41 - The Hiveship Cometh

The glowing liquid bubbled and churned, within it lay a power barely seen across the multiverse, mana so condensed it would power a planet, mana so plentiful and pure that the greatest enchanters would give up their lifeblood for a liter. It was the most sought after resource in the rainbow sky hellscape and near impossible to create in the multiverse at large… and Tender was bathing in it.

“It’s alive!” Maya cackled, prancing about the container that Tender was occupying. The six eyed rogue AI looked at her and then at Bell who only shrugged.

“Should I be feeling something?” Tender asked. The liquid mana churned around him and dripped off his metallic form, but nothing had happened.

“Give it time, my boy! A good soak cures all ails!”

“I don’t kn-“ Tender’s words came to a halt and his eyes snapped forward.

“Behold!” Maya cried. “His sins are washed away and he is reborn from the waters of the System!”

Tender glowed with a bright internal light; it seeped from every joint, every crevice, and from every seam of the armor plating that covered his body. The internal light grew brighter and brighter.

“I-“ Tender said and then stopped once more.

Even Maya stopped her prancing and stared as Tender’s metal armor seemed to melt and shape across him, it ran like water, but then reformed, more compact and more leaner. The ugly, in Maya’s opinion, practical form was reshaped as metal and components warped and changed.

“This is crazy,” Bell said, mouth agape.

“Crazy awesome,” Maya replied.

As soon as the change began it, stopped. Tender shuddered and his red eyes flashed to life once more. Maya stared as she realized that the entire tub of liquid mana that had been poured out for Tender was now gone. Not only that, but now Tender was taller, leaner, and his form more compact and seemed to exude power as he clamored to his feet. No longer was he six legged, but now he had only two legs, four arms, and a humanoid head with six eyes.

“Oh, shit. I think we got a Belleganger,’ Maya whispered.

“Four arms are the best way to go about life,” Bell whispered back, equally awestruck by what they had just witnessed.

“No wonder those guys were fighting over the liquid mana, if it can do this to a low leveled low-grade rouge AI…” Maya shook her head. “No offense, Tender.”

“None taken,” Tender replied, his body might have changed but the deep melodious voice he had chosen for himself remained.

“How do you feel, buddy?” Maya asked.

“Strangely, I can feel,” Tender said flexing all four of his arms, each tipped with four fingers and a thumb. “I feel…”

Maya peered at him and squinted. One thing she had never conciously done to anyone she personally knew was to use her Evaluate Skill upon them. She did it automatically when she would spot another creature, a cursory glance telling her their levels and a long hard peer giving up more information.

Tender - Level 50

Mana Forged Rogue AI

Artificial Consciousness Overlay expanded to Fully Automatous Neural Core

Integrated sensor network established

“Oh, man,” Maya grinned. “You’re a real boy now, Harry.”

“I don’t understand,” Tender said, still flexing his arms.

“I think your bod not only got upgraded, but your brain too. You’re now a full blown AI, not just the personality overlay on top of programing.”

“How is this possible?” Tender asked.

Maya looked to Bell and then shrugged. “Magic,” she said.

“This is what all the other rogue AIs have been doing,” Bell said. “Why weren’t they as dramatically changed as Tender? We saw more than a few that were near wreckage, but only returned from the waters healed and stronger, not physically changed.”

Maya thought on it for a moment. “Have you been using Roci’s secret sauce?” she asked Tender.

“Ah, yes. Roci had told me of the efficiency she had gained in a revised version of the black goo. As we had the material on hand, I decided to replace the own black goo with the upgraded version.” Tender said. “With Roci’s assistance, of course.”

Maya grinned. “I could hug that little tentacle girl. Her black goo is making everything possible.”

“Well, he took more than two thirds of our remaining liquid mana,” Bell said, looking at the containment field. “He might have been able to absorb more if we had released all of it. Imagine what could happen if we threw him into the entire mana lake…”

“Tenderzilla,” Maya nodded. “Too bad Chuckles took all of it.”

Tender tried began walking and stumbled, his balance off and he then fell to the floor.

“Ow,” he said.

“That hurt?”

“Yes.” Tender paused. “This is not good.”

“Toss Plan C out the window. So much for the Tender battering ram,” Maya said as she and Bell helped Tender to his feet. He was wobbly and unsteady, but after a moment he began to gain his balance.

“This is off putting,” he said.

“Get used to it buddy. You got actual physical feelings now, as Pops used to say: ‘Pain is a reminder you done fucked up’.”

“How did I fuck up?” Tender asked.

“Gettin’ all soft and feely when we’re about to go into battle,” Maya said.

“You suggested this.”

“Well, that’s where I fucked up,” Maya paused and then laughed. “We’ll get you sorted, buddy and we’ll have a grand ole time smashing that damned hiveship outta the air.”

“How are we going to do that?” Bell asked. “Your plan was to trick us into gathering up everything and loading it into the Cage and then dumping it all into the ISS so that you could die gloriously in battle.”

“Yeah, well…” Maya muttered. “What’s the one thing we know about this here hiveship?” Maya asked.

“That it was the hiveship that sent the swarm of ants after us and the Tarvana,” Bell stated.

“That is is a hiveship, therefore high leveled and very dangerous,” Tender added as they lugged him to a chair and sat him down. He looked woozy, if a robotic creature could.

“Nope. Both of you are wrong,” Maya announced. “The one thing we know about this hiveship is that we know nothing about this hiveship.”

“I do not think you understand what is considered correct or incorrect,” Bell said.

“Yeah, but you were supposed to be wrong in your guesses and I would segue into the real plan,” Maya said. She walked away from Bell and Tender and brought up a holographic image before her.

“The deep scanning machine?” Tender asked.

“Yeah, totally. We used it once on the ISS and totally left it there forgotten,” Maya twisted the image and the entire device began to break apart, major components and parts were displayed with ease. “Here’s something that they didn’t tell us when we bought the engineering VR gear. It makes it real easy to reverse engineer devices, especially when you can scan the entire thing and break it down into components.”

“And highly illegal,” Tender replied.

“Oh, yeah, there’s that too. But tell me, O’ Nearly Reformed Tender, who’s gonna rat me out? I’m already a [Pirate], I might as well go full Blackbeard and steal other species’ intellectual property too.”

“So what does this have to do with the deep scanning machine?” Bell asked.

“Well, we nitro boost this bad boy into a hulked up version of itself and then we scan the ever living hell out of the hiveship. We pump through so much mana into the machine that it screams for mercy and we get a scan so deep we know where every hair is on the asscrack of this hiveship.”

“That’s ambitious,” Tender said.

“Also impossible,” Bell added. “They’ll be shielding and armor plating that even military grade scans won’t be able to get through. Also, we will have to be out of this compressed timespace and use the device against the hiveship, which we don’t know how long the scan will take.”

“We’re gonna have to use a tesseract as a power source. We set this baby up on the BR and let it blast the ship. We on the other hand are gonna be inside the Cage and then once the info is transferred, we hit them in the soft spots, take the queen, check the king and voila, back to the ISS before lunch.”

“That’s ambitious,” Tender said.

“Also impossible,” Bell said and then grinned. “We just had lunch.”

“High five, buddy,” Maya said and looked around. “Man, I gotta get me another set of arms.”

***

“We’re a little light on weapons,” Maya said, yawning.

“We’re a little light on everything,” Bell clarified.

“We should not have given Roci and the other so much material,” Tender replied. “The dimensional storage container and all the bags held more than half of what we had salvaged.”

“Well, we’re going in light and fast anyway, lugging around several tons of busted up system tech would only slow you down.”

“I do not believe you carried all of that stuff around,” Bell muttered.

“You should have seen my purse, oh, wait. I didn’t have one. You should have seen my car, it was so trashy.” Maya laughed and stopped. She took a breath and settled her nerves, the mention of her POS Ford Focus brought back too many of the memories she had been bottling up.

The fight was coming and it would not do to rehash the past and lose focus.

Maya brought up a hologram of the Bonita’s Revenge, the ship they had taken from Shen when he had been killed and one still hated by Bell. Maya dissected the image and showed various spots where they would have to open the door to.

“Engineering, Tender you’re gonna have to hook up the power source, a tesseract backpack. I’ve already created the hookups and it should work. Machine set up, Bell and I will open a door here and begin setting up the scanner, once we’re all done, we move into the bridge, where I’ll toss in the comm relay, then we door it out of there, slow down time, take a look-see around, and then hit Phase Two.

“It’s gonna be a whole lotta running around, stress, anxiety, and fear, but hopefully we’re not gonna have to fact any of the hiveship’s minions. Hopefully that turd is still floating its way on over to us and is not in position yet.”

“How many minutes have passed in the RSH since we left the lake?” Bell asked.

“I think about fifty minutes, fifteen for Badblood’s people, twenty four for the ISS, and various other little things that just added more to our clock.”

“Fifty minutes is not that long, perhaps it is still coming,” Bell said.

“Yeah, well, like my Pops used to say: ‘the enemy moves fastest when you want them to go slowest. What you get is always what you don’t want, therefore plan, adapt, and kill the fucker’.”

“Interesting saying,” Bell said.

“Yeah, was weird because he said it to me when I was a Junior in high school and on the softball team.”

‘Even with the impressive amount of mana that remained after my transformation, we are still running out,” Tender said.

“I know right! Everything was supposed to change after we got all the juicy mana and here we are once again, fighting some bullshit rogue AIs, no offense, and burning through our mana supply.”

“The last three standard days we have been in here has not helped. At the rate that the Cage is now consuming mana we won’t have much time left, boss,” Tender added.

“We began with 1800 liters of black goo, but thanks to the Tarvana’s assistance and you gaining more mana stones from the lakebed, we were able to bump that up to nearly 3000 liters of black goo.”

“Thankfully the black goo can be modified once it’s formed,” Maya said. “Otherwise we’d be stuck with the limp version of it.”

“Indeed,” Bell said. “The original agreement with Badblood was for one fifth of the gained liquid mana, but as they had no way to store it they, took half of our 1800 liters of black goo as payment, forgoing the remainder of the liquid mana they were entitled to. That left us with 2100 liters of black goo. Within the mana containment device we were able to secure nearly 1000 liters of liquid mana before the… Chuckles rendered the lake empty. Of that 1000 liters, we have used 225 liters of liquid mana to create 150 tesseract crystals, 45 of which Badblood took, and which meant we had about 775 liters remaining. Tender’s transformation required the use of 500 liters of liquid mana.”

“That’s some math,” Maya said. “We still got 275 liters left.”

“We have been in this compressed time for 160 hours, which has consumed 6,400Mg of power. Or 32 tesseract crystals and 32 liters of liquid mana.”

“That’s a lot of power,” Maya muttered. “Jesus, that’s a lot of power.”

“Of our remaining 105 tesseract crystals, you decided to give Roci half, or 50 tesseracts and fifty liters of liquid mana.”

“So where are we now?”

“We have 55 tesseracts and 193 liters of liquid mana.”

“That’s not bad,” Maya said. “We can hang out here for another 1000 hours.”

“Not if we wish to power anything outside of this Cage,” Tender said.

“Okay, fine. We’re running a little low on power. Got it.’

“Our power expenditure has been horrific,” Bell said. “This much power… it could have done a lot of things, especially the tesseract mana, such wonders it could have created.”

“It made Tender much more awesome,” Maya said.

“Thank you,” Tender replied.

“Well, since we’re done with the math, let’s play with some physics,” Maya said, leaping to her feet. “The new and improved Deep Scanning Cannon is completed, we just need to set her up and shoot for the moon.”

“Then let us proceed,” Tender said.

“Whoa, easy there. We’ve been up for nearly three standard days, we need to sleep,” Maya said.

“As you stated, ‘you’ll sleep when you’re dead’.”

“Ouch. New Tender is a spicy Tender,” Maya muttered forming a bed and then throwing herself onto it.

“Where’s my bed?” Bell asked.

“Can’t hear you. Sleeping,” Maya muttered.

***

Fully rested, freshly showered, with her stomach churning with a ration bar and tepid water, Maya stood with her hands on her hips before the control panel. The intrepid crew were gathered as they prepared to resume the flow of time and a fight for their lives against a hiveship that out-leveled all three combined. The tone was somber and not as tense as Maya expected. They all had experience in fighting against terrible odds and failing.

“Weapons checked? First aid checked? Clean underwear checked?”

“I do not wear underwear, boss,” Tender said.

“Commando, huh? You really get into these parts you play, Tender,” Maya said. “Everyone know the parts they’re supposed to play?”

“Got it, boss.”

“Yes.”

“Then, as Mistress of Time, I command time to flow normally once more. Let us re-enter the RSH with style!”

Tender hefted a series of four tesseract containers, they would installed in replace of the unusable core of the Bonita’s Recenge.

Maya opened a door and the viewscreens showed the interior of the engineering section of the BR, recreated in wireframe as there existed no light in the mana devoid area.. Tender rushed forward with surprising speed, exited the Cage and Maya clamped the door closed. She redshifted it, feeling the strain on her mind as she remembered all the details and areas of the exterior of the BR. A new door formed, showing the hull of the BR, again in wireframe.

Maya hopped forward as Bell was already wheeling the massive recreated Deep Scanning machine out of the door. Weight wasn’t the problem, but the sheer size of it required them to steady as move the machine with care. There was also an issue of the rushed job creating less than ideal connections and sturdiness.

An alarm bleeped on her suit as she exited the door and Maya felt the chill of the air around her.

“What the hell?” Maya wondered as she saw the temperature gauge of her HUD move for the first time. The temperature dropped from the moderate 23 degrees Celsius to barely hovering over 2 degrees Celsius. “Home just in time for winter.”

“The weather is being effected now?” Bell asked, concerned.

“It’s barely been fifty minutes since we left, how has it gotten so cold?” Maya shook her head, but focused on the mission at hand.

Bell was already pulling out tools and rough fusing the base of the Deep Scanning Canon to the hull of the ship while Maya skidded across the freezing hull and cut out a section of hull plating. It was an access panel that lead to a power distribution node, she snapped the panel opened and began connecting power cords.

“Done,” Bell called.

Maya could almost feel a shudder though the ship as the power to the tesseracts were connected. The exterior flood lights flickered on and for a moment Maya and Bell stood in a small pool of light in the vast darkness of the RSH.

“Connecting to the scanners,” Bell said, pulling out a tablet.

Maya finished connecting her power cables and began the activation sequence of the canon. It would take a few seconds to boot up and begin sucking power, then they would have to find the hiveship and blast it.

“Aw, shit,” Bell said.

“Trouble?”

Bell pointed into the sky and Maya followed his finger. In the sky above them appeared the hiveship, the massive vessel eerily silent as it floated far above them.

“Well, shit,” Maya muttered. “Back into the door!”

Maya formed a door and before she could move, she could feel a shift in the dimensional space around her. She didn’t know what it meant, but she moved automatically, pulling her axe from her inventory and striking where she felt the shift of dimensional space.

There was a screech and the split body of a creature appeared before her. Maya stared at it for a second and then began to feel the dimensional space around her begin bubbling.

“You said teleportation exists?” Maya said, backing up toward the door.

“Yes…”

“I think these dudes can teleport too.” Maya said and then watched as a dozen rogue AIs blink into existence before them. “Tender we the rogue AIs can teleport. Be on alert!”

“Gotcha, boss!”

Rogue AI - 11ARCN54B-AA - Level 35

“These guys have levels,’ Maya remarked.

“They’re not complete swarm drones,” Bell said. “They might be their version of independent forces. A sort of semi intelligent battle group.”

“Awesome, rogue AI special forces.”

The first of the rogue AIs launched themselves at Maya. The rogue AIs were built the same as the ants, but where those rogue AIs crawled and ran on their multiple legs, these new ants were upright and tall. They balanced on two thick legs and carried a variety of weapons in their four upper arms.

“Shit, does everyone have four arms now. Is that a thing? Am I behind on the times?” Maya grumbled. She ditched the axe back into her inventory and produced a rifle.

With the mana purge still in effect, the rifle’s battery would have been drained dry and had been previously, but Maya had discovered, to the horror of Bell, that she could shape the tesseract crystals with a little brute force. She had managed to chip off a piece of the tesseract to remake the mana battery within the weapons they carried, allowing them to be used like normal, with a bit more in the way of firing power.

The particle rifle zapped across the hull, followed by Bell’s own weapon fire. The ants danced and moved fast, trying to close the distance, but their surprise attack had been foiled.

“Assassin ants,” Maya cried, kicking one of the blade wielding creatures as it neared her. The metal armor crumpled and the ant careened off the side of the ship. “Fast and deadly, if they surprise you, but also squishy as hell.”

A blade skidded off her armor and Maya shoved the barrel of her particle rifle into the thorax of the ant and fired. The beam punched through the armor and she shoved aside the body.

“You okay Tender?” Maya asked.

“Three appeared in Engineering, but they were dispatched due to your timely warning,” Tender replied.

“Shit. Bell, get that canon firing, I’ll hold off any more surprises. That kind of teleporting can’t be easy on their power reserves, might be that they can’t do much of it.”

“On it,” Bell said rushing to the canon.

The BR seemed to shudder once more, but not from the power coursing through it, but from the appearance of another attacking force. Maya saw a dozen more assassin ants and in their midst, a massive creature that carried what looked suspiciously like a gatling gun.

“Hey, Bell wanna trade places?”

No answer came.

“Bell?” Maya looked behind her to see her friend missing. “Bell?”