Chapter 011: Saving Throw

The Day of Sorrow is the popular name of the initial transhuman assault that marked the beginning of the War of Purity. It occurred on 28th March of 2266, simultaneously throughout Human Space. The goal was to cripple the Solar Commonwealth, rendering it unable to use its many times larger numbers to crush the Transhuman Alliance early on.

The Day of Sorrow was a complete surprise to the Commonwealth, despite being prepared for at least several years. In the Solar System it started with two envoys from the Mechanist Hierocracy turning out to be warforms in disguise and gunning down the entire Senate and High Council of the Solar Commonwealth. Merely minutes later a poison gas was pumped into the ventilation system of the headquarters of the Commonwealth’s Armed Forces, killing everyone inside.

Simultaneously to that, a massive hacking attack destroyed all of the Commonwealth’s databases in its capital world of Titan, leaving it without population censuses, criminal databases, logistic plans and even information about present military deployment. As a result, entire task forces of the Commonwealth Navy received neither orders nor supplies for months, as all who knew about them were dead and the data was destroyed.

Two hours later the emergency meeting of the commanding officers of the 1st Fleet and Reserve Fleet present in the system was interrupted by a transhuman-deployed cognitohazard that drove almost every officer with the rank of Commander or above present in the Solar System insane.

Attacks beyond the Solar System were equally if not more successful. During the first day of the war, the Commonwealth lost the entire Fourth Fleet, close to one one hundred million citizens, fifty percent of the members of regional governments, sixty-five percent of military officers (Lieutenant General and Commodore or higher) and the leadership of about ninety-six percent of interstellar corporations.

Encyclopedia Galactica

Book 6, page 423

***

EGS Echo - Medical Bay

12:01 17.04.2610 STT

Cadet Christopher Hall

Christopher woke up to see the painfully familiar ceiling of the medical bay. He was once again lying on one of the beds there, though this time he was wearing the same clothes as the one he wore during the night club.

“Hey you, you’re finally awake.” Athalia was, of course, there. Sitting on the chair next to him, with a paper-thin mask of a rather familiar Nord on his face. The quote was even more familiar, and an obvious proof of the chief medical officer reading something about early 21st century popculture.

“Please, stop.” Christopher sighed and pulled himself up. This time he didn’t feel any sort of pain. “It was already super overused in my times. By the way, how many days have I lost this time?”

Athalia put down the mask. Christopher could now see him pouting.

“Days? Who do you take me for?” The medic snorted derisively. “12 o’clock, 17th of April. And yes, the year’s the same as well.” It sounded like he wasn’t going to joke about being on permanent medical leave. At least, not this time.

“You got a ceiling dropped on you, which knocked you out.” Athalia continued. “There was also a burning electric installation nearby, so you breathed in a bit too much carbon monoxide for my taste, but nothing even remotely dangerous.”

“And… the others?” He could only hope they were alright. But he had to be realistic when it came to the chances.

“Well, let’s see…” Athalia looked serious for a while. “Ryan is fine, though the firefight cost him a chance to spread his genes around. At least he did save the girl. The marine got shot a few times but those guys are all built like a tank and cybernetically or biologically improved, so he’s fine. He’ll stay here for a day or two. One engineer is dead, three others are wounded including one who’ll spend a few days here. The attackers are all dead, but the population of the city of Tham shrunk by seventy-four people.”

“Seventy-four people... Seventy-five.” Christopher corrected himself and added the engineer. “That’s…”

“A lot.” Athalia finished after him. “The most important part is that you are alive, and the Echo lost only one crew member. It could be much worse.”

Much worse? It’s already pretty damn bad. Didn’t I… didn’t I kill someone? Two people? They were attackers, but…

He was about to descend into trauma when Athalia suddenly stood up.

“Now I’m sure!” He shouted. “You’re visiting me so often because you’re obviously enamored by what a magnificent person I am.” He said something objectively and subjectively wrong with a smile on his face. “Now c’mon, give me a hug.”

Christopher reacted in time. He tilted his body, thanking God that there was no quilt on the hospital bed he was lying in. The medic’s charge was stopped when Christopher’s feet landed on his chest, keeping him at safe distance.

Christopher was about to say something when someone grabbed Lith and raised him up in the air. The person standing behind him turned out to be Colonel Nowak, the head of the ship’s marines. Christopher had seen her once during his physical training, but he had never spoken a word with her until now.

He could see some muscles, but as a whole, she looked remarkably unremarkable. Rather tall (slightly taller than Christopher), but that was pretty much all. He never understood why the marines were all looking up to her and treating her like some sort of God of War until he saw her effortlessly lift Lith with one hand on the back of his clothes.

“I came to visit my soldier.” She said calmly. “And saw you risking lawsuits again.”

“Lawsuits? Errr…” Lith immediately understood the danger. “It was just a special therapy! Have you never heard that laughter and happiness is crucial in healing? I just wanted to give Christopher a happiness-inducing hug but he misunderstood!”

“A hug.” Nowak stared at Lith for a while. “I’m supposed to believe that?” Lith, already small, had suddenly shrunk a little.

A second later the Colonel grabbed him by his other hand. And then she threw him. Lith disappeared from Christopher’s sight two meters above the ground and with a rather substantial velocity. Two seconds later a loud noise of something landing on the ground could be heard.

“If he tries something like that again, inform me.” She then said towards the shocked Christopher. “I’ll have another corrective talk with him.”

Christopher wasn’t sure what part of the spectacle was a talk, but it was nevertheless rather hilarious. Especially the part with Lith merrily making a ‘Weeeeeeee’ sound mid-flight.

“By the way.” She spoke to Christopher again. “The two assailants hit by that grenade survived that, and died when the ceiling caved in.” Before he understood what she meant, she was already gone from his view.

***

EGS Echo - Command Deck

18:01 17.04.2610 STT

Commander Lena Drathari

The attack on the crewmembers on Carmotia made the Captain and the rest of the officers understandably angry. The locals earned some degree of trust due to their fast response unit being the chief reason for the majority of the attacked crew surviving, but they had managed to mostly squander the good will when they attempted to pin the attack on some unspecified internal opposition.

In the end, the Captain decided that enough was enough. Colonel Nowak landed in the city with a company of marines in combat equipment behind her, a show of force that had the Tham’s city administrators fold. Marines secured the club’s surroundings, allowing the Echo to conduct its own, independent investigation.

A few hours later, the time came to conclude it. Remarkable speed, in Lena’s opinion. The report was to be discussed in the briefing room - and she understood that. She could also understand the presence of Colonel Nowak and Lieutenant Commander Mendez (who was set by the Captain as the head of the investigation). But why the Captain invited Lieutenant Commander Innocent and Lieutenant Commander Athalia was beyond her.

Athalia ignored Lena completely. Innocent was suspiciously official. Nowak stood in the corner with her back on the wall, looking absentminded. The atmosphere was tense with badly concealed anger.

“Eva, what did you find?” Captain unleashed the anger with a simple question. “And who are we supposed to start killing right now?”

“The attacker was certainly not from the subsector.” The astrogator, communication officer and Keller’s private detective began her answer. “Not a single part of their equipment was manufactured locally, everything was imported. What’s more, not a single imported weapon, armor or piece of communication equipment was obtained legally. We have a relatively recent copy of the database of these types of goods passing through the conduit, and the IDs aren’t a match. Someone either smuggled it through the conduit, or got them from a different source.”

The number of ‘different sources’ was rather limited. There were very few ways of getting into the subsector without using the conduit. Discord was the most likely answer.

“There’s a chance that somebody prepared everything really professionally.” She continued. “So the strike team trained in virtual or artificial reality, and the weapons were smuggled in right between the attack, minimizing the chances of the local security to notice them in time. If that occured, the guns could technically be obtained legally but we’re yet to receive an update with their IDs from the conduit service. This, however, would require delaying the update from reaching Carmotia. Since our next stop, Texia, is closer to the conduit, we’ll know for sure if that’s the case when we reach the Protectorate.”

That made sense. At least from the point of view of someone with very limited experience with organized crime and smuggling.

“Any idea who could be responsible?” The Captain stuck to the point, completely unlike his normal self.

“Not presently.” Eva replied. “They covered their tracks expertly. One more reason why I do not believe the locals were involved. They are decent in secret operations, but whoever organized this attack was simply beyond their level. What we do know is that they have good funding, and are fanatically devoted.” She paused for a few seconds. “I’ve tracked them to their base of operations on Carmotia. Everyone inside commited suicide to avoid capture. They also purged data from their computers, and then thoroughly destroyed said computers. I can’t even track the parts of those, so it’s a dead end.”

“So extremely competent, well-funded fanatics.” Captain summarized. “Well, damn, it’s easier to list the countries and organizations which we just excluded than the ones who fit the description.”

“Most of these well-funded fanatics do not use self-replicating biolytic nano to cover their tracks.” Eva finally dropped the bomb.

“Biolytic nano? Self-replicating?” The Captain was the first to get out of shock. “The locals have to be overjoyed to have that on their turf. How come they didn’t nuke Tham yet?”

“That’s because they don't know about it.” Lieutenant Commander Mendez replied, admitting to a serious violation of laws of both the Republic of Triana and the Confederation of Mankind. “I had Lieutenant Commander Innocent assist me in neutralizing it. I’ve decided against informing the local authorities as they could overreact. I was sure that the nano had limiters on replication. I believe that Innocent’s analysis confirmed it.” She looked at the robot priest for confirmation.

“Confirmation: Yes.” The robot said. “Clarification: Extremely beautiful piece of code, even if lethal. The nanomachines dissolved everything organic within that apartment into organic sludge. Trying to isolate enough genetic code to run an analysis on it is a waste of time.”

“What about the attackers in the club?” Captain asked. “We have their bodies, yes?”

“Nope.” This time it was Athalia that answered. He was sitting on the chair, leaning forward so much that his upper body and head were pretty much resting on the table’s surface. He was busy observing his fingernails for the last few minutes, and didn’t stop doing so even while answering. “They were prepared for that too. All DNA samples taken by locals are a complete mess. I suspect someone genesculpted the attackers recently. For adults the phenotypic effects are reduced greatly and might take years to manifest, but it’s enough to obfuscate the DNA comparison.”

“No way of going around that?” The Captain asked the medic.

“I can compare the DNA, but it will take hours.” The chief medical officer yawned. “Hours per sample compared. So if you find someone you suspect of being responsible for the attack and pinpoint a group of their associates that disappeared recently, I can try to puzzle up the answer within a reasonable chance of being correct. 60 to 75% depending on the attacker. Trying to go through the entire DNA databases of the Republic and those aboard the Echo is a nope.”

“Great, so we know nothing.” The Captain sighed. “Though the biolytic nano capable of self-replication tells us that whoever did this is probably on the Confederation’s To-Kill list.”

Self-replicating weaponry of any type wasn’t just forbidden in the Confederation of Mankind. It was super forbidden. Research and production were theoretically allowed under some incredibly special circumstances (and with full oversight of the Confederation), solely for research purposes. But deploying it, regardless of circumstances, meant getting blacklisted. And getting blacklisted in the Confederation meant being dead.

“Discord?” Colonel Nowak spoke for the first time in a while.

“The most obvious perpetrator, yes.” the Captain commented. “Almost too obvious. Besides, I still don’t get what the point of the attack was. Going through all this preparation and risking so many skilled operatives just to kill a lance corporal, a cadet, a petty officer and six enlisted? I could understand going after me. Officers, maybe. But this? What’s the point?”

He was right. Lena didn’t see the point in the attack either. She might not have a lot of experience in intrigue and secret operations, but this still felt like an incredible waste of resources.

“I can think of four reasons.” Lieutenant Commander Mendez said. “First, influence. Someone might be planning something that for some reason requires the Echo and its officers to be in a state of wariness. If that’s true, then the attack has obviously succeeded, however I cannot fathom what exactly the plan is. Second option is a diversion. However, the lack of a follow-up means the probability of this is low. Third option is that the group responsible wants something from someone in the group that was attacked. The only person who could theoretically be a target is Christopher Hall. However the chronology of that would require someone aboard the ship to leak information about him in Carmotia, and Lieutenant Commander Innocent has thus far found no signs of unauthorized messages or codewords in authorized messages. The last option is a simple mistake. The name of the lance corporal accompanying the group is Sebastian Heller, so it’s technically possible that someone with access to the spaceport system thought that he was Keller, but it’s an extremely unlikely mistake.”

Well, that concludes it. I have absolutely no talent nor knowledge on the field of black ops. And I should stick to being an exec.

“Alright.” the Captain said. “Eva, continue the investigation. Anna, double the security during our every subsequent planetary visit. Innocent, look through security recordings. Make sure that we don’t have a mole in our ranks. You’re dismissed. Lith and Lena, stay here for a while.”

Lena couldn’t imagine a reason for her to stay together with a person that seemed to hate her very existence. Although it was Captain Keller who told them to, so he probably had a reason for it.

Everyone but the three of them left the room. Athalia kept pretending he didn't notice Lena’s very existence. It was infuriating, but also something she had gotten used to.

The Captain pulled out a bundle of papers and placed them on the table. Then he turned towards Lena.

“You see, it’s time for you to see the perks of an unorthodox choice of crew members.” He smiled wryly. “And to learn of the existence of something you didn’t know was a thing. Lith is a bit of a special case in more ways than one. His dislike towards transhumans has a lot to do with the War of Purity and so on, but in the end, it’s mostly because he has a pathological hatred towards cybernetic augmentations of human beings. He has neither a personal computer, nor any translation hardware.”

It was shocking. Necessitarians were the most anti-cyberware of all purists, and even they agreed that these two things were completely necessary to live in modern society. She couldn’t even imagine how one could live like this.

“He uses a smartphone, a piece of technology from the 2000s to go around the lack of a personal computer.” Captain continued. “And when it comes to languages, he knows a few hundred of them.”

“A few… few hundred?” She had never had to learn any language - she got rid of memories from that part of life. But she was vaguely aware of how long it took humans to learn their primary language. Learning a few hundred was a breathtaking and rather superhuman achievement. Especially as in the world of translation implants, nobody learned more than a single one anymore.

“Well, he cheats a little.” Captain admitted. “Have you ever heard of an eidetic memory? He remembers things in much greater detail than any of us. That alone is helpful, as all he really needs is to go through a dictionary to remember the majority of the vocabulary. Now, have you ever heard about Thought Acceleration sorcery?”

“He has THAT too?” She had heard of it. A relatively rare and rather powerful post-Awakening power. Those blessed with it had a rather incredible ability to accelerate their own cognition to crazy levels. It was described as being able to ‘freeze’ the world around them, spending dozens of minutes to figure out their next moves.

They could even subjectively ‘rewind’ time, to see through their earlier memories. Unfortunately, human memory wasn’t perfect, even if the thought acceleration improved it significantly. So the ‘rewinded’ part was typically highly distorted.

She heard that it could be used without neuroamp, but it required some incredible amount of training. This probably explained why such a pathological cyberphobic could be using it without collapsing into a black hole of hypocris...

That’s when she understood. Thought acceleration AND eidetic memory was...

“Yes, yes!” The Captain saw the understanding dawning on her face. “Beautiful synergy effect, isn’t it? Also, for your information, he is a Supreme-class thought accelerator. If he really pushes it to the brink, he can spend ten hours pondering on things while only one or two seconds pass in the outside world, though he’ll pay for the ‘pushing to the brink’ part with crippling headaches. He remembers practically everything he has ever seen. Being able to pause time in the middle of an operation and then spend a few hours pondering what to do with access to every single medical book, lecture and article he ever saw and all of his past surgeries is one of the reasons for his great skill as a medic.”

“Supreme… you mean to tell me that Supremes actually exist?” It was a myth. A legend. Everyone she knew believed that Flames going all-out and empowered by adrenaline were responsible for all footage of supposed Supremes circulating through the Confederation.

“Yep.” The Captain nodded. Athalia sighed in the background. “We actually got two more Supremes when Cadet Hall and Enlisted Welch dropped temporarily dead after their first Hyperspace travel. Unfortunately, after the things done by the Exalted Conclave during the War of Purity, the existence of sorcerers equaling its members in power is generally kept under wraps. The last thing we all want is new witch hunts. Thus, the Confederation secretly seconds those found to serve in the Guild on the borderlands, where they are useful, well paid and out of view.”

Made sense. It was still shocking, but it made sense. She still had to spend a while trying to get used to her suddenly changed world.

“Now, back to our friend Athalia.” the Captain said. Athalia was obviously irritated by the Captain’s prolonged talk and Lena’s presence, but remained silent. “He can do pretty scary things with his head. He has pretty much indexed the whole knowledge and can easily run search queries. Lith’s brain is a biological computer, though a bit slower than normal ones.”

It was an interesting experience to see a person with such mental capabilities but still being a prisoner of their prejudices. She also didn’t miss the delicious irony that Lith Athalia seemed to be slightly more transhuman than most of the actual biological transhumans she knew or heard about. Not to the exhuman level, but it was still a hypocrisy in her eyes.

The real question was whether he saw himself as a transhuman. Which, in turn, depended on which definition of transhumanism he saw as valid. Most transformationists staunchly believed that for as long as you maintained the human form, it’s not transhumanism.

“Due to these qualities I’m using him as a secret database.” Captain continued. “It allows me to search for certain things, without leaving any signs. Athalia also knows things that aren’t or cannot be in conventional databases. So, I hope he can help us with this predicament.”

“It’s much more likely that I won’t be able to help, and you are just going to make it disappointed.” Athalia finally spoke, immediately infuriating Lena. Referring to her as ‘it’ was a new low. “I don’t know the faces of every single person in this Galaxy, you know?”

The Captain said nothing and pulled several pictures from the bundle of papers. Close ups of the attacker’s faces.

Athalia started looking through them. Now that Lena knew what to look for, she could notice the moments when he was accelerating. A second-long freezing of his facial expression, followed immediately by a sudden change of it.

How long was he out, subjectively? One hour? Two hours? Twenty minutes? She knew that even if she asked, she wouldn’t get an answer. She had also heard that he tended to be moody and unpredictable. Was this a result of him accelerating, with minutes or hours passing within a single second, making him ‘suddenly’ change his mind about things?

How old was Athalia actually? If he could expand a single second to many hours, his mind could be ancient by Lena’s standards. How did he fit so much data in a purely biological brain? He had to be an Enhanced, there was no other option. He was either biologically improved or the Awakening had altered his brain.

Maybe he even grew another one? That’s a disturbing thought if I ever had one.

“Oh?” Lith paused his query and suddenly spoke, his eyes still fixed on one of the pictures. “I recognize this one.” He looked at the next picture on the table. “That one, too.”

“Names, Lith.” Captain said. His face was that of a predator who just saw a vulnerable prey “Give me their names and allegations. I have some murders to do.”

“The murder part might be a problem.” Lith smiled strangely. “Private Martien von Brenk. Sergeant Jonáš Tomášek. Marines from the EGS Napoleon.”

“... They’re from the Guild?!” Lena said, shocked. Athalia didn’t answer. Instead the Captain did.

“Not precisely.” the Captain said slowly. “I recognize the ship’s name. The EGS Napoleon disappeared during hyperspace transit in sector 64. Declared MIA seven years ago. Updated to KIA six years ago, though they never found it. How the hell do you even know the faces of its crewmembers?”

This explained why neither the Republic nor the Echo had any data on the assailants. Who would bother to keep track of names and faces of people who died years ago, and in a place that was many months of travel away from the subsector?

“Because it happened in this oversector.” Athalia replied. “And you have been using me as your personal computer for ten years. I looked through Napoleon's crew roster six years, nine months, twelve days and seven hours ago. When they were still considered missing.”

“So… someone kidnapped them with their ship and brainwashed them?” Lena asked. There were ways of doing that efficiently and with perfect results. Used horribly often during the War of Purity and the Unification Wars. One more thing that had you lose your breathing privilege if the Confederation found out.

“Seems so.” the Captain said with a worried look on his face. “This proves a few things. One, the attacker has beef with the Guild. Two, they are using both biolytic nano and mentalsculpt technology. This means they are either from a human group living outside of the Confederation or are crazy enough to do things that would get them exterminated to the last if they were discovered. Three, we still have absolutely no clue why they randomly attacked a completely unlikely target.”

“Sounds like Discord.” Athalia announced. “The remnants of the Transhuman Alliance, __ and __ have the tech, the motivation and possess the necessary capabilities to operate in the Confederation’s space like this.” It was the first time Lena got to see the censorship program in action.

It left her wondering. Discord was once a secret base of the Transhuman Alliance, with its own jumpgate system that worked as a backdoor to the majority of Human Space. She knew that it was a haven for pirates, slavers, remnants of the Transhuman Alliance and other scum banished from the Confederation of Mankind.

But she now knew that there were two other groups around that equaled the Alliance in technological level. Which was something she didn’t even think was possible. She learned this on the same day as she had found out that Supreme-class sorcerers exist.

What else did she not know? What else was she going to learn during this flight? The excitement was tearing her apart.

“__ and __ are so incredibly insane that it would almost explain why this attack was completely stupid.” Captain replied. “But, you know, there is also one more potential source of the attack. The Singularitarians.”

She had heard about them. Pitiful and occasionally dangerous fools that were pretty much worshipping the outdated concept of technological singularity. Many of them were also conspiracy theorists that claimed the whole Wall of Reason was a government cover-up. They never seemed to agree to why the government would stop itself from achieving godlike technological progress. Then again, they didn’t even agree as to which ‘government’ is responsible for the cover-up.

“Since you probably don't mean those random crazies produced by watching too many sci-fi films, I guess you suggest __”. Athalia replied. “You know that if your suspicion is correct, we might be slightly itsy bitsy screwed, right?”

“I expected nothing less of this mission.” The Captain chuckled. “At least not since our crew was joined by someone who smells of __.”

Now I’m really curious.