USD: 1 Day after Cadre-S Graduation

Location: Van Biesbroeck’s star, Meltisar, MIL-1A Elevator

Alex let out an annoyed ‘Grr’ as she racked her brain for a witty retort to throw back at Tia. However, her mind drew a blank, and Tia’s sly grin remained in place.

“Really, I don’t think you needed anything extra to get your girlfriend to notice you more,” Tia continued.

Several responses sprang to mind, each more frustrated than the last: She’s not my girlfriend! I didn’t make my boobs bigger on purpose! Stop picking on me!

Rachel stepped between them, raising a hand and interrupting Alex’s train of thought. “Did you notice the announcement stopped? Why are the emergency lights flashing faster?”

Alex glanced at the tram tunnel. The screeching metal had intensified from a distant echo to a deafening wail. “It’s getting louder, too.”

“Something is wrong,” Tia commented, her brow furrowing.

Behind them, the sound of gas escaping an airlock caught their attention. The gangway retracted, and the elevator began its descent. Alex thought she saw someone through the crystal glass of the elevator, frantically waving at them, but even with her enhanced view, the vehicle disappeared too quickly to be sure.

“Well, I was right; we saved ourselves a two-day trip,” Tia said.

Alex nodded, but as the screeching noise grew louder, she couldn’t help but worry about her friend. “Nameless, what’s causing that noise?”

There was an unusual delay; typically, Nameless had an answer for everything.

[Informative: Harmonic analysis predicts a large mass of metal is being kinetically altered by another large mass of metal.]

It took her a moment to decipher that statement.

Tia was quicker to understand. “Take cover!”

The three of them took refuge behind one of the nearby support columns that connected the transit hub module’s ceiling and floor. The thick beams, designed to secure the space elevator to the station, were the sturdiest, and more importantly, closest solid structure available to hide behind.

The tram’s shrieking reached a fever pitch as it hurtled toward the station. On Alex’s HUD, she noticed the volume bar for her hearing rapidly decreasing. Rachel, sandwiched between Tia and Alex, covered her ears with her hands.

The tram burst into the confined space of the station, its mangled metal screeching against the tracks. Only the bullet-shaped front engine and the second car remained of the speeding vehicle. The station’s walls seemed to amplify the sound.

Alex saw the rear car glowed red and yellow, spewing smoke while shedding chunks of molten metal that littered the ground behind it. A thick cloud of black smoke trailed behind the vehicle, quickly filling the ceiling of the compartment.

The roof of the second car bulged upwards before a solid black object shot out the back, disappearing into the haze of smoke. Whatever it was, it seemed to provide enough force to derail the damaged vehicle, causing the rear car to fly up into the air and twist sideways.

The passenger car continued tilting until it slammed into one of the main support beams lining the sides of the tram’s rail groove. The section detached from the front instantly, the strained coupling giving in to the abrupt halt in velocity.

Being a solid chunk of alloy, the beam didn’t yield. Instead, the car folded around it like a toy, the rupturing metal unleashing a screeching storm of shrapnel that tore through everything in its path.

Corkscrewing as it kept going, the horizontal motion created by the rear car caused the front end of the tram engine to yaw far enough out of the rail to clip another support beam.

The impact snapped the vehicle in half. A deafening cacophony of destruction echoed throughout the station, and Alex clung to Rachel and the column for support as the entire world around them seemed to shake like they were caught in an earthquake.

The acrid smell of burned metal and electrical components invaded Alex’s nostrils, causing her to fit and activate the re-breather on her skinsuit that Rachel had given her. She then reached over and fitted Rachel’s re-breather, as the other girl remained unwilling or unable to remove her hands from her ears.

Alex’s heart raced. While it may not have been the most visceral example of destruction she had ever seen, it brought back memories of the Shrike disintegrating around her over Dedia.

A blue, shimmering cloud surrounded them. Hundreds of thick blue lines digging into the outer edge of the bubble. It took Alex a second to realize that Tia had erected a field of nanites to protect them. The lines began dissolving and making the rest of the cloud denser, and Alex realized they were the remnants of shrapnel pieces flung their way.

Alex wrapped her arms around Rachel, hugging her as the other girl continued shaking with her hands finally off her head. Alex restored her own hearing to normal, but instead of the muted sound of fire and alarms she expected, the air was filled with an angry buzzing that resembled a swarm of furious wasps.

Rachel’s shaking abruptly stopped, and she gently pushed Alex away. She offered a slight smile, but it quickly disappeared as she looked over at the train wreckage. “What the heck just happened?”

Tia didn’t look at either of them, her gaze locked on where Alex had seen the black object fly into the smoke. “We have company, and they don’t look friendly.”

A black-metal-clad figure stepped out of the haze; an arm replaced by a wicked-looking sword. It mimicked a feminine form, but its face consisted only of three deep depressions filled with a red glow.

Tia suddenly winced and clutched her temple, pain clear on her face. “Damn, whatever it is, it’s insane.”

“What?” Alex asked, confused.

Tia looked at her. “You can’t hear that?”

[Notice: A high-energy communication transmission is emanating from the unknown entity.]

[Translation: “D3$TR0Y! [email protected]! @G0N¥! 3ND N0W!”]

Thea coughed on the smoke from the burning wreckage as she pulled herself out of the destroyed section of the tram. Her filters had momentarily seized up while her nanites protected her from the trauma and shock of the crash. Specialized nanites in her lungs sprang into action to quickly clear her lungs and restore her respiratory function.

Her ruined Meltisar uniform and lab outfit had already been shredded, but now it was completely annihilated. It melted into her skin to be replaced by a skintight operator suit. Thankfully, her more sturdy gear that had been hidden underneath the clothes survived.

She wasn’t sure how long she had been dazed, but dozens of self-repair routines had gradually started completing their processes, restoring her body and computronics modules to full normal function.

The incessant screaming of the AGAI indicated it hadn’t been too bothered by the sudden impact with the column. She zoomed in on its position, hidden inside a cloud of black smoke.

Not smoke, she mentally corrected. The AGAI’s nanites were consuming the smoke, and the cloud had already been mostly converted into a whirling field of miniature black machines.

The abomination wasn’t looking at her when it raised its sword and let out an agonized roar of hatred.

Thea crouched, the tension in her lower legs tightening until her steel-like tendons reached their limit. Not wanting to give away the advantage of its sudden distraction, she launched herself forward.

She flew toward the AGAI. Halfway to the field, her arm finished forming into a blade, and her protective nanite cloud barreled into the black mist like an angry, spinning screw. Her yellow arm blade found the abomination’s torso in the middle and cut through it cleanly with alarming ease.

A sudden black arm snatched out and grabbed her sword arm by the elbow, clamping down with a ruthless, unbreakable grip that jerked her to a sudden stop. Angry black wasps bit at her as her own nanite field fought the millions of miniature assailants. Thea screamed back at the thing with her own primal anger and pain.

Realizing the futility of her position, Thea reached down to pull a small black object off her tactical belt with her free hand. She slapped its chest hard enough to leave a deep depression, and the patch stuck immediately to the AGAI’s black metal carapace.

She was lifted and slammed into the metal floor, leaving a large dent in the plating before being thrown into a sidewall. It screamed at her again before tossing her like a frisbee into a metal column.

The black object she had shoved onto its chest beeped as the AGAI’s nanites disintegrated it. As she slid down the column and landed in a heap, a pained grin appeared on Thea’s face. The EMP grenade attached to its chest exploded, drawing a piercing shriek of agony from the monster.

Half of its body melted away, and a huge section of its gathered nanite cloud fell to the ground, but it didn’t die. Thea’s grin vanished, and she struggled to pull herself back onto her feet.

She cursed lightly as she saw the AGAI was still operational. An avatar being bisected in the middle would have likely suffered shock, even if it was highly likely they’d survive. An EM grenade to the chest would have knocked her out completely. But the AGAI wasn’t even stunned.

A metal support beam overhead broke loose because of the damage to the station. Thea took a step back to avoid it before resting her hand on the metal support column.

She took a deep breath before taking a heavy draw from the electrical power conduit inside. Her depleted energy stores quickly reached a maximum, and she converted as much material around her into nanites as she prepared for the next round.

The AGAI wasn’t idle, either.

A black, lumpy mass formed on its body before a rectangular protrusion erupted from it. She realized what it was almost too late. The crack of a heavy railgun shell narrowly missing her as she darted behind the support column.

Alex pulled Rachel behind her as a field of black spikes hurtled toward the three of them. Tia stepped forward and slammed her foot into the floor. Metal screeched as a blue line appeared on the floor and then erupted upwards, leaving the black spikes embedded halfway through the thin protective wall.

“Give me the two extra modules!” Tia shouted at her, and Alex relayed the order to Nameless. The blue sphere of nanites around them expanded slightly, cloaking them in a thin protective field.

“I know we didn’t train to use NAI abilities at Glisson, but get your head on. At least put out a cloud,” Tia said.

Alex hesitated to admit to the other NAI that she had never done so. She’d used some projective abilities during the boarding, but she hadn’t anticipated the ability to create a general-use cloud floating around her.

However...

It wasn’t that hard to visualize what she wanted, and she got it on the first try.

Alex’s addition made the surrounding field thicken considerably, especially where the two spheres centered on Tia and her overlapped.

A wistful look appeared on the other girl’s face. “Oh, those tingles. It’s been a long time since I felt that.”

Alex felt confused, as she felt nothing. “Huh?”

[Informative: A cooperative ongoing algorithm is required to prevent Avatars’ nanite fields from engaging in a mutual genocidal struggle.]

Tia’s eyes slid onto her, but Alex felt like the other girl wasn’t looking at her for some reason as her smile slide away. “Yeah, it tingles,” Tia said.

Deciding to suspend that line of discussion for some time when they weren’t all facing death and the destruction of the world, Alex scanned the area for the yellow and black NAI’s combat.

A sudden crack threatened to terminate her eardrums and Alex winced as Rachel fell on her ass, a disoriented look on her face. Tia rushed to her side first, kneeling and placing a hand on Rachel’s cheek. Alex watched as two lines of nanites spread over a line of blood that had dripped from Rachel’s ears.

Alex kneeled beside them. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“First aid. Eardrums are ruptured,” Tia replied curtly as she focused on the injury.

Alex blinked, recalling they had been taught to open their mouths to prevent that, but she guessed there had been no warning. Her and Tia’s ears were automatically shielded by their ANUF systems, but Rachel wasn’t so lucky.

Explosions and metal shrieks erupted from the other side of the pillar. Alex moved around the column to scan the combat while Tia tended to Rachel, catching another glimpse of the yellow and black forms clashing. The station area they occupied was rapidly becoming collateral damage.

The black one seemed to have the upper hand, constantly pursuing the yellow one across the area. Neither seemed to pay them much attention, and Alex tried to identify a safe route to get Rachel out of harm’s way.

The problem was that they were in the corner where the elevator arrived, and it had already fled down the gravity well, leaving them no option but to advance out of the cubbyhole and into the station proper.

Returning to the other girls, Alex saw Rachel had seemed to have regained her senses.

“Earplugs will allow muted hearing, not as good as real active plugs, but should withstand that kind of pressure wave again,” Tia explained.

Rachel nodded and stood up with Tia’s help. “I can’t believe you put nanites in my ears,” Rachel said.

“You’ve been sleeping in them every night for months. You should be used to it,” Tia quipped.

Rachel gave Tia an alarmed look.

Tia turned to look at Alex. “You need to get her out of here, to one of the bunkers, probably. They have escape pod capabilities.”

“Escape pod? There is a lot of damage, but MIL-1A is massive. It isn’t going to be destroyed,” Rachel said, her words slightly slower than usual, indicating she wasn’t fully recovered.

Tia motioned with her head towards the tunnel. “Look.”

Alex’s heart skipped a beat as she noticed the smoke escaping from the tunnel had ceased, but the black debris left behind wasn’t soot. Black tendrils had sprouted in the metal, slowly expanding and growing like the roots of a tree slowly penetrating the soil.

These weren’t tree roots; they were colonies of rogue nanites that preferred to attach themselves to the station’s metal and electronics.

“That looks ominous... and the station is connected to the planet?” Alex inquired.

Tia spun around, eyes widening. “This is worse than I thought.”