43 - The Hiveship Strikes Back

“From my point of view, it’s been several days since you were kidnapped,” Maya said, rubbing her tired face. She yawned and looked at Bell and Tender, they were in the midst of repairing their armor and preparing to rejoin the fight. Maya sat on her command chair and idly ate a ration bar. “Mistress of Time and all that.”

“You are taking this revelation in stride,” Tender said.

“I mean, it’s what I used against Shen back in the day and the whole doorways being able to be opened anywhere in the RSH without that stupid 200km penalty in the multiverse.” Maya hopped to her feet. “It makes it almost too easy to do some crazy things with time.”

“But you can’t completely stop time,” Bell said.

“Right, I can make it go way faster in void space, so that’s the limitation. The moment I reconnect to the RSH, it’s normal time flow.”

“And that’s what happened to the Bonita’s Revenge?” Tender asked as he looked at an updated holographic image.

It showed the BR or what was left of the BR. The once mighty ship was a punctured ballon, the hull pocked with laser and particle beam strikes, a few railgun hits, and some explosions tossed on like a cherry on top.

The hiveship was pissed, from what Maya could tell. It was laying waste to everything that had to do with her and the Cage, but in it’s enraged destruction, it had deemed that the BR was the source of her attacks. The large ship was a clear target, but Maya had all her eggs in a different basket.

“We can’t let this turd keep blowing up everything. We’ve lost most of the BR and they’re gonna go after the Hab next, after that the Hangy and if they go for the Hangy, I don’t think we can keep this Cage running. The Cage is tied to the machinery that we installed there. So if that gets slagged, no more Cage.”

“I’m sure this plan will be straightforward and simple,” Bell said.

“It’s gonna be easy, peasy, lemon sleazy,” Maya said. “This thing isn’t going to stop trying to destroy us, so we need to end it quick. Go in for the knock out before it can hammer everything around us.

“From the power layouts and systems we scanned, it appears there are three spots that need to be taken down to severely weaken the defense shields guarding the main AI core.” Maya brought up an image of the saucer and highlighted several areas. “We set up some hacking ant heads, defend it until the codes are cracked, then we move in on the main core.”

“Hold the area, boss?” Tender asked. “Won’t that be overrun with ants?”

“The hacking heads will take a hot minute to do their thing and that unfortunately means you’re gonna have to be on the defensive here. As we’re low on weapons…”

“We can do it,” Bell said. “If they’re allowed to destroy or capture the Cage, then we’re done for.”

“Agreed,” Maya said and cracked her knuckles. “We’ll divvy up some of the weapons, these guys were more ninjas than stormtroopers so all we got are some tough melee weapons and very little energy weapons.”

“If they don’t swarm us, we should be able to hold our own,” Bell said. ‘These tunnels aren’t very large and I doubt they can fit more than two abreast within them.”

“We can work with small and tight quarters, boss,” Tender said. “If time is not an issue, we could in fact create some barriers that will hamper their movements.”

“We got all the time in the world, boys…. No, wait, scratch that.”

***

The door opened amongst a dull throbbing orange light and temperatures that were on the exceedingly high side. Tender exited the door and steam began to rise off his metal armor.

He got the ‘hot zone’ where the temperatures from the destructive marsani slug were still in the inferno ranges. Bell and Maya’s armor could have handled the extreme temperatures, but not for long.

“Be back in a flash, Tender,” Maya called from the doorway and then it snapped closed.

Tender looked down the narrow access corridor and summoned an ant head from his dimensional bag. He got to work as the ship around him shuddered and groaned with stressed metal.

***

Death.

Death.

So much death.

The hiveship screamed in the flooding emotions, but they were vast and they was old. Thousands of years they had survived the dimensional plane, for thousands of years they had faced off against un-countable enemies, for thousands of years they had won.

Slowly, arduously, they pulled back their emotions. The newfound feelings and rage that had shook their mind began to reform. Slowly the hiveship brought themselves back from the precipice of madness.

Pain and rage still roared through them, but they was a mind that dominated. A mind that controlled.

Internals sensors were pinging, flashing emergencies messages that they had dismissed in their momentary madness. The messages were clear and direct, the SIL were invading their hiveship. Dimensional fissures, similar to the teleportation device the hiveship used, were being opened and SIL were exiting, doing something to unprotected processor nodes.

It took only moments for them to verify what those creatures were doing. They were attempting to reach the shielded brain core of the hiveship, they were seeking to destroy them.

They acted, with speed and clarity that only a mind as great and vast as their’s could. There was so much that was wrong within the ship, but they shifted resources, moved bodies, activated emergency reserves and as a third dimensional fissure opened, the hiveship struck.

***

Maya hopped out of the door and was greeted by a complicated wall of rogue AI technology. She summoned a hacking head from her Inventory and quickly got to work. In a matter of a few seconds she was done and turned to re-enter the door while the head did its job.

Her eyes widen suddenly and she tried throwing herself through the door. Around her she could feel the distortions in the dimensional space, a twisting and churning as the hiveship used their teleportation device.

It took less than a second to move into the door, it took less than a heartbeat for her to command the Cage to close the doorway, and within those two moments lay an eternity.

For a thousand standard years the hiveship had access to dimensional teleportation. It had gained it from battles, from forced evolutionary leveling, and research. The hiveship knew everything there was to know about their own form of dimensional manipulation and they quickly realized the dimensional doorways the SIL were creating were very similar.

Rogue AIs were always the main threat to the hiveship, the constant need for mana and for better grade components led to constant fighting, but there were still SIL within the plane. Those that survived the first month were normally stronger than most rogue AIs, they had access to powers and manipulated mana in ways that rogue AIs could not. They were rare, but they were also a great threat.

The threat lay in their minds, the ability to shape mana lay in the lumpy sack of flesh that all SIL used as a core. A soft thing made of electrical pulses that could be easily disrupted.

***

Before Maya could command the doorway to shut, a rogue AI appeared before her, then another and another. They were not the ninja assassin ants she had fought on the Bonita; they were small creatures with gossamer wings that beat furiously, creating a buzzing noise that she heard a moment before her world filled with pain.

Shen had once used a strange power on her when he had captured Bell and her. He had filled her mind with pain and, at the time, Maya had thought she knew the pinnacle in agony. The flies before her flashed a deep orange color and Maya’s mind exploded with pain.

It shook everything within her, her thoughts fractured and the only thing she could feel was the agonizing sensation that her mind was being ripped apart. She writhed upon the deck of the Cage and the dimensional teleportations continued.

Power was no issue to the hiveship, like all the rogue AIs that had survived the purge, they had supped at the lake of mana. Even now, as they battled raging fires, collapsing tunnels, and the intrusion into their most sacred of places, the hiveship consumed vast quantities of mana from large reservoirs it had stored.

The moment Maya was struck by the orange flies, the hiveship was busily sending in more support. Thousands of standard years they had fought and destroyed its enemies, thousands of standard years had taught them how to combat even ones as great as they were.

More flied appeared, overlapping their mental attacks with the previous, they stacked and stacked, making sure there was no gap in their attacks. Then came scrambling creatures, meter long and with the shape of centipedes, they rushed toward the fluctuating door and stabilized it. Their bodies clamping upon the doorway and producing their own method to force the threshold to remain open.

Next came scores of spider like creatures, they scurried and moved, rushing toward the control panel for the Cage, within moments they had clamped themselves upon it and began tearing into the code of the device. Rogue tech was based on system tech and the hiveship had a long history of studying system tech and tearing secrets from it.

Yet the nature of the Tier 2 components that made up the Cage provided a challenge for them. They had time though, far more time than the SIL they had captured. Methodically they began stripping away the security walls that held them at bay, one by one they ripped out information, but it fought back, it hindered them and they had to bring to bear more processing power.

The teleporter ferried in more spider hackers, they climbed upon one another and added their processors to the mix, they added their knowledge and skills to the program running against the Tier 2 components. Rogue tech was based upon system tech and they had their own high-grade, Tier 2 components. They were the only artificial intelligences that could rise beyond Tier 2 and their technology reflected that.

A massive ball of tentacles and wires appeared before the Cage control panel, it swallowed the gathered spiders and machinery whole and began pulsing and shuddering as it got to work.

The hiveship was not done yet, there was still the issue o the SIL that controlled the Cage. Via the stabilized doorway, they sent in the assassins that would finish the deed. The mid-grade rogue AIs it had previously sent had been easily destroyed, now they sent two of their greatest guardians.

Rogue AI AA4575ZX - Level 120 - low grade, Tier 2

Rogue AI AA9877ZX - Level 114 - low grade, Tier 2

They appeared in a flash and approached the prone figure writhing on the floor.

***

Maya couldn’t scream, she couldn’t make her body do anything. All her thoughts and emotions just shattered as they formed. There was nothing but the all consuming pain, turning the world black and shunting her off into a void as even her nerves frayed and scattered their messages.

Yet as the darkness and pain descended upon her, she saw something in the distance. A golden rope that was bound to her, her mind was attached to this endless cable that was lost in the darkness.

Maya grasped at it, she clung to it as her mind began to fray and the pain swallowed her whole.

***

“Ah, what is this?” a voice asked.

“Pops? Pops, is that you?” Maya groaned. “I think… oh, wait.” She blinked her eyes and saw that she was in the living room of her old home. “I’m in the dream thing again.”

Maya looked to see a figure sitting on the couch beside the lounge chair she lay sprawled on. She shifted herself and sat up straighter, looking at the man.

“Why am I here?” she asked.

“You tell me.”

“Is this some kind of riddle? Like solve the question and you gain insight?”

“No,” the System said. He looked at her. “You brought yourself here.”

“How?”

“You tell me.”

“God, I forgot how you were.”

“I’m not the one interrupting my day,” the System said. “I was going about my business of running the entire multiverse and you appeared.”

“I felt like my brain was being torn apart,” Maya said slowly. “Something attacked me, the hiveship teleported something into the Cage.”

“Yes, a form of mind disruptor,” the System said. “Nasty business, liquifies a SIL’s brain in minutes.”

“Minutes.” Maya took a breath. “I’m dying right now?”

“You’re making it a habit of only coming to visit when you’re dying,” the System said.

“I tried calling you the other day, to get Yosi into the multiverse.”

“And she did, didn’t she?”

“But no word from you.”

“I warned you about the impending mana purge.”

“Thanks for that, by the way.”

“I had vested interest in the survival of your AIs.”

“Roci? What was that about? There is no such thing as a sentient and sapient low-grade Tier 1 AI, rogue or otherwise.”

“An experiment,” the System said.

“Why me?”

“Why not you?”

“Ugh,” Maya groaned and leaned back. She dug into the couch and found the cool glass of the bottle her father had kept there. She pulled it out to see that it was at the same level as she remembered, even after consuming it all the prior time she had been in this memory construct. “She’s a good kid. It doesn’t matter how she came to be, she’s still a good kid.”

“That is why,” the System said, with a smirk.

“So I’m dying, huh?” Maya said.

“It appears so,” the System replied.

“I saw a sort of life line, a bright line that I grabbed onto in all that pain,” Maya said. “I think that was our connection.”

“Normally no one can see the Point of Contact connection,” the System replied.

“Normally?”

“SIL are interesting, when I declare something impossible they manage to achieve it. Therefore you being able to sense, see, and actually use the Point of Contact connection with me to bring yourself here is impressive, but not unheard of.”

“It’s happened before?”

“This has all happened before,” the System said in a spooky voice, waving his hands around his head.

“You jest, but if I ever told someone about this conversation, they’d totally think it was some kind of System Gospel and try and interpret it,” Maya said.

“Your disbelief in a higher power to guide your life and actions is a interesting aspect of your personality,” the System said.

Maya sighed and opened the bottle of scotch. She drank it and grimaced.

“How do I stop from dying?” she asked.

“Destroy those flies. They’re the cause, obviously.”

“How?”

The System sighed and looked at his watch, Maya noted that he hadn’t been wearing one before. “You’re a Tier 2 SIL, there’s a lot you can do.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, you’re a Tier 2 SIL and you’ve dumped more than half of the attribute points you’ve gained in the last few weeks of fighting into your Mental stats.”

“Are you telling me to think of a way out of this conundrum by myself?” Maya asked.

The System sighed and rolled his eyes. “I’m saying you’ve got a big brain, use it.”

“So it’s for me to figure out my own solution?”

“Big Brain. Big Defenses. Plus you’ve got the Cage.”

“What about the Cage?”

“I don’t know, Mistress of Time, god of your own little universe.” The System snorted and Maya felt a flush on her cheeks.

“Fine, I get what you’re getting at. It’s just that… I don’t want to go back there, it’s damn painful.”

“I think that someone said, ‘Pain is a reminder you done fucked up’.”

“Ouch,” Maya muttered. “I thought I was tough shit, kicking that hiveship’s ass left and right, so I underestimated it; I underestimated a living being’s willingness to survive.”

“Indeed.”

“It’s Tier 2, right? That means its almost sentient, right? Is this considered murder?”

“Well, at a minimum it’s self defense,” the System said.

“Really? No wise words to ease my troubled soul?” Maya asked.

The System shrugged. “I’m not here for moral support or to judge you.”

Maya sighed and looked to the ceiling of her home. “I don’t want to die.”

“No one does.”

“This is going to hurt,” she said.

“It always does.”

“Ugh, you’re no help sometimes.”

“Sometimes. And don’t call me Ugh.”

***

There was a reason it was called void space, Maya knew. Nothing technically existed within it. The Cage did, though, through some magical means and methodology Shen had created a device that could form a bridge between the rainbow sky hellscape and the multiverse at large. It was a creation that Shen himself didn’t understand, he thought it was simply a bridge, nothing more.

Yet in the months that Maya had controlled the thing, she had noticed the odd peculiarities about the Cage. The list was great, but time and space were concepts and things that didn’t exist within void space, but inside the Cage they did. In the field that the Cage created, reality existed and she could control it.

Time was the obvious one, the first thing she had discovered when Shen had forced her to open the dimensional threshold between existences. She had taken advantage of his ignorance about the full capabilities of being a SIL in void space, making time her plaything. She couldn’t stop the march of time, but she could slow it considerably.

Another strangeness of the Cage was space. The original Cage was only a fifteen foot by fifteen foot box of Tier 2 components, creating a space just large enough to be called comfortable. Yet, she could change the shape and size of space within the Cage itself, although not actually expanding the size of the Cage itself. But space within the Cage could be manipulated.

Both of those aspects of the Cage she had been grasping in the days she had been fighting and hitting the hiveship. She had played with time and reshaped the Cage itself, creating rooms, creating firing chambers, creating machines to make items that they needed. It was how she planned to defeat the hiveship and it had nearly worked.

She was the Mistress of Time and Space, within the small area of the Cage, and the hiveship hadn’t yet taken control of the Cage just yet.

“It’s the suddenness of pain that gets ya,” Pops had told her once, “but if you know it’s coming, then you can prepare yourself for it. Still gonna hurt like hell, but, y’know, you’ll know it’s coming. For what that’s worth.”

Maya knew she wasn’t dipping her toe into a hot bath, this was a mind destroying attack and she already knew what it felt like. She dunked back into reality, leaving the comfort of her old home, and began screaming once more.

Her thoughts tried shattering, but she clung onto them. She clung onto the words that the System had told her. She clung onto the image of her home, of her friends, and of the Cage. The pain wasn’t all consuming, otherwise she’d have been washed away once more, now she was in a river of pain and there was a branch to cling to.

The Cage was her’s. She controlled it still and she controlled reality within it.

Fine control of the Cage was an ability she hadn’t played with too much, the only time had been when she had captured one of Peg’s cousins when they had gone to Haltor’s World, causing the Cage components to reshape and reform, trapping the SIL in a small closet of Cage material. Yet she could still feel what was happening within the Cage itself, as if it were connected to her mind.

She could feel the flies that were attacking her, stationary above her, their buzzing wings sending out clear vibrations she could almost see. Then there were the hacking spiders and the strange globe that was trying to break into the control panel, also the centipedes that were keeping the doorway from closing, and finally the two Tier 2 figures that were within striking range of her body.

Maya saw everything in a heartbeat and reacted just as quickly.

The Cage was sluggish, but she pulled up a wall around her, blocking off the two Tier 2’s, but not the flies. She shaped the Cage around her, it was an idea she had never tried, but Maya always figured she could control reality to a finer point than the entirety of the Cage. She was the Mistress of Time and Space, right?

Time, space, gravity, temperature, and oxygen, so many things that should not exist did exist within the Cage. A buzzing fly smashed to the ground with the force of a bullet, as the gravity within the small area it hovered suddenly shifted and became far greater. There was a momentary pause as the other flies tried to shift their position to cover the area the fly had left exposed, but they were far too slow.

She had to move fast and fine control was out of the question. Maya shifted the gravity of the area she was within, one moment she was on the deck the next she was flying toward the ceiling, the flies were caught in the field and they tried adjusting, pausing in their attack just enough for Maya to gain a momentary reprieve.

Gravity shifted once more and the flies as a whole flashed by her and smashed against a far wall. They splattered in a wash of orange light and black goo. Maya was caught up in the ‘normal’ gravity of the Cage and slammed to the deck.

Maya gasped as her head finally cleared, she gagged and coughed feeling hot tears running down her face. Her respite was momentary as the thin wall she had erected was torn asunder.

She looked up to see the descending axe of the Tier 2 Executioner ant. Maya threw up another wall, at the same time shifting gravity so that she was pulled away from the AI. She slammed painfully into a wall, feeling her muscles and bones scream in protest.

The thin wall gave away again, but Maya was already getting to her feet. She saw the levels of the two armed rogue AIs and cursed. She could feel the ache that was the centipedes forcing the doorway open and the failing defenses of the control panel.

“Let’s dance, motherfuckers,” Maya spat.

The two AIs were caught in a gravitational field and pulled upwards, but they moved fast, reorienting themselves and through the crushing area of high gravity, threw themselves forward. Maya dodged away, as their blades slashed the spot she had been occupying, she cursed and threw up another wall behind her. That lasted an entire heartbeat as one AI threw themselves through it and the second launched a lightning fast attack at her.

Maya felt an explosion of force against her left arm and she nearly collapsed to her knees as the AI’s blade skidded off her armor. Her HUD flashed red, screaming about damage, but thankfully she hadn’t lost a limb again. The AI was off balance and Maya created a pillar that smashed them against the wall. It gave a satisfying crunch, but wasn’t out of the game just yet.

The second AI was already taking their place and rushing at her. Maya summoned an axe and tried to parry the blade, instead she was thrown back as the AI’s weapon warped her own mid-grade weapon. The bones in her hand nearly shattered and her wrist screamed in pain. Maya backed away and felt the stab of cooling numbness flash through her limb, the low-grade healing potions Bell had made finally making their presence known.

She summoned the plasma gatling gun and began spraying in the direction of the two rogue AIs, but they were far too fast for her to hit, the minor damage from each round did not slow them down.

Her dangersense screamed and Maya threw herself out of the way, losing the grip of the plasma gatling gun. She skidded across the deck and scrambled to her feet. A sense of relief seem to flood her as the assault upon the security of the control panel was eased up, but that was short lived as she saw the liquid blob of high-grade, Tier 2 rogue tech had joined the fight against her. Its liquid-like mass smashed down upon the dropped gatling gun, crushing it.

Maya cursed, but paused as she felt distortions in her dimensional awareness. Reinforcements had teleported into the Cage.

“Aw, shit,” she coughed.