32 - Maintenance

The armored beetle screamed as Maya shoved the sawed off railgun into its abdomen and fired both marsani slugs. The resulting explosion knocked her back, slamming her hard against the hull of the Hangy. She immediately threw herself forward as a hissing blade embedded itself in the spot she occupied.

The railgun was lost so she summoned the last weapon she had on her, a low-grade marsani axe. An ant reared up before her, it’s deadly blade appendages flashing in the gloomy light. Maya parried the descending blade and slammed into the torso of the ant with her shoulder and the full weight of her armored form.

As the ant staggered back, Maya spun throwing all her strength and momentum into the axe as it flashed in her grip. The marsani blade connected with the weak joint that held the bulbous head of the ant to its segmented body. A screech of metal sounded and Maya decapitated the ant.

Rogue AI Swarm - 11ARCN54B - low-grade, Tier 1

Defeated - lootable

She wasn’t safe yet, though, as the beetle she had shot was still kicking. Maya launched herself forward and slammed down the axe upon an exposed limb. It wasn’t any ordinary limb, instead it was a weapon mounted to one of the beetle’s many arms. The metal snapped under the blade and the plasma bolter fell away; with it the beetle’s main offensive weapon.

The ants were simple creatures, they swarmed and fought with melee attacks, but the beetles were mobile weapon platforms, carrying an array of plasma bolters and laser beam weapons mounted to a pair of their arms. They were slow moving, but heavily armored, and they were destroying their defenses.

The beetle reeled back but Maya gave it no reprieve. She snapped forward, embedding the head of the axe into the face of the creature, it was the weak point of the beast. The heavy marsani blade tore through metal and there was an audible crunch as something important broke. The beetle shuddered, black goo gushing from the hole in its face, then it crashed to the ground.

Rogue AI Swarm - 11ARCN54B - mid-grade, Tier 1

Defeated - lootable

Maya gulped in air and cast her eyes about the gloomy landscape. Before her were the bodies of three additional beetles and over two dozen ants, along with the remains of two canister turrets and a gatling turret.

There was little in the way of tactical thinking on part of the ants, they just swarmed. Dozens had swarmed the cluster of six canister turrets and a gatling turret; and they had been ripped part. When one went down, another ant was ready to take its place. They had taken the turret position by sheer attrition and the fact the turrets had run out of ammunition.

Maya stomped over to the canister turret and snapped open the large box shaped magazine that held long tubes of puck sized canister rounds. She pulled a arm length sleeve of canister rounds from her inventory and snapped it into place. The small indicator showing it was out of ammo flashed from red to green.

The gatling turret was a loss, as the ants had torn it up in a madden frenzy. It hadn’t gone down easily, though, taking down more than forty ants and two beetles before it was finally silenced. Maya checked the ammunition magazine and pulled out the remaining one hundred rounds before inventorying the whole thing. The turret base could still be salvaged and the sensor box was still operating.

Maya pulled out three replacement canister turrets, they were the last turrets they had. With Scotty on low power, there was no way they were making more turrets. He and Roci were working on the manufacturing module, claiming it didn’t need as much mana as the assemblers and they could begin making ammunition. They were also running low on ammunition.

The initial attack had begun with a swarm of over two hundred ants and ten beetles rushing her guns, that wave had been torn to shreds before they even reached the turrets. The second wave was suicide bombers, armed with explosives and shrapnel. They were fast and they were hard to hit, but when they were struck it was a terrifying thing to see. Whatever they were using as explosives created a ten meter smoking crater. Maya assumed it was some kind of plasma bomb and she wanted one.

The ants had changed their tactics once more, using smaller and harder to hit ants or armored ants to act as bullet magnets. They rushed, fell back, hid or forced the sensors to track and try to hit them, thereby wasting ammo. It had worked on one section of turrets; then they had swarmed the turrets with glee. The helix mines had did their work on dozens of them, but there were always more ants willing to die for the cause.

It had been two hours since the fight began and things were looking bad. Maya hadn’t figured on a fight that would take this long, the railguns were being held on standby just in case something bigger came along. Also, Maya had to shut down two of the railguns as their mana was needed to top off the smaller tool batteries.

Maya ran a quick diagnostic and swapped out the ammo for the surviving turrets. Afterward she summoned the threshold and entered the Cage.

She had contracted the Cage back to its orignal fifteen foot size; she formed a chair in the center of the room and sat down heavily. With the added emergency mana battery, she had four more hours of Cage time left. If the ants were going to draw out the battle, they would have to fall back to the Bonita’s Revenge as the Hangy didn’t have the BR’s defenses and weapons.

Maya opened a door back to the Hangy and walked out into the mess hall. It was empty, but she moved toward the manufacturing room as she heard thumping machinery and a blaring alarm.

She entered the room as Roci began shouting enthusiastically at something. Maya saw that the manufacturing module was up and running.

“Good news?” Maya asked.

“The best!” Roci cried. “The manufacturer works better than we thought. It’s accepted the schematics of the ammunition and now its beginning to make casings.”

Maya grinned as Roci held up a metallic bullet casing.

“We can make all the ammo we will ever need.”

“Fantastic news,” Maya said.

“Maya, we have another swarm approaching,” Yosi announced over her comm. Maya sighed and opened a window. On it she saw a large amount of the rogue AIs, the smaller ants, along with beetles, and behind all of them, massive lumbering artillery bugs.

“Damn it,” Maya hissed. “Get the railguns up and running. Take out those big bastards. Gotta go, kids. Good job, by the way. Glad you’re making progress!” Maya opened a door and raced through it, a moment later she was on the bridge of the BR.

“I believe the main weapon is a type of plasma thrower,” Bell said. “These rogue AIs seem to be using a simple plasma shell system, instead of the focused plasma beam that Big Snake used.”

“Whatever it is, it’s doing the job,” Maya said and watched as the hoard of rogue AIs began to assault a section of their defenses. They were using the same tactics as before, pushing forward the smaller and more nimbler of their kind to get the guns firing at them. Maya grimaced as she wished she had programed a more manual control over them. The sensor boxes were simple, if it wasn’t SIL or wasn’t recognized, they’d be fired upon. She could remote override the guns if she wanted, but she wasn’t able to remote fire them or control them.

The railguns powered up and Maya watched as the big artillery bugs were prioritized.

“I’m getting a lot of interference,”Yosi said. “I think they’re trying to jam our sensors.”

Maya watched as the targeting locks on the big bugs failed. She sighed. “It looks like the shotgun turrets and gatling turrets aren’t being effected, they’re only shielding their big guns. I can patch into the guns and fire them manually,” she said as she began to open a door.

“I’ll help,” Bell joined her in the Cage.

The air was filled with the sound of fighting, the sharp bark of the canister turrets and the cloth ripping noise of the gatling turrets filling the air. She could hear the screeches of the ants as they died and the heavy roars of the beetles as they were torn apart.

Bell and her stood on the very top of the Hangy where the railguns had been clustered. The ants had originally approached from the direction of the BR, but after they had been hit with missiles and beam weaponry, they had decided to come at them from a different front. Their weakest side being the area guarded by the turrets. The BR could, in theory, throw up a defensive shield that was effective against ship-to-ship fire.

She quickly connected to the targeting system of a railgun, double checking its load out and battery power. The three remaining railguns were all they had left to fight anything heavy that came their way. She regretted pulling two of them offline.

“All good?” Maya asked.

Bell nodded as he connected with the gun’s sensor box. Maya had to grin, only a few months before he had been solidly against the use of system tech. Now he used it like an old hand.

“Let’s show these ass-“ Maya choked on her words as pain burned through her head. She heard herself screaming, but she wasn’t the only one, Bell also cried out beside her.

WARNING!

Mana purging has begun.

Mana condensing will occur.

Take shelte

r.

“What the shit,” Maya cried as she got to her feet. Bell shakily rose to his own and looked around.

The sounds of battle had stopped, the guns fell silent and the ants were in full retreat. Did they get the message too? If they were running then something very bad was about to happen.

“Oh, crap.”

“That was the System,” Bell said.

“What is mana purging?” she asked. Bell shrugged.

I would suggest you remove your AI companions from this plane for the time being.

“I just got a message from the System,” Maya cried and summoned the doorway.

***

“Move, move, move!” Maya cried as she hustled Roci, Scotty, and Nan into the Cage.

“I don’t understand!” Roci cried back.

“The System told me to get your asses out of here. Whatever is happening with this mana purge is not gonna be good.”

“What is going on?” Roci cried again.

“Maintenance,” Maya said. “The god damn System is running maintenance.” Maya rubbed her arms, having taken off her armor. Her skin felt like it was tingling, as if electricity was flowing across it.

She had made the deal with the System, to be its Point of Contact as it did maintenance upon this plane of existence. That had been weeks ago and she realized she had put it in the back of her mind. It was something that was going to occur, but the System stated that it was going to happen over the course of five hundred standard years. She wasn’t expecting it to happen so soon, especially not now.

It was the feeling of dread she had been feeling all day. It wasn’t the swarm that was causing it, it wasn’t the fight they were in that made her feel it; the System was already using her to do its bidding and she somehow felt a small portion of that.

“Where are we going? We barely have three hours of mana left,” Roci asked.

“You’re going to be spending time with Tender. Gather up everything you can and get going. We need you out of here.”

She was glad she had kept the Cage operating. It would cost them a million gens to reconnect to the ISS, but there they would be safe for the time being.

“What about Badblood?” Nan asked, concern creeping into her voice. “She needs to be watched.”

“We’ll deal with it,” Maya said. “I need you all to leave now.”

Roci grumbled, but they worked quickly to detach Scotty’s AI core. Nan gathered up her own mana core and AI core and hustled into the Cage. Roci paused and then began loading up tools and supplies.

“What are you doing?” Maya demanded.

“I might get bored,” Roci said as she carried various pieces of machinery with her. “If the System is doing maintenance, it might be days or weeks or months before we can come back.”

Maya stopped and stared. “Oh, shit,” she said. The System worked not in moments, but in decades, centuries, and millions of years. It was focused on the long game. This mana purging and condensing might be going on for a long time.

“Alright. We have enough food and water to last us at least a year,” Maya said. That was their emergency stash, the one thing that Maya had been insistent that they create in case everything went tits up. There had been the addition of Badblood’s food, but if Nan was right, she could basically eat anything and be fine. “We have the cores and we can keep things powered. Junior’s growing strong.”

Maya felt a rising panic, but tamped it down. She looked around the manufacturing room and grabbed some tools and equipment, tossing them into the Cage.

“What’s that?” Roci asked.

“If this goes on for a long time, those astronauts are going to need your help. We’ll load up all the food that Nan was producing and hopefully that’ll be enough.”

“Is it really going to be a long time before this resolves itself?” Nan asked.

“I have no dang clue,” Maya said. “The System does things on its own time.”

Nan nodded and began packing up some of her own supplies. “I will need to maintain the health of the astronauts,” she said.

“Good point.”

It took half an hour to load up everything, all the while Maya felt as if her skin was slowly burning up. She could feel the System using her access to essence mana to change the world around them.

“Hurry up, people. I think whatever is gonna happen is happening soon.”

There was no time to greet or explain to Tender what they were doing. She sent a burst message to him and then they began shoving everything through into the new area that Tender and Veskari had built. Now that she had a visualization of the place, she could form the threshold on the interior bulkhead, no need to enclose one of the airlocks just to allow access.

Maya’s body began aching and she cried out for everyone to bail. Roci looked at her in worry.

“Be safe, Maya,” she said.

“Scram, kid. I’ll be fine.”

The door closed and Maya let out a gasp of pain. She shook and throbbed, the feeling seemed to only intensify as everyone had left the Cage. Maya collapsed the Cage and shutdown the power running through it. She felt the Tier 2 components begin crumbling around her as they reverted back to their standby status.

“How are you feeling?” Yosi asked, helping Maya to her feet.

Maya looked down at the little woman and grunted. “I feel like I have a fever and my skin is about to burst into flames. Otherwise, I’m good.” Maya chuckled and moved to a seat. Her head felt too big and her muscles were aching. It reminded her of the first time she had arrived into the RSH, waking up in her truck feeling as if she were hung over from a night of drinking. “Anything going on outside?”

“All is well. Bell is watching over Badblood and the sensors show no movement. I have not been able to contact Zono.”

“Oh, shit. I totally forgot about him,” Maya said. “Our defensive pact was to protect one another, but that turd just bailed.”

“I fear that the swarm was even too much for him to handle,” Yosi said.

“I don’t think he’d be taken down that easily. He’s probably chewing on a trash pile a safe distance away until he gets the all clear, then it’s back to pretending he didn’t flake on us the first chance he got.” Maya sighed and pushed away the issue with Zono. That mining barge was a weird creature, with his mysterious origins he wouldn’t talk about and the even weirder personality he had been programmed with.

Maya opened a sensor window and stared. “Oh, boy. That’s just creepy.”

She shared the screen with Yosi and both of them stared mesmerized by what was occurring. The rainbow sky was freaking out. Maya didn’t fully comprehend what she was seeing, but the normal vertical stripes that made up the sky were now swirling and warping. The multicolored sky was moving like an ocean, a stormy ocean, but that wasn’t all. Maya could see a color bleeding through, what looked like a patch of blue sky, brilliant and clear.

“What the shit,” Maya said softly.

“Chaos,” Bell said, suddenly appearing.

Maya looked up at Bell and frowned. “What?”

“That is chaos,” Bell said. “I have heard of it before, where essence mana bleeds into the multiverse, where it comes in contact with SIL thoughts and it manifests chaos.”

“That’s crazy talk,” Maya said staring in awe. “It’s blue skies.”

“No, it is not,” Bell said firmly. “No one knows why, but it looks different to each species of SIL. The blue skies you claim to see for me is a void of teeth, gnashing and gaping.”

“Jesus,” Maya said. “That’s what you see?”

“I see green grass,” Yosi said. “Covered in the faces of people I knew.”

“Holy crap,” Maya muttered, shuddering. “What’s going to happen?”

Bell shrugged. “Its chaos, anything could happen. It could destroy us all or it could cough up a single feather,” he said.

“So wait and see?” Maya groaned and rubbed her arms. The strange feeling that had been effecting her was beginning to ease. But her own worry began to rise. She did not like not knowing what she was facing and now the System had thrown some crazy chaos BS at them.

“Hopefully this will be o-“

The rainbow sky flashed, the colors seem to invert for a long second and then it all became blue. It was a brilliant blue, but it wasn’t like the blue skies and sunlight she was expecting. It bathed the entire plane in a harsh blue light. Maya flinched, Bell and Yosi looked away in fear.

“Can you feel that?” Bell gasped.

Maya frowned, but then she looked around the mess hall to see the lights suddenly flicker and begin to fade.

“The mana,” Bell said. “It’s like it’s being sucked away.”

Yosi and Bell let out a gasp of pain and they crumpled to the floor. Maya rushed to them and saw that they weren’t injured, already moving and beginning to get back to their feet.

“I’m tapped,” Bell said shakily. “Its Mana Depletion. All the mana we’ve been absorbing was just ripped out of us.”

Maya quickly opened another window and checked the sensors. The computer seemed sluggish and the screen before her flickered.

“Oh, shit,” she said when she saw the readings. “There’s no ambient mana.”

“That’s impossible,” Yosi said. “Unless it’s a non-Integrated universe.”

“Look at that,” Maya gasped. The brilliant blue sky had faded and what she saw shook her terribly. The entire sky erupted in what she could only call lightning, but it wasn’t lightning. Where lightning traveled in branches and crooked lines, what she saw came down in thick white bars from the sky.

It rained down; Bell and Yosi cried out once more and then the world went dark.