. They had killed themselves and were willing to kill the civilians to kill me.

"Hold on tight, Lucy," I warned her, and to my immense relief, I saw that she held the canister holding David and the kids. In an airtight ball, the microbots moved us forward, racing against time because the one thing we didn't have was air generation. We surged forward, my optics leading the way as I followed a map of the colony that should take us to the nearest airlock.

I started to feel a burning in my lungs when we reached it a short minute later, the microbots prying one half of the airlock open, carrying us inside. After repressurizing the airlock, I sucked down a greedy gasp of air with Lucy falling right next to me. There wasn't any time for respite, however, because as soon as we had arrived, I saw that we were in the middle of a battlefield.

Another safe zone.

And the aliens assaulting it weren't prepared to get attacked from the rear. Taking a bracing breath, I blurred forward, my vibroblade flashing out as I decimated the invaders in the surrounding area. Only this time, I didn't stop. I couldn't afford to. Not now that I knew how far they were willing to go. So I pushed beyond the area, racing towards the bulkhead doors. It would have been impossible under Earth's gravity, but in near zero G, I could simply launch myself like a speeding bullet towards my destination to avoid overtaxing my body.

As my blade skewered the airlocks, thereby linking several of the safe zones, the aliens couldn't bombard us without killing even more of their own.

Not a perfect solution, but it worked well enough for me.

Blurring back, I skidded to a halt in front of Lucy. As soon as my Sandy stopped firing, more blood dripped from my nose and my legs felt a little woozy. She shot me a concerned look, but swallowed whatever she was about to say. Probably because she knew I wouldn't listen. Johnny, however, had something to say. "You're burning yourself out right at the gate moron. This isn't a sprint -- it's a goddamn marathon," he warned as the defenders seemed to realize that I was here.

I saw the same awkward looking soldier that I saw before -- the one that knew me -- and he already looked worse for wear in the few short hours I had been creating the microbots.

"That Sandevistan of yours sure is something else," he remarked and, unlike the one I found Lucy in, the defenders here had managed to hold up better than the last room they could possibly fall back to.

"Who is in charge here?" I asked him, pulling up his records. Arthur Jenkins.

"That'd be Chirisopher Williams. I… don't think he's still alive, though," Arthur answered with a small dismissive shrug, evidently not too broken up by that fact. "Chain of command is a little fucked at the moment. Our orders were to remain here until relief could be sent."

My scan also picked something up. "You have soldiers with sandevistans?" I ventured, earning a small nod as a handful of other soldiers approached while the rest focused on shoring up the defenses. Unnecessarily.

I couldn't hit the remaining eight safe zones by myself. Johnny was right -- once we got off the Moon, I imagine the situation on Earth was going to be every bit as fucked as it was here. I had to pace myself. To that end, I grabbed the rest of the canisters and shoved them into Arthur's chest. "New orders, choom -- get seven Sandy's and have them each go to a safe zone. Toss one of those on the ground to secure everyone inside, then we're all getting off this rock."

Arthur, surprisingly, was all for it. His comrades, however, less so. "Our orders-"

"I could give a fuck. Do it or feel free to die here," I interjected curtly. I didn't fail to notice the odd look I got from Lucy.

But it didn't matter. Arthur snapped off a picture perfect salute, "Orders received. How are we going to get off this rock though? You… ah, do you have a rocket in one of your pockets?" He asked, and as he spoke the words it seemed to dawn on him that was actually a possibility. In lieu of answering, I pointed up at the drop ships that had busted an airlock into the ceiling.

With a modern rocket, it took eight hours to reach earth. And, unfortunately, I didn't have a spare one in my pocket. And, even if I did, it was an eight hour trip through a hostile force. If we wanted to get through the blockade, then we needed to fight smarter and not harder.

Arthur's eyes widened a fraction as he understood the implication and offered a shaky nod. Then he rushed off to spread the word and secure the civilians, but before he did, "I have trackers in the canisters. So, I'll know what you do with them." I gave the warning and I saw by his face paling that he understood.

"Is that going to work?" Lucy asked me, cooking an eyebrow. I could see that the soldiers that had Sandevistans were being given the containers and the mission. To help them out, I sent out a message through the official channels telling all the safe zones to pull back to the last line. That way no one got left behind.

"Doubt it," I answered. I might have been a little more confident if the aliens hadn't been willing to kill each other to kill me. But that didn't really matter. I saw how fast the ships were during my brief time watching out the window in the garden dome -- they reached Earth from the Moon in a manner of minutes, meaning their ships were way faster than any I had seen before. So long as I could get us most of the way there… "You should head into the container too."

"I'll just slow you down, is that it?" Lucy asked, sounding like she knew what the answer was but was daring me to say it.

I would have before, I realized. "I need you on something else," I told her, flicking a data packet towards her. "It's a daemon to crack their ICE, but I have no idea what the chips in them actually do."

Lucy's eyes flashed, the transfer received and she offered me a thin knowing smile. "Smooth recovery," she acknowledged. "I'll take care of it with the brain tank." The kids were young, but they should have at least some basic knowledge in netrunning to help out. I wish I had the time to write out some translation software for the alien language, as it would help things along. There simply wasn't any time for that, though.

I was relieved when Lucy vanished, shrinking down and entering the container. She would be safe with all the others there. For my part, I started cycling through whatever cameras were to see that the damage done to the colony was extensive. A number of positions were breached, the hotspots of the conflict were brutal, and there were a number of dead that hadn't managed to reach a fall back position before they were found or overwhelmed.

However, that wasn't what I was looking for.

"Evac, evac -- location is clear," I heard the aliens chirp, scanning their communications for a clue. I zeroed in on that message, scrolling through busted cameras until I found a half destroyed mech that was looking at what seemed to be an evacuation point for the aliens. It was where they were bringing their wounded, and, more importantly, it was where their dropships were coming and going from to ferry them up to one of the motherships. I got a decent view of a dropship taking off, heading up to one of the three ships in orbit.

There it was.

As I did that, the rest of those coming along were busy. The ones with Sandevistans raced forward, and while they weren't as fast as me, they were still plenty fast in comparison to the aliens. They shot into the safe zones, and one by one, they were emptied out into the containers before they came rushing back. It wasn't an easy journey for them, I realized when one outright collapsed after the short trek. People couldn't use their Sandevistan's like David and I could.

They were put in a container made for the wounded where the Autodocs should patch them up. And, one by one, each container found it's way back to me.

It only took a few short minutes, but we were ready to go.

"What's going on? We have no movements from Target Reds," I overheard the chatter, the colony suddenly rather empty of fighting. I took in a slow breath, bracing myself for two taxing uses of my Sandevistan, as I waited for the opportunity. My gaze was focused on the dropship , how it came down and opened the doors so that wounded aliens could be rushed inside. Every muscle in my body tensed to the point that they ached. "Confirm visuals-"

Time froze and I shot forward faster than a speeding bullet, racing by unaware aliens as their focus was purely on the now empty safe zones. I blasted by every door, making a straight shot to the dropship as its doors started to close. All the while, I reached out and sent two commands with the Skeleton Key. Such was my speed, even the upload time seemed slow to me as I cleared the medical area and twisted to a stopon the other side of the closing doors, suddenly finding myself in a small ship with a good fifty aliens in various states of fucked.

Time resumed and my body ached at the strain. The programs I sent underwent their function -- I couldn't commandeer the dropship remotely because the controls were completely isolated, but I did manage to cut communications.

The second command went out to the Moon colony. And every single door and airlock in the colony suddenly opened.

I felt the violent decompression of the colony as rubble slammed into the dropship as it continued up, taking some emergency maneuvers to dodge the worst of the rubble. Decompressing the colony wouldn't kill all of the aliens, but it would provide us some cover and explain why the ship couldn't receive or give any communications.

"Human!" I suddenly heard, one of the aliens finally taking notice of my presence and I looked down to see it was an alien with one of its mandibles blown off. "There's a human on board!" It shouted, going for its gun. That prompted the rest to spring into action.

They died before they could do anything else, and I flicked blue blood of my vibroblade before sheathing it back in my arm

Grabbing the pilot's corpse, I pushed it out of the seat onto the floor as I gave the cockpit a look over. I could read the language on the various controls, but I didn't see a way to jack into the system-

A charge has been spent!

Mass Effect: Citadel Technology -- 1

A sudden flood of understanding filled me as I took a seat. I hadn't used it much before, but I did end up spending a charge on how to drive flying cars when I first broke out of the Home for Wayward Boys. And I suppose an alien dropship wasn't too far removed from that. Taking the metaphorical wheel that certainly wasn't made for human hands, I continued flying towards the mothership. I had no idea what I was going to see up there, but one way or another…

"Nova. I'm tacking on space pirate to my resume," Johnny informed as we flew up, sounding as happy as could be.

"Not sure if this counts as you being a space pirate," I was compelled to point out as we were granted docking permission. The one bad thing about cutting comms was that I couldn't hear what they were saying.

"Killjoy," Johnny replied. The auto-dock function kicked in, letting me get up and stand at the door. A throbbing headache emerged in the front of my skull, and I knew it was about to get a whole lot worse.

Ignoring him, I felt the slight vibrations as the dropship landed and the doors began to open automatically. What I saw was what I thought was a medical team, but it was a little difficult to tell. Mostly on account of the fact that they were armed and their knee jerk reaction was to start shooting the moment that they saw me.

I ignored the lot of them. My Sandevistan fired off, the headache becoming a great deal worse as I blurred forward, lashing out with my vibroblade at the bulkhead doors, dicing through them as I made my way to the command deck. The ship wasn't that big -- about a thousand feet long, and its organized structure ended up working against it. In the span of about three seconds, I found my way to the command deck to find it looked vaguely like what I had imagined it would.

A command chair that sat behind a number of monitors with various aliens sitting at them, all working in a flurry. It was like I caught a snapshot of panic as they were left reeling from the colony decompressing.

Reaching out with Skeleton Key, this time, I found that I had a great deal more to chew through in terms of ICE -- comms, controls, logistics -- but even the ship was completely isolated. I couldn't touch the rest of the fleet beyond communication. Maybe I could send a data packet, but even that wouldn't work because there were digital airlocks to prevent what I wanted to do.

No matter.

Time resumed as I took command of the ship, piloting it much like I would drive a car remotely. I saw how they used element zero, creating a gravitational field that encased the ship, rendering it weightless. Then some kind of ionized thruster provided thrust, allowing high speeds.

I beheaded the captain of the ship, my arm shifting into a lasergun as I gunned down the rest. Couldn't risk them trying anything as the ship turned around and I fired up the element zero engine. As I did so, I received a message. And, as it turned out, the aliens didn't allow ships to refuse hails that came from a superior, I soon learned as a hologram appeared before me.

"THC Vereiean, you are moving-" an alien began, its tone sharp before pausing as it looked at me with dark blue eyes in a pool of black while it's face plates were a grayish blue color. "This is Tacitus Orolus, Admiral of the First Punitive Flotilla of the Turian Hierarchy's Eighth Fleet. You are to surrender yourself immediately."

"What a fuckin' blowhard," Johnny sneered. "Suppose humanity can't have sole ownership of being arrogant bags of shit."

I couldn't reply to this Admiral Tacitus even if I wanted to. My mouth was completely unsuited to forming the alien words. Instead, I kept doing what I was already doing.

"Disable the engine of the Vereiean immediately," the Admiral continued as I set my destination. "Or you will be fired upon."

They only had three fingers -- well, talons would be more appropriate, so I don't think they really understood the gesture. That didn't stop me from flipping them off, though. With that as my reply, I blasted forward and found that the ship had some serious speed to it. At the rate I was going, I would arrive just outside of Night City within minutes.

You know, provided that I made it there at all.

Because, true to the alien Admiral's word, the two ships that had flanked mine began shooting.

Looks like I was in for a crash landing.