Chapter 022: Clean-Up

The Machine Wars were a number of wars between the Berserks and contemporary civilizations of Known Space, waged simultaneously between 2514 and 2537. The reason for the war was the Prime Code - the overruling central command consciousness of the Berserks - upholding its original programming, which tasked it with the goal of extermination of all sapient life.

The Berserks possessed access to a technology that was massively superior to that available to Mankind or other known civilizations. The result of it - and the rapid replication of the Berserks, resulting in overwhelming numerical superiority of the machines - was a long series of defeats.

The Devourers’ were brought to its knees in 2519. The Greys’ fell in 2530. The Dragons collapsed militarily in the early 2530s. Mankind held until 2537, where the recent Berserk victory against the Shades led to the discovery that the campaign against this mysterious species had occupied ninety-nine point five percent of the Prime Code’s military assets for the past twenty-three years.

Following the pyrrhic victory of joint forces of the Confederation of Mankind and the Solar Republic over the vanguard fleet of the Berserks (immediately followed by an arrival five times larger main force), Mankind was defeated. That’s when the Berserk Schism happened.

Encyclopedia Galactica

Book 2, 451

***

EGS Hercules, Command Deck

15:46 30.06.2610 STT

Rear Admiral Hao Yunqi

The Perfect fell to his knees, the final round piercing its synthetic carapace and destroying the last of its hearts. This warrior was an apex of genetic engineering and both cybernetic and biological enhancements, designed by the Seekers of Truth to simultaneously engage several Enhanced in combat at once. Yet it fell to a single enemy.

Rear Admiral Hao Yungi couldn’t believe his eyes. But he knew he could neither hide nor fight. Not against someone who just bested a Perfect in single combat. His attempt to flee to his personal frigate in order to escape and warn the Seekers of what sort of monsters Keller had (or to at least find out if they actually knew about them all along) came to an abrupt end.

Instead of hiding, he rose from the hideout where his bodyguard had tossed him before facing their pursuer.

The attacker made no move. It wasn't an easy fight for him. He was sweating and bled from several shallow wounds. They stared at each other for a few seconds.

“Who are you?” the Rear Admiral said.

Third Tenet. Shock and fear of the unknown is a weakness. To die after learning the nature of your enemy is to win.

“Lieutenant-Commander Lith Athalia. Chief Medical Officer of the EGS Echo, at your service.” The petite man bowed, his neon hair waving around. “I’m afraid Captain Keller was precise with his orders. Letting you reach the hangar where you parked your private frigate is not an option. You are not allowed to warn the Seekers. Also, Alexander can’t wait to meet you in person.”

Those moves. Too fast, even faster than a Perfect. Enhanced. Non-standard, speed-focused. Exalted or exotech augments. Probably biomod-based. Where did Keller find such a monster?

The Rear Admiral’s eyes moved sideways.

That pistol… no manmade weapon of this caliber could have pierced the Perfect’s carapace. Even exalted. So an exotech. Several modes of fire, each varied in the rate of fire, firepower, and even projectile trajectory. Energy gun or solid rounds?

“I can imagine that,” grumbled Hao. If Captain Keller had been tracking the Seekers’ operations in the subsector, then Rear Admiral Hao was his best source of answers. The only possible source of answers, in fact.

Almost five meters of distance between him and the Enhanced. How much time did he have? One second? Two? Even if the exotech pistol had a stun mode too, it would be for naught. Escaping was futile, slaying or even injuring his opponent wasn’t a choice either. That was the only Perfect he had received, and he would require at least two of them to take the Enhanced down. This left him with only one option.

First Tenet. Knowledge is power. Gather it. Use it. Protect it.

“No gods. Only men.” He spoke defiantly. The minuscule bomb implanted in his brain by the Seekers began charging up. The neon-haired Enhanced leaped forward, his movement so fast that Hao failed to follow him with his eyes.

A blast of pain took his senses over. It was followed by the shocking discovery that he was still alive, yet he couldn’t move a muscle. He was lying on the ground, paralyzed, seeing nothing but the floor plating in front of him. Then something turned him around… and soon he was facing the Enhanced. Rather than the pistol, he was waving around some short stick, made from a substance resembling plastic.

“Committing suicide to avoid interrogation, and with the motto of your organization on your lips. Admirable, even when your organization consists of a bunch of assholes.” The Enhanced pointed towards the stick with his other hand. “Small and useful gimmick that I got from a friend. It’s an exotech that allows me to fry every electronic near me, with no detrimental effects on the flesh. Very convenient for someone like me, without even a milligram of circuits. But for someone who’s enhanced his nervous system… quite a jolt. And look, the bomb no longer works!” The Enhanced laughed. However, the only part of him that took part in that was the mouth. The eyes remained cold yet somehow… furious.

“All right!” Hao Yunqi could feel himself getting raised up and slung over the much smaller man’s shoulder. “Now, time to get you to the meeting.”

***

EGS Echo, Hangar Deck

16:22 30.06.2610 STT

Commander Lena Drathari

“That was… unbelievable.” Lena Drathari didn’t feel good with her temporary replacement body. She was even more robotic than Innocent. Her replacement body was humanoid - and that’s where the similarities to humans ended. “Crazy and unbelievable.”

“I promise to pull nothing like this ever again, at least not without detailing the plan and my reasoning to you. A long while in advance.” Keller replied. Lena decided that he would probably still do it if he considered the circumstances to be sufficiently hilarious. “Showing what my crew is capable of was among my objectives.”

“It felt like you had the time of your life.” She answered. They were walking through the ship together, heading to the hangar.

“It’s something that I caught from Princess Dunecki.” He smiled. “We might have improved the protocols, the training, the equipment and even human bodies during the centuries, but deep inside, the war is still fought by men. They might even be Enhanced, but in the end the one last vulnerability common to all armies is there.” He put his finger right next to his temple.

“I acted like I was totally crazy, despite my orders and plan being utterly rational.” He continued. “As a result, Hao Yunqi and his clique was too shocked and surprised by my craziness to expect rational actions. The fact that they were pissing their pants over my little menagerie of horrors contributed, too. And we still almost failed, as the Rear Admiral had a moment of lucidity, enough to prepare to open fire at the Echo.”

“You call that lucidity?” She remembered Keller telling the Rear Admiral that if they try it, the Godhammer will destroy half of the enemy cruisers before dying.

“Yes, because I was bluffing.” She would have stared at him, but the limited facial expression of the replacement drone made this impossible. “If they all fired at the Echo at once, they would almost surely knock the Godhammer out instantly. But this is a weapon almost as mythical as Princess Dunecki, and I was sure that none of them was exactly knowledgeable on it. The rest was me keeping their boxers wet until Innocent got their entire weaponry offline, their own panic making them not realize they had an upper hand until they lost it.”

“Remind me to never play cards with you.” She shook her head. He had to be incredibly good at that.

“Really?” The Captain chuckled. “And here I was, planning to invite you to a traditional post-battle strip poker tournament.” Unfortunately, her current frame made staring daggers at people impossible as well.

“By the way…” she decided to change the subject. “I thought that you are mostly an APD man. So how come you have so many monsters from the RPC?”

“Oh, that.” He shrugged. “These guys are far simpler. The APD, just like every other faction out there, has its own share of monsters. But the APD is, in the end, ‘serious’. So all of their monsters have military ranks, and their leadership would rather ally with the Pact of Steel than let me borrow any of them. But the RPC tends to be into honour and so on. I helped the Redhanded Princess and the Society once or twice, so they now owe me and that’s the way they decided to repay me. Simple as that.”

Since Lena was certain she wouldn’t know how to find the Princess (much less how to get her to be in debt) and she never heard of the Society before joining the Echo, she didn’t believe that it was anywhere near ‘simple’.

“There is something I don't understand. Two things, actually.” He looked at her questioningly. “First is what exactly Innocent did to Captain Arthval after he got her to release the tacnet lock. Yes, I know I shouldn’t, but I did hack into the feed.”

“Oh, my sweet boy Innocent.” Keller chuckled. “You know that he is a Supreme-class telekinetic, despite being a robot?” She nodded. It was unbelievable, but she somehow got through that by explaining it with some exotech magic. “Well, this is both true and not true. He is an equivalent of a Supreme-class telekinetic… but also a Divine-class.”

She stayed silent. It was beyond insane. And beyond impossible.

“I thought they didn’t exist.” She finally said.

Keller laughed. “Like a lot of things that seem to be doing fine.” He had a point. The Extradimensionals, the Truthseekers and the Supremes were a proof for that. “Before you go crazy over that, there are only three of them in Human Space. Each of them an artificial creation, and an exercise of a true cutting edge technology.”

She quickly navigated through the list of known powers in her mind. Then she understood.

“Yes, yes.” Keller was first. “He is, in the end, a terrorist. A good type of terrorist, though, so ‘international vigilante’ might be a better term. And he is very much into irony. Meta-empathy can, if one is powerful enough, be used to superimpose emotions and even thoughts on other people. All he did was simply to have Captain Arthval experience her favourite hobby, but from the other side of it. And both strengthened and subjectively accelerated, so she felt days of it in the span of minutes.” He paused for a while. “In my opinion, he is still a big softie on the inside. He could keep her like that for months, but he killed her after less than thirty minutes. He even did this simply because he promised her that if he ever runs into her doing mean things to people, he would do exactly that. And he is very into keeping his words.”

One thing was certain - she would never look at the tactical officer the same way.

“And… who exactly is Lith Athalia?” She asked the second question.

“Our chief medical officer.” He replied, technically true, but obviously dodging the real answer. “By the way, what sort of casualties did we suffer?” She decided to give up on the issue. For now.

“Twenty-three marines dead, fifty-two wounded. Which leaves us with a whole twenty-six combat-ready marines.” She always hated such reports. Summing people’s deaths into numbers felt somewhat wrong. “Out of the recent recruits, we lost two hundred forty-five, while almost twice as many suffered various degrees of wounds. Which leaves us with around six hundred recruits left. The number of dead can rise a bit because many of them are still in critical condition.” Of course, the wounded ones were mostly going to be back in service.

The Marines had taken the brunt of the damage. The relatively low casualties of the recruits meant the enemy had lacked the time for any serious flanking attacks. The Marines had lost lots of people burgeoning their way through the fortified positions, while the recruits had to handle panicked crew members and some small counterattacks. Overall, it was a wonderfully executed operation.

“There is also an issue of remaining holdouts of enemy forces on both the Hastati and the Hercules.” Which meant more casualties, though not many. “Lieutenant Commander Innocent and Lieutenant Fouquet eliminated everyone aboard Nietzsche and Agreement, but both the heavy cruiser and the armed supply ship are big. We took over their citadels and are in full control of their ship’s electronic systems, but wiping out the survivors will take a while and might incur further losses.”

“Well, I might have made some… preparations to improve our numbers.” The only reason why Commander Drathari didn’t stare at Captain Keller with suspicions was her current lack of eyes. “Do you remember the Primrose?”

“The Primrose? You mean that transport and passenger vessel that was lazing around in the orbit of Texia during our stay?” She wasn’t sure what it had to do with anything.

“It’s en route to our current position, carrying a further three thousand recruits and over one hundred retired officers and petty officers. Either from the Texian Protectorate’s Space Defense Force or the Republican Navy. You’d be surprised how many people from Triana pick Texia for retirement.” She stayed silent for a while. She didn’t expect that. How many steps ahead had Keller planned the whole thing?

“There are also the slaves we saved.” Captain continued, taking advantage of Lena being at a loss of words. “In an ideal world I’d send them back to Texia on the Primrose, but this is not an ideal world. I don’t think they have people specializing in such… repairs, at least not in numbers that are enough for that. They will stay aboard for now. Innocent is an expert in patching up people after traumatic events.” And, if what she saw was correct, in causing traumatic events.

“All right. I didn’t see that coming.” Lena admitted after a while. “You want to crew the ships we seized, right?” Once she was answered with a nod, she continued. “How the heck did you persuade the Protectorate to all of that?”

“By selling them the Agreement.” This time the silence was an explicit invitation to sharing some details. “Their administration is pragmatic. They realize that all major countries in the subsector are crazies of various brands. The more… insurance they can get, the lesser the chances of someone invading them in a fit of ideological fanaticism. The Agreement is a modern light cruiser designed for long-term operations away from home bases. It won’t achieve anything if it tries defending Texia, as the invaders will swarm it with numbers. But if it withdraws into Hyperspace, it can prey on the attacker’s hyperspace traffic for years. The chances of any of the invading powers from the sector to survive the resulting economic collapse are… debatable.”

“I see. It makes sense.” Lena nodded. With her robotic head lacking the neck, it probably looked weird. “Though it’s one less light cruiser for this operation.”

“Nope.” What is it now? “They are even less sympathetic towards the Seekers running unchecked through their subsector than we are. The Agreement will accompany us during the operation, though as a loan from the Texian Space Defense Force. If things go well, they will get a cadre of veterans to man it. If not, then I promised to use my contacts to provide a suitable replacement ship, including a temporary crew to train their Texian replacements.”

“Wow, that’s…” Lena went silent for a few seconds. “... something. How did you persuade them to this?”

“I already signed all the documents.” The Captain replied. “I’d have sent them out of the subsector, but if the Seekers infiltrated the local Guild, they also control the customs’ office on the conduit. Texia will try to smuggle it out together with a warning that Seekers are doing things around here, but whether they succeed is doubtful. Even if they fail, they’ll still have some insurance once the Seekers are knocked out by us, or anyone else.”

“I see, I see. I hope that in the future I’ll get to learn things like this BEFORE they occur, Captain.” It was infuriating to learn things like that so late. The Captain nodded in answer, which was fairly uncommitted. “And the destroyers?”

“They were attached to the First Task Force under Rear Admiral Hao Yunqi according to the standard set of prerogatives given to the Guild by the Confederation of Mankind.” Once reminded of that, Commander Drathari internally went berserk.

They should give us every ship we asked for, as long as there is a serious risk of an external threat to the subsector - and that’s what Keller reported when he issued the call for help. But each country gave us exactly ONE destroyer! If the threat we found were aliens or someone from Discord, this degree of stupidity would lead to not only the Guild’s fleet getting overwhelmed but maybe even with everyone in the subsector getting enslaved, killed or worse. Bunch of idiots, even without mentioning the fact they sold themselves to the Seekers.

“This is still the First Task Force, however, the sudden and unexpected deaths of all higher officers means that the command of it has passed to me.” The captain continued. “And that’s the interpretation I’m planning to stick to when I’ll get to talk to their commanding officers. This leaves us with two heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, four destroyers, and an armed supply ship. Without counting the crew of the destroyers, we will have close to four thousand Texian personnel, plus around a hundred and fifty of various ‘properties’ from the Agreement and the Hastati. Once Innocent and Lith finish fixing them up, we should have enough crew members to run all the ships of our little fleet, though training them to a reasonable level of skills might take a while. Anything else about my ingenious master plan you want to inquire about?”

“What are the chances that the Seekers didn’t foresee all of that?” His face made it obvious that she hit a weakspot. The balloon of good mood exploded, leaving nothing but stale air behind.

“Very small.” He answered. “I expected more of their tech and more Perfects aboard the task force. Unless we somehow left the parameters already, they for some reason wanted us to defeat the task force. Getting rid of Hao Yunqi might be useful for them, especially as I suspect they already prepared identical ships with crews wearing the same faces as Hao and his people, but without his ambitions and irritating individuality. Maybe they hoped we would wipe each other out? It felt like it was a possibility for a while.”

He sounded incredibly paranoid, as always. But she had to agree that he might have a point. She recently got to read much more about the generally confidential data about the Seekers. And she was increasingly terrified.

The most scary part was that the Seekers were almost surely aware of the people that Keller had under its command. If they truly weren’t even picking an honest fight, and instead were treating the Echo as a part of their plan… just how much firepower and confidence in it did they have?

They entered the hangar bay right in time. The hyperspace shuttle was finishing the docking procedure.

Innocent was standing there, motionless. Waiting for them. Lena wasn’t sure how to react to him, so she simply nodded towards him and left it at that.

The shuttle docked. Lith Athalia emerged from it, carrying an unconscious Rear Admiral. He dropped him in the middle of the hangar like a sack of potatoes.

“My job’s done.” The medic announced. “Now I believe I’m really needed in the medbay, so I’ll excuse myself. Besides, Innocent’s better at interrogations than me either way.” Lena decided that it was the first time she ever heard Lith mentioning someone else being better than him in anything.

She didn’t bother running a query through her memory data, so she could be wrong somewhere. This way or another, it was a rare case.

She spent close to twenty minutes talking with the Captain in the far edge of the hangar. Both of them could easily issue orders regarding the mop-up operations through the network.

Occasionally they could hear Hao Yunqi’s screams. They could see Innocent simply standing right next to his paralyzed body. Finally, the priest waved towards them.

“So, what did you learn?” Keller asked him when they got closer.

Lena looked down at the Rear Admiral. He was pale, his eyes were shooting around the hangar. He looked like he finally lost his mind. She had no idea what Innocent made him experience, but it had to be something terrifying.

“Answer: A few bits about the general Seekers’ operation in the area.” The robot replied. “Most of it seems cohesive with my prior knowledge, so the information is either genuine or the Seekers have woven an even larger and more convincing lie.” The Captain clicked his tongue. He certainly didn’t like that dichotomy.

“Additional Answer: There’s more.” The robot continued. “There is a Seekers base in a recently explored binary system of Tyra. The Rear Admiral seemed sure that the Corporation didn’t want him to know about it, though when the Agreement passed through that system and noticed it, they admitted that it existed. It’s called ‘Echelon-II’, and it seems to be a Truthseekers data vault. ’”

Once again, either one more layer of ruse, or a minuscule screw-up. Rethan help me, if I had a physical body then having to deal with the Seekers would surely give me the headache of a century.

“Well, we seem to have a very few alternatives right now.” The Captain sighed. “We could as well head to Echelon-II and hope we get to find out anything there. Returning to Texia would just put us back into their sack. The only option right now is to go forward. Next step is Lyria, from which we can go to either Tyra, Setia or Hub Seven.” He didn’t add that, but Setia was within the Divine Directorate of Plesja’s space. So no-go, unless there was literally no other option left. Hub Seven was the Techtrian Hierocracy border system. ”So I guess we go to Lyria right now, and see what happens next.”

It was probably one of the rare cases when Commander Drathari actually knew what the ship was going to do next. She decided to bask in this for a while.

“Alright then.” The Captain added. “Innocent, space him. Lena, let’s go back to the bridge.” The two of them turned towards the exit.

“Regretful Answer: No.” Innocent said, pausing their long walk to the bridge before it started for real.

‘Err… what?” The Captain was stunned.

“Clarification: I will not do that.” Robot added. “Elimination of hostile targets during combat with lives of civilians at stake is permitted. Enhanced interrogation techniques are allowed when the procured information will save lives. Execution of a prisoner not in a position to resist or escape is not allowed.”

“Innocent.” The Captain looked like he was about to have a stroke. “You killed Captain Arthval, you remember that?.”

“Answer: That is correct.” Innocent replied. “However, I procured the necessary evidence warranting such treatment. It was no execution, it was a capital punishment handled accordingly to the legal doctrines of the Society for the Eradication of False Beliefs. When it comes to Rear Admiral Hao Yunqi, the only proven crime of his thus far was an attempt to destroy the Echo. This attempt was stopped, but he was taken alive. Thus he can face a court martial, which will without a doubt find him guilty. However, there is more than one appropriate punishment for it according to the Explorers’ Guild legal framework, which can’t be said about Arthval’s crimes in the light of the Society’s legal framework.”

It somewhat made sense to Lena, when you took into account that the Society apparently believed itself to be in a position to render judgments to anyone, anywhere and anywhen (and that’s without mentioning the part about Innocent seeing himself as judge, jury and executioner at once). Without regard for whether the victim and the perpetrator considered themselves to be under the Society’s jurisdiction.

Attacking another ship was apparently a crime that the Society didn’t consider to be important enough to warrant their attention, unlike Arthval’s ‘hobby’. Thus it was left for the Guild’s jurisdiction. And if she remembered it correctly, Innocent was right. There was more than one punishment for this, even if the execution was the most likely one in these circumstances. On the other hand, due to a certain thing, there wouldn’t even be a court martial.

“He is a member of the Truthseekers.” The Captain said, forcing himself to stay calm. “That alone is enough for a summary execution.” It was precisely the reason why Innocent was wrong. As a blacklisted group, all Seekers associates were to be killed.

“Reply: You forgot one thing.” The robot refused to stand down. “Delegates of the Res Publica Christiana never attended the blacklist votes in the Supreme Council. Our judges never participate in similar proceedings in the Supreme Tribunal. While the existence, scale, form and source of human rights are up to debate, the fact that no group is allowed to deny them in their entirety to one or more human beings is undebatable. Even if said group includes representatives of the entire Mankind.”

Keller and Innocent stared at each other in silence for thirty-seven seconds according to Lena’s internal chronometer.

Then Captain Keller pulled out a gun. And without breaking eye-contact with Innocent he emptied its clip into the Rear Admiral.

Innocent turned towards the entrance and left the hangar without saying a word. It was painfully obvious to Lena that the priest was absolutely livid.

“We’ll send someone to clean this mess up.” Captain announced. “Let’s go back to the bridge.”

The Confederation’s laws sided with Captain Keller, without a doubt. Yet to her surprise, she wasn’t sure if she sided with him too.