Chapter 020: Assault

Princess Róża Dunecki is an almost mythical figure to the Res Publica Christiana and, ever since her miraculous victory during the Battle of Route 67 elevated her to public consciousness, the entire Mankind.

A seventh daughter of the reigning king of the Visegradian Commonwealth, she - if her official history is to be believed - decided to dedicate her entire life to God. On the day of her Confirmation she publically made a vow that she wouldn’t settle down until she personally slayed at least one hundred thousand enemies of God.

After becoming a Knight, she went on a rampage throughout Human Space, targeting aliens with genocidal intentions towards Mankind (especially Triffids, Devourers and the Fallen), and members of factions such as the Pact of Steel. She is credited with the singlehanded slaughter of six thousand crew members of the Fourth Reich’s dreadnought Heinrich Himmler in 2597, among many other exploits.

Due to how impossible some of the stories are, many suspect that Princess Dunecki doesn’t exist, and instead is merely a blanket term for a number of Visegradian errants, if not a straight propaganda piece of the Res Publica Christiana.

Encyclopedia Galactica

Book 9, Page 322

***

EGS Hastati, Cargo Deck

14:32 30.06.2610 STT

Cadet Christopher Hall

“Can someone tell me: How the hell did we end up here!?” Tendrik complained. Not for the first time, either. However, Christopher empathized with the cyborg too much to order him to be silent.

The interiors of the Hastati looked much different from the Echo. The dominant color was white, with some rare golden adornments. The floor was made of large, white plates of a material which resembled plastic to the touch.

In Christopher’s opinion, the ever-present white color only made stains and dust more visible. Though it still felt like he shifted from a rusted, industrial vision of the future from the times of the Alien series to a more modern depiction. A welcome change of scenery… if they hadn’t come here to kill everyone.

There were twenty of them, walking through the corridors of the outer hull of the Hastati. Seven members of Recovery Team Eight, and thirteen soldiers. All of them were Texians who went through two years of mandatory military service in the Protectorate’s army. As Rukh said, that was an adequate foundation, but even more than two months of accelerated training regime aboard the Echo couldn’t make them an equal opponent to actual marines. Especially as most of their equipment was Texian, too, which meant obsolete.

Hopefully, the three crawlers rolling behind them, each packed with various goodies, were enough to change that.

“We were ordered to secure this area to protect Berserker’s flank during her assault on the citadel.” Recently, Rukh had started speaking. It was rare. Occasionally derogatory. Yet it was progress, nonetheless.

“I know about that! I just don’t get why we are anywhere close to a battlefield!” Tendrik replied. The ship was large, but not large enough for the distant explosions to not be audible. Sometimes they could hear gunfire. Both seemed to be slowly moving away. “We were supposed to be scavenging things from abandoned ships! Not attacking active warships!” Christopher was about to remind Tendrik of proper military communication, but Rukh spoke first.

“Scared? Typical for Techtrian cowards.” Rukh, unlike the rest of them, seemed to be glowing with enthusiasm.

“Goddamn Numenian warmongers.” Ryan mumbled loudly enough for the microphone to catch it.

“You have a problem with me, engineer?” Rukh felt insulted. That was the point when Christopher concluded that he had enough of it.

“Cat Three, Cat Five and Cat Seven, if you don’t shut up and start using proper communication protocols, the heat death of the universe will come before your house arrest ends.” This did shut them up. A small victory for the military discipline.

“Cat One.” An unfamiliar voice cut into their talk. A corporal in charge of the soldiers, judging from the name tag. “We’ve arrived.”

Finally.

***

EGS Hastati, Cargo Deck

14:45 30.06.2610 STT

Cadet Christopher Hall

There was no real sense in pushing too far. Enemy forces were still operating in the outer section of the ship. Most of them according to the tactical screen were busy retreating into the citadel through every passage possible, but that could change at any moment.

Judging from the fact that their group had not found anyone yet, the retreat must have included regular crew members whom they were ordered to shoot on sight. The only exception were ‘slaves’, if they came upon any.

Slavery, apparently, was a thing in the Hastati’s country of origin. Each time Christopher thought about it, he remembered how curious he used to be about Mankind's state in the 27th Century after he travelled to the future. Now his curiosity had waned significantly.

The area they decided to dig in was a now-abandoned hangar. No shuttles were present there during the boarding action, and all crew members of the Hastati had fled from the area. As one of the few open spaces aboard the ship, it was a pretty decent place to defend if you knew where to place yourself.

Of course, you also had to carry out some precautions. The crawlers carried an abundance of useful equipment: deployable bullet proof covers resembling a concrete road block, a remotely operated heavy machine gun, mines and what resembled an early WW2 anti-tank gun.

“We’re digging in here.” The Corporal announced. He had some previous military experience on Texia, so he was left in charge of the whole unit. ”According to the schematics, we need to seal two corridors, two maintenance tunnels, and some ventilation shafts to make sure that any attack in this area will have to go through this place.”

Not something I want to happen. But it’s not like I have an awful lot of choice in that field. It’s war. Now, time for some orders.

“Cat Four, Cat Seven, go do that.” Ryan was an engineer and Nekia had made some progress with handling explosives. The best pick for the job. “Cat Three, send some scouts to accompany them. And place them on both sides of the blockades.” Tendrik nodded, hopefully understanding the point. One side to know if the enemy tried to get through the blocked routes, the second one to know if they somehow breached through the blockades. “Checkmate One, could you...” He added, but the Corporal replied.

“Checkmate Six, Seven, Eight and Nine, with them.” Four soldiers in black and only slightly nazi-looking armor stopped unloading the equipment. Soon they disappeared from the hangar together with Ryan, Nekia, and a small army of scout-bots.

Little more than a camera and radio transmitter on four legs, so small that you could step on it and notice them only because of the crushing sound. But how useful they are!

“Send some of them there?” Tendrik asked while pointing towards the opposite end of the hangar—towards the side of the ship that was a no-man’s-land separating them from the crew and marines of the Hastati.

“Yes. Wait, how many do you have left?” Christopher quickly asked. The fact that he didn’t have an infinite number of those filled him with sadness.

“Twenty.” The cyborg answered. The number was higher than Christopher had feared, but smaller than he had hoped. It should, however, be enough for the task at hand.

“Send… twelve. Spread the remaining eight in the corridors behind us.” The Corporal nodded enthusiastically. They only had a general schematic of Spatha-class heavy cruisers. But what if the Hastati had been modified after leaving the shipyard? He would not get attacked from behind by someone sneaking through an added tunnel.

Tiaa was rather… insistent about depending on the blueprints too much. Besides, we all know how it ended on the Pristine Jewel.

“So, now we set up the rest of the equipment and… wait until Berserker captures the citadel?” Christopher asked the Corporal. For some reason, the Captain urged them to not mention their commanding officers’ names no matter what happens.

The answer he got was a nod. Fifteen minutes later they discovered that things wouldn’t go as easy as they had hoped.

“Uhm, Cat One?” The fact that Tendrik somehow remembered to refer to him with the codename gave Christopher a serious case of chills. “I’ve just lost contact with one of the scout bots.”

Hoping that it’s a malfunction is probably futile, isn’t it?

***

EGS Agreement, Citadel Entrance Alpha

14:51 30.06.2610 STT

Major Randall Lerathi

“I don’t fucking care what Sena is saying!” Randall Lerathi, the major in charge of the Agreement’s marine detachment shouted at the sergeant. “Stop acting like a pussy only because she mentioned that some goddamn fairytale is attacking the ship!”

Ever since Captain Arthval heard Keller’s bluff, she had begun acting unreasonable. Worse, her cowardice started spreading to other members of the crew. Ten minutes ago it was funny. Now it was infuriating.

“But…”

The fact that someone dared to talk back to him in this state was a clear sign of things going seriously wrong.

“Look around you.” The Major replied.

The main passage through the inner armor layers was wide. It was a key communication artery of the ship - lots of essential things inside, most of the storage areas to the outside. Three transport trolleys could ride alongside each other. The passage was seven meters wide and thirty meters long - much longer than the armor layer’s thickness, but it was an intentional element of design made to improve the defensiveness.

To allow high packages to travel with the trolleys, it was also almost three meters high. The ceiling was mostly a mess of pipes and cables, though. The ship’s designers had agreed that it was a better idea to lead some of them through here rather than to expand the number of holes in the inner armor.

There were also two massive bulkheads on the opposing sides of the passage. Each of them was constructed with similar technologies as the armor. They didn’t offer protection as good as the full armor layer. But if things got really bad, they could retreat inside and seal the passage.

Which would consign the entire outside part of the ship to the attackers. The defenders would have to wait for reinforcements from other ships to kick them out. That’s why Major Lerathi preferred the alternative option.

Bleed them out when they attack. Then counterattack. And he had means to do that.

Two whole marine squads made it to the passage in time. Deployable covers, mines, two heavy machine guns, and two heavy troopers with anti-tank rifles changed the entire passage into a death trap.

“All of that, and you are afraid of what? A fairytale! A character from the RPC’s equivalent of superhero comic!” And all that mess because Sena saw ‘someone’ in the recordings of the assault group and claimed that it was Innocent. It was so foolish that he could scarcely believe he even had to talk about that. “Someone told you that the ship is attacked by a god damned Mary Sue character from contemporary fiction and you are all losing your fucking minds! Get your act straight!”

“Uhm, boss?” One of the soldiers interrupted him, pointing towards the end of the tunnel.

When Major Lerathi looked that way, he saw a robot in a… robe with a clerical collar waving towards him.

What the actual fuck?

Major raised his rifle and pulled the trigger. The robot disappeared behind the corner in time, avoiding the rain of bullets.

Before Major Lerathi could chastise his soldiers for not opening fire after seeing someone who wasn’t part of the crew, something even more bizarre happened. A long stick with a paper fixed to the end of it emerged from behind the corner where the robot hid.

“Three shall be the number thou shalt count before looking up?”

Controlling twelve fragmentation grenades with telekinesis at once required almost perfect control. Levitating them among the clusters of pipes and cables that formed the ceiling pushed this feat into the realm of impossibility. Detonating them all at once was, in contrast, simple.

***

EGS Hastati, Cargo Deck

14:51 30.06.2610 STT

Cadet Christopher Hall

Why does it have to keep happening to us?! Why?! Is it because of the angels and that still unexplained ‘mission’ of mine?

“Another bot went dark.” Tendrik confirmed their worst fears. “I put the sites of the disappearances on the map of the Hastati. I think whoever is destroying them is drawing closer. We have maybe fifteen minutes left.”

Christopher checked the commlink. Still in distance. Good enough.

+Cat One to Cat Seven, over+ After a few seconds, he got an answer.

+Cat Seven here, how can I help you?+ Ryan’s voice was slightly distorted, but easily audible.

+We have company. Hostile company. They will be here in fifteen minutes. Can you finish securing the side routes?+ He had to stand by for the answer for a while. A painfully long while in such circumstances.

+Yeah, easily. But we’ll make temporary blockades rather than sealing them completely.+ It was ok. Christopher didn’t think they could hold long enough for it to actually matter.

+Hurry up.+

“I updated Berserker.” The Corporal said, picking the moment perfectly. Christopher just concluded his talk with Ryan when the Texian spoke. “We got orders. Slow the attack down. Find out details about the enemy forces. Reinforcements on the way. We can retreat if we decide to, but it might turn ugly if we try to escape with a pursuit on our tail.”

The part about ‘finding out details’ and ‘slowing the attack down’ made Christopher's preferred tactic (running away before the enemy arrives) impossible.

“Well, hopefully, it’s just a bunch of random crew members, not marines.” Christopher replied. “Cat Three, tell me you found something out.”

“Give me a second, I’m struggling here! They are good.” Tendrik was hunched behind one of the covers they deployed earlier, using his personal computer to oversee the scout bots. “Uh oh.”

“Cat Three.” Christopher had enough of it. “Talk to me.”

“I caught some of them on the camera.” Tendrik replied. “At least two squads of marines, probably more. With heavy equipment. They’ll be here in thirteen minutes.”

We are so fucking dead.

The Corporal started barking orders, placing people behind the covers, and having some of them man the machine gun and the anti-tank gun. Ryan’s group returned right in time, running behind covers.

At least this time we all know more or less how to shoot, and we are better armed! Rifles for everyone. And more! Super-light exoskeletons connected with armor plates in strategic places, each of them too heavy to carry without reinforcement. Support equipment, like the bots. Heavy weapons.

Not like it will help us a lot.

***

EGS Hercules, Command Deck

14:52 30.06.2610 STT

Rear Admiral Hao Yunqi

“Report from Colonel Teryenko.” The face of his exec spoke volumes about the contents of the report. “He is getting pushed back. Forty-seven percent of marines dead or incapacitated. Each time he establishes a defensive position, something arrives and starts slaughtering everyone.”

Rear Admiral Hao Yunqi couldn’t believe his own ears. Five hundred veterans, armed with both cutting-edge equipment of the Confederation AND the exalted weaponry and augments granted to him by the Seekers. He could count forces in the Human Space capable of beating his marines with equal numbers on one hand. Keller’s marines were slaughtering them despite being outnumbered at least two to one.

They suffered casualties too. Heavy ones, that could be said without a doubt. The fragmentary data from the security system - continuously massacred with wide-scale electronic warfare from both sides - left no doubts about it. The dead bodies littering the outer section of the hull included those wearing uniforms of the Echo’s marines. But they weren’t dying fast enough.

This couldn’t be happening… but it is. Who the fuck did he send with his marines? What sort of abyss spawned monster does he command? Is it Nowak? Or is it… is it something else?

He had no idea what other space myth - or sidekick to a space myth - he had. Technically he had the Echo’s personnel data on the Hercules databases, but there was no Colonel Nowak there. So it was all lies. Ingeniously fabricated lies that he believed for months. Worse - lies that he shared with the Seekers, claiming that they were genuine.

Unless… unless they knew they were lies all along. And didn’t tell me. Am I… Am I an expendable pawn?

“Orders to all ships.” He announced. If he was going to die, he wasn’t going to die alone. “Prepare to fire everything you have on the Echo.”

***

EGS Agreement, Command Deck

14:52 30.06.2610 STT

Captain Sena Arthval

She tried to bunker down on the bridge, but it was of no use. A few minutes after she lost contact with the blockade in the armor passage, the entrance doors opened wide. Despite being locked with the best computer security she could buy.

Explosions and firefight. Her bridge staff dying all around her, the marines that stormed in massacring them. It wasn’t even worth being called a fight.

She didn’t move from her seat. She couldn’t. Something was keeping her pinned down. Something terrifyingly familiar. Something she was almost sure was coming for her ever since Keller admitted to having access to RPC’s supply of monsters.

Nononononononononononononononononononononono.

It wasn’t possible. The Human Space was giant. It was simply not possible for her to run into that very same person once again.

Her seat turned, forcing her to face the entrance to the bridge. There she saw it. The robot in the cassock casually walked in, strolling through the sea of bullet-strewn corpses that used to be her friends and co-workers.

“Ancient Reference: Captain Arthval, I presume.” It said. She managed to turn her eyes enough to see the main display. The Rear Admiral and the other officers clearly saw nothing wrong. It had somehow hacked the ship’s communication, replacing the feed from the bridge with a fake recording.

“An Astute Observation: That’s a nice tattoo, but I preferred you without it.” When she understood that it remembered her, she soiled her bodysuit.

Her tight grip on her mouth lessened a bit, enough for her to speak.

“In...innocent.” She was abjectly terrified. “Please, have…” The grip returned before she could say the word mercy.

“Regretful Answer: We had that talk already.” It stood right in front of her, looking down on her. “Twenty-two years ago. Do you remember it?”

She did. In all its details. It took her ten years of psychotherapy to stop being awakened each night by the nightmares and night terrors.

“Reminder: You asked me for mercy back then. And I obliged.” The machine continued. “I spared you as the only crew member of that ship. Despite the fact that the Long Haul was carrying a shipment of children to one of these ‘anarchocapitalist utopias’ that changed pain and degradation into a form of art, and where the spoilage of innocence was the current fashion. Do you know why?”

He didn’t let her answer.

“The Answer: Because you asked me.” He replied to his own question. “Because you were merely a rank and file crew mate. Because I knew that if you didn’t join that particular crew, you would have run out of money. And we all know what bankruptcy means in the Free State. That’s why I evacuated the shipment and left you alone aboard the ship. Do you know how unbelievably saddened I was when after landing aboard this ship I hacked into your personal database and discovered that you took your hobby after the other crewmembers of the Long Haul?”

She tried to say something. She herself wasn’t sure what. But he didn’t let her.

“Silencing Remark: Shhh, Captain Arthval. We’ll get to the punishment in a while.” She wanted to scream. But he didn’t let her. “Nothing you do will change your earthly fate, but you have one last time for an expiation, and perhaps the Lord will look favourably on this lost lamb of His. Release the tacnet lock.” The grip on her mouth lessened, letting her answer.

So that’s what he wants.

“No.” She replied. It was her very last act. If she was going to die, she was going to at least deny it its victory. If Yunqi’s last message was any indicator, most of them were going to die - but they would at the very least take the Echo and its crew with them. And Innocent too. It haunted her for years - but now, she was going to face her fear. “I SPIT ON YOU, BASTARD! YOU WON’T GET ANY…” Her mouth once again froze.

“Saddened Response: It’s as I was afraid.” The robot shook its head. “You are an impenitent sinner. Unfortunately, the lack of your cooperation is merely a minor setback, as it forces me to use my powers in a way that I personally dislike.”

She stood up. It startled her, because she didn’t want to do that. She walked towards the tacnet console, and was almost there when she understood what was happening.

“Reply: That is correct, Captain Arthval.” Innocent walked right next to her. “Thanks to my telekinesis, some precise calculation and your detailed anatomical data I downloaded from the ships’ medbay, I can, to some limited degree, operate your body like a puppet. Of course, forcing your muscles to contract at my will isn’t beneficial to their health.” She could feel the growing pain almost everywhere. “But the result is good enough to fool the system into not noticing the signs of you being forced to release the lock.”

She tried to struggle, but she felt like she was bound tightly, every single part of her body restricted completely. She tried to activate the bomb implanted into her brain, but it didn’t blow up. And when she tried to break the fake tooth, the robot's telekinesis tore it away before the poison spilled out.

She reached the console. She put her hand on it. The ship scanned her fingerprints and DNA. Facial recognition software scanned her face in general and her retina in particular. Only the last hope remained, the code. There was just no way the robot could know it, nor force her to say it. Even Innocent’ telekinesis needed to have—

Suddenly she felt that the throat was no longer her own.

“Sierra. Bravo. Tango. Uniform.” She screamed in her mind, but that was all that she could do. How could it know the code? “Zulu. Yankee. Bravo. Alpha, Charlie. Three. Four. Seven. Two. Zero. Juliett.”

“Lock on large file upload to the tactical network lifted.” The robotic female voice sounded throughout the bridge. “Initiating upload of priority update.”

No. Nonononono. This is impossible.

A tactical network was a network developed primarily for targeting data exchange between ships of a single formation, for both artillery weapons and the point defense weapons. It greatly helped in coordinating fire between ships.

Now she could only watch in terror as the bridges of the other ships erupted in panic. The virus uploaded by Innocent - the one that she had just given pretty much administrator's rights - infected and deactivated every single weapon system throughout the task force - with the sole exception of Echo.

“Ending Note: That will be all, Captain Arthval.” Innocent turned its face towards her. “Captain Keller is no longer pestering me to hurry up and deactivate your weaponry before Hao and the rest of your abominable group recover from his crazy stunts and start thinking. This means that I have an hour or two to fulfill the promise. You know, the one about what I’m going to do to you if I ever see you hurting innocent people again.”

This time he did let her scream.