CHAPTER 015: Elysium IV

Adam Rytman

Ockham’s Razor/Elysium System

Long War

18 April 2547, 17:27

This wasn’t a battle. It was a massacre. And we weren’t the ones massacring. The difference between armed industrial bots and the dedicated combat machine of the Precursors was painfully obvious.

The closest commando didn’t even have time to figure out what was happening. The Choir guys didn’t know English. The machine leapt forward and made a complicated acrobatic figure over his head (with the head being lower than the legs, while the entire body being perfectly vertical) while using its hands to break his neck.

Fuck.

We might have a chance if it was more…. stable. If it stood there and shoot at us, using standard tactics. Instead, it was jumping around with insane speed, murdering us one by one. Breaking necks and gutting people with some short version of a lightsaber.

What’s worse, we couldn’t even fire at it properly, as it was in the middle of our soldiers.

After a minute of combat, we were down by five soldiers. Then, King tried to engage in close combat, by using his battle armour strength enhancement.

He lasted about five seconds. Then he died.

Avran also tried using his mighty powers. All he achieved was pushing the machine back. A bit. While we tried to fire at it, taking the occasion, even the anti-armour rounds bounced off.

No way we can win this. It’s just going to wipe us all out.

“WE ARE RETREATING!” I shouted. The surviving soldiers retreated, while Avran used his powers to keep it at bay, pushing it back each time it charged at us.

Makes me wonder how long his mana will last.

The door through which we came - and that was the only remaining way out of the room - opened. Two new machines came in.

I DON’T WANT TO BE HERE. I DON’T. I WANT TO BE BACK ON THE SHUTTLE, RIGHT…

Everything suddenly frozen. I saw something like that once. No way. It feels precisely as it did during the phaseshift jump. What the…

Something pulled me. Weakly. But I could feel the pull growing stronger bit by bit. I don’t understand what was happening. Only that my headache intensified. Together with the pull.

I don’t know what’s happening. But unlike the world around me, I could move.

When I closed my eyes, I saw the insides of the shuttle. King was there. He seemed to walk towards the cockpit, probably to talk with Sarah and try to figure out what was happening with the Numbers’ reinforcements.

Ugh. What the fuck is happening?!

I touched the nearest soldier. He disappeared. When I blinked, for a split second I could see him in the shuttle, still frozen in the same position. I closed my eyes just in case… and I confirmed it.

What the heck?! Did I… teleport him?!

The pull was getting stronger. I quickly touched the other soldiers and Avran. Then I let myself be pulled through the walls and corridors of Ockham’s Razor.

***

King

Shuttle/Elysium System

Long War

18 April 2547, 17:30

I was about to enter the cockpit when a wave of hot air came at me from behind. Followed by Nymphae suddenly appearing, with a shocked face. And sudden noise of something falling on the ground.

“What just happened?!” As if I know.

I turned back. Avran and his soldiers. All of them lying on the ground. Adam standing in the middle, turning towards us.

Then blood burst from his nose and he fell on the ground.

“WHAT JUST HAPPENED?!” Nymphae went nuts completely.

Great.

***

Vryn Vasaryk

TCS Cutlass/Elysium System

Long War

18 April 2547, 17:30

“An assault carrier is, essentially, a voidcraft carrier built upon the chassis of a battlecruiser.” Einstein explained. “Armour, anti-voidcraft defences and size of a battlecruiser. Artillery and missile weapons on the level of a light cruiser though with one or two heavy guns that can be traumatic even to a heavy cruiser. Plus a lot of voidcrafts.”

“Which, if I remember correctly, are our natural enemy.” One good thing was that our seabound navy used very similar ship classes. Of course, there were much more of them in space. It was much more complicated. And there were no submarines. But the battlecruiser played the same role as the ones in our fleet.

“Yes.” Einstein nodded. Then she froze for a second, probably consulting something with that damn machine. “Right now they are deploying voidcrafts. Since they are machines, the need for a crew compartment is out of the question. Because of that, a Kilo-class assault carrier can carry up to a thousand voidcrafts. It will leave some corvettes for self-defence, they are good support for the AV defence. Which will leave about nine hundred fifty fighters, most likely in bomber configuration. This means quite a lot of missiles.”

Wonderful. And each probably with an atomic warhead. I learned enough about our AV defence to know we can easily shoot twenty or thirty missiles. But if the enemy fires a hundred, we are dead.

“In fact, each of them has probably ten to twenty missiles.” Einstein sighed. “If data about Numbers’ fighters that Nymphae’ recovered from Alum is right, they can fire up to four at once. Good news is that they can’t fire more than that without the fighters’ targeting computer being too diluted to counter the missiles’ inherent stupidity and vulnerability to our electronic countermeasure. They need assistance during entire approach, which due to communication systems that are only as fast as light means that they are very vulnerable to ECMs. We can survive five fighters coming in range with close to one hundred percent certainty. Maybe seven. So they will probably send squadrons, each made up of twelve.”

“Which means a lot of fighter squadrons.” For now, we were just outside of the fleet missile range, and instead of running blindly after us they remained where they were when they arrived. That gave me a while to figure out a plan. “Any ideas what they will do?”

“They will probably launch their fighters squadron by squadron. They have much greater acceleration than Cutlass, so we can’t possibly hope to avoid them indefinitely. If we try to escape by using conventional thrusters, we’ll lock ourselves to a single possible course. It will make it a child’s play for their fighters to catch up, as they are superior both in acceleration and the turning radius. As long as we stay here, our phaseshift drive gives us an edge.”

Actually, I more or less figured that out already. Guess I’m figuring out the whole spaceship business.

“If we wait for the last possible moment to jump sideways, they won’t manage to turn towards us in time, and they will miss us. Flying beside us with a rather high speed. Which will force them to decelerate and then accelerate again to catch up, right?” This surprised her, but then she confirmed with a nod.

And if they send all the fighters at once and they end up fooled like that, then we would have an open way to their fleet. A frontal assault would be suicidal, but they probably won’t risk one of our missiles finding its way to their ships. And we could always ram them. So they will play it safe, knowing a group of us is bound to the Razor and we can’t really move away without leaving them.

“Alright, but they already know we have a phaseshift drive.” That was the problematic thing. “Now, onwards to the important question. How many jumps can we reasonably hope to do?”

Einstein didn’t look thrilled about that.

“About five. But that’s stretching it.” Yes. The last jump was painful. A lot of vomit to be cleaned. Several jumps in short succession will only make it worse. ”I think it might be a good idea to have our medical officer put half of the crew to sleep. We’ll wake them after the other half…” She didn’t have to finish it.

The enemy wasn’t stupid. They would stay close to the wreckage field, keeping captain and his group away from us, hoping to slowly weaken us by consecutive jumps with a hope we will overexert. If we lose too many people to side-effects of jumps, there won’t be enough active crew members to retreat through the Hypergate.

It was a similar tactic to the one the Choir Navy used to take down #73. Ikhvir might have constructed an unsinkable battleship, with enough firepower to deter all attacks from our planes and navies, but even the strongest ship will fall if an enemy will use their aircraft to place mines in every nearby port and even more planes and submarines to sink any tanker trying to sneak around.

Being on the receiving end wasn’t nice.

“Good idea.” I nodded. “Contact the captain. He has time until the third jump to figure something out. If he fails, we go home.”

I can’t imagine any way of them returning, but I’ll still stay around as long as we can. Losing the ship - and the Voice’ niece - wasn’t an option so we would not risk. Even if it means abandoning the captain.

***

King

Shuttle/Elysium System

Long War

18 April 2547, 17:35

“I’ve stabilized him. More or less.” Nymphae said. “He is unconscious, his brain continues to be on fire according to the brainscans, and I do not understand how he… we literally made a phaseshift jump. Without the hyperspace drive. If not for his brainwaves and the fact that some of those that avoided going insane after taking in too much Hyperspace supposedly could move from place to place too fast for it to be natural I would think it was a freak anomaly, but…”

Ugh. “Stop it. Please. You are talking too fast, and it’s really not important right now. Updates on Cutlass?”

Sarah was busy trying to dock. There was a deep crevice nearby, one that should cover us from enemy fire until they will literally come within twenty meters distances. Hopefully, there were no murderous machines in the crevices. But with the Numbers’ fleet bound to launch fighters towards us we had no other choice.

Avran and other soldiers were still stunned by the passage. Unlike Adam, they didn’t suffer from an epileptic seizure before losing consciousness, but they were still shocked and lost. Avran looked the worst of them all.

“Commander Vasaryk decided.” Nymphae seemed to control herself better. “They will try to avoid the Numbers’ as long as it’s possible, then they will dart towards the Pontifex system.”

Smart. It doesn’t help us, but definitely a good move.

“So, we have a bit of time to figure out how to get out of here.” Me, Sarah and Adam will probably resurrect on the Cutlass if they destroy the shuttle. But losing remaining soldiers and Avran - plus a shuttle itself - will be a major problem. We only had one more left, second passenger/cargo shuttle from Alum. “Ideas?”

“I’m not a miracle-maker, you know?” Nymphae decided to be tiring instead of useful.

“I don’t expect a miracle. I expect you looking through data and trying to figure out a way for us to reach the Cutlass. That’s all.”

“Well, right now we are hiding in a crevice inside the Razor. There is a small fleet of the Numbers’ pretty much within the missile range, and if they fire at us, we’re dead. Also, I expect them to send a fighter squadron after us soon. And if that wasn’t enough, this part of Razor is now powered up, at least partially, and we can’t be sure it won’t fire at us after we leave.”

“It didn’t fire even a single missile against neither the Cutlass nor Numbers’, and they are both in missile range. Numbers’ could be easily hit even by artillery.” I reminded her. Then I got an idea. “Some artillery towers of the Razor seemed big, nasty and undamaged. Could you hijack one to fire at Numbers’?”

She chuckled loudly. “As if that was possible! The civilization on the technological level of Precursors has their computer security more advanced. Much more advanced. Hundreds of years more advanced. I might be an AI, but…”

“At least try.” I interrupted her. “Do that for me.”

She sighed. Then she froze - this happened each time she was too busy to render her avatar. She returned after several seconds.

“ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!” Oh, she found out something interesting. “There is no security. Not a single antivirus scanner, no firewalls, no defensive AIs. What the…”

“Can you hack the weaponry, then?” She shook her head.

“Unfortunately, no. While I can browse the system, trying to change anything from here is still impossible. They use hardware blockades. Any nonstandard access attempt from the outside will trigger physical separation of the cables.” Isn’t that weird? “Weird. It’s like… the entire ship was completely decentralized, with every system being operated by dedicated crew members, with literally no mean of automatization or centralization of decision-making at the bridge! This makes no…”

“Yes, I know.” I interrupted her yet again. “We already established that Precursors made little sense. Now, where is the nearest artillery tower?”

***

Vryn Vasaryk

TCS Cutlass/Elysium System

Long War

18 April 2547, 17:42

“Aaand… they moved.” Einstein said, describing the obvious. “One hundred twenty bomber voidcrafts.” She added, after checking the readings. “Ten squadrons. Acceleration: 950g.”

An entire wing? Great, if they enter missile range, we’re dead.

Also - fast. I still can’t get used to the speed of things flying around. And I remembered that voidcrafts used by the Corporation could reach 2000g. Numbers’ were far behind. Not like I will argue about that. A frigate could reach a 850g acceleration while most of the ‘proper’ ships were capped at around 500g.

The bigger acceleration, the more space was taken by thrusters and fuel tanks. If you wanted to fit a serious amount of weaponry, you had to make amends. I already more or less figured out that part.

“Well, let’s wait for the last possible moment for a jump. Hopefully, we’ll have them waste missiles.” One jump out of three remaining. I really hope that captain figures something out.

***

King

Ockham’s Razor/Elysium System

Long War

18 April 2547, 17:47

Reaching the artillery towers itself turned out to be a bad idea. Despite the ship being decentralized, there were still local command posts. If we wanted to take over more than a single weapon system, we had to get for such a place.

The command centres were connected with the weapon systems through cables that lacked hardware blockades. The way the Razor was constructed looked more and more mysterious.

It would be a simple thing to explain it by the obsessive fear of an AI. Which would then mean that the Archenemy was a genocidal AI. Simple methods like firewalls could barely stop such a being. Hardware blockades, physically separating the connection after detecting any transmission out of ordinary, were a much more shrewd countermeasure than piling up software barriers.

But the machines prowling the Razor were using very sophisticated software defences… while simultaneously being rigged to detonate if they detected a security breach. Nymphae, despite her computer wizardry, couldn’t even get deep enough to make them explode, the best she could do was detecting the bomb and the whole self-destruction system.

According to her, that system was mostly software-based… and an AI capable of causing problems to Precursors was guaranteed to hack through it. Especially a Class Five one.

Besides, using deadly robots as security when you fight against a hostile AI is suicide. A creative one, but still suicide.

Until now, not a single thing we’ve discovered about Precursors’ made sense.

At least Nymphae hacked some security systems. Those close. Which meant cameras - that gave us the ability to avoid the now active machines.

“According to the partial data I recovered, they are called Overseers.” She informed me. “‘Responsible for keeping the peace and ensuring social unity, while eradicating harmful elements for the greater good of society’. Hmph. Sounds awfully totalitarian if you ask me.”

Exactly my thoughts. Not like I’m really interested.

“Captain should probably hear it. After he recovers.” If he recovers. But I won’t say that aloud. “Where now?”

“Left door.”

***

Adam Rytman

Ockham’s Razor/Elysium System

Long War

18 April 2547, 17:50

I’ve woke up with the worst headache of my life. That was slowly waning. I also spend who-knows-how-much time dreaming some insane things…

...That I forgot now. Only the feeling of my dreams being insane remained. Ugh.

Then again, I saw nothing even remotely similar in any previous VR games! If one suffered weird brain shenanigans, there was no pain. No feeling of forgetting something. In fact, in most cases, you got a barely interactive cutscene. And that was all.

And it even really kept me unconscious for, like, twenty minutes!

It was something new! Despite the pain (or maybe because of it), I was now even more interested in the game.

I opened my eyes to see that I was in the shuttle. Surviving Choir soldiers in a state of disarray. Most of them were unconscious. The rest looked only barely conscious.

I stood up (ouch, THE PAIN) and marched towards the cockpit, hoping to find King. Instead, I found only Sarah.

“Sarah? Where’s King?” She almost jumped out of the pilot’s seat. Ugh. At least she didn’t make us hit anything with the sudden manoeuvre.

“He llleft.” She stuttered a bit. “Bbback to Razor.”

What?!

She took a while, but she managed to more or less explain what happened.

Weird, because normally it’d be Nymphae’s job. Seems like she transferred her ego to King’s implants (we still haven’t figured how he and the clones developed them the second I connected them to the respawn system). Hmm. It feels weird without her constantly talking in my head.

King, that idea is just brilliant!

That the whole squadron of Numbers’ fighter voidcrafts will pay us a visit is less nice.

“How much time do we have?”

“Ttten minutes. They are ssslow.” She is really focused on not making any eye contact with me. That’s weird. But I have no time to search for answers here.

They are interested in sniping us from a short distance - otherwise, they would fly by us and send us a missile with an atomic warhead - with their onboard MAWs. Probably to limit damages to Razor. Or to avoid some automatic defense protocol accidentally activating.

Because of that, they fly reaaally slowly. Especially now that they already entered the wreckage field and decelerated almost to a crawl.

So, the Precursors’ systems lack any security, huh. I think I might have just got an idea.

“Can you contact King?” She nodded.

Obviously, the shuttle comm systems are much better than the ones in my battle armour.

Now I need Nymphae to help me.

***

King

Ockham’s Razor/Elysium System

Long War

18 April 2547, 17:52

Nymphae suddenly froze again.

“What is it this time?” We entered the ship’s second layer. The artillery command centre of that section of a ship was in the third layer. And the amount of Overseers I had to circumnavigate grew exponentially.

Nymphae getting distracted right now was the worst thing possible.

“All of you Clones are mentally broken.” She answered me after a few seconds. “Some biological error. Or genetic mistakes. I can’t explain your love for insane stunts. First, you get an idea to hack the Razor. Then, the captain wakes up and suddenly…” Suddenly she smiled widely. “I absolutely love it. I seriously can’t be bored with you around. Not even for a second.”

Aaand… our AI is changing into an adrenaline junkie. The captain will be thrilled.

At least he woke up.

“I’ll write a program that will guide you and warn you of incoming Overseers. He’ll need me earlier.” The pixie waved. “Goodbye! I’ll see you later.”

Then she disappeared.

***

Adam Rytman

Ockham’s Razor/Elysium System

Long War

18 April 2547, 17:50

How do you counter enemy fighters if you lack AV weaponry? By your own fighters. What do you do when you have no fighters but are currently stuck aboard a goliath belonging to an insanely advanced (and advanced in terms of insanity) ancient civilization? That seems to have some serious societal taboo about adding software blockades and computer security? While having a friendly AI and being of the same genetic, physical and mental stock of said advanced ancient civilization?

You steal some of their fighters and use them to combat the enemy, of course. I still hope King gets the Razors’ weaponry online. Preferably BEFORE the Numbers’ fleet does something funny. I don’t think one or two fighters can do a thing to an assault carrier.

Then again, it’s the Precursors’ we are talking about.

When Nymphae suddenly appeared in front of me, I turned towards Sarah.

“Where’s the nearest hangar?”