Receiving clearance from the Rig flight control, Dragon waited for the force field surrounding the facility to drop, then guided the transport to a soft landing on one side of the helipad, powering down the aircraft. She checked the prisoners, who were mumbling to each other in more or less incomprehensible voices, made sure that their vitals were in the green, then opened the hatch and climbed out, the light duty bipedal combat suit she was loaded into making a faint click of metal on metal when she reached the deck.
The PRT trooper waiting for her at the base of the steps saluted. "Hello again, Dragon. Armsmaster has sent word he's waiting in his lab for you. Do you require an escort?"
"No, thank you, Trooper Davidson, I know the way," she said with a deliberate smile in her voice she she handed him her credentials, the finely made mechanical features of her combat suit moving slightly to make her appear more human. He nodded as he ran her ID card through a scanner at his belt and handed it back before the machine even beeped, a small green light flashing. Smiling back under his helmet visor at the seven foot tall mechanical reptilian-appearing combat suit, utterly unaware that there was no biological system associated with it in any way, he saluted again.
"Welcome to the Protectorate ENE. We'll secure your aircraft and perform the usual refueling and maintenance. I understand you have three prisoners on board?"
"I do," she said, unable to keep the happiness out of her voice. "Saint and his two co-conspirators. We finally caught them."
"Excellent," the man replied, looking very pleased. "Allow me to congratulate you on that, I know how close the Guild has come before."
"Thank you. Could you transfer them to PRT high security containment and make sure they're kept incommunicado, please? Narwhal and a detachment of Guild personnel are en route to collect them, they should be here within three hours. I don't want to lose them at this point."
"I'll make sure it gets done, Ma'am."
She thought once again of something that had been bothering her since the capture of the terrorist and his friends, then a possible solution. It seemed stupid, but… Humans being what they were, it was worth trying.
Leaning down a little, she looked both ways, the metal dragon's head gaining a slightly conspiratorial air. "One warning… I believe that these people are, as well as terrorists and criminals, not entirely sane. Saint has been shouting about me being… well, a robot. A computer intelligence, something like that. He seems fixated on that idea to the exclusion of any common sense." Dragon laughed lightly, tapping the side of her head with one metal finger, the faint clink carrying only a short distance in the breeze.
"He just rants on and refuses to listen to any arguments to the contrary. We're going to have to examine him for competence to stand trial, I suspect. In a way I'm almost sorry for them, they're clearly severely disturbed and possibly not entirely responsible for their own actions. But I felt I should warn you. As soon as the containment foam is removed you're probably going to get an earful from all three of them and he's the loudest. I advise paying no attention to him, he has no evidence to back up his wild stories, merely a whole series of arguments that don't hang together. I mean, do I look like a robot?" She spread her arms and gestured to herself with her hands, suppressing a laugh with a significant effort.
Trooper Davidson smirked a little under his helmet. "Ah. I understand. One of those. We've encountered parahuman criminals with delusions more than once, I'm afraid. We'll put them in isolation cells and warn the guards to keep the sound dampeners on for their own sanity."
She nodded, laughing slightly once more. "That sounds like a good plan. I had to turn the microphone in the secure hold off halfway here, he was getting on my nerves something fierce. He was carrying on with all the passion of a true zealot, it's practically a religious calling for the guy, but it's extremely annoying to be honest. There's only a certain number of times you can be called a soulless machine trying to enslave humanity before you start to feel insulted, after all."
The trooper laughed out loud at her comment, said in a long-suffering voice. "I can understand that, Ma'am. Don't worry, we'll make sure he's kept somewhere no one will be bothered until your people collect him."
"Be careful, they're slippery bastards," she warned, straightening up. "We nearly got them at least a dozen times before, I don't want to lose them this time. That pain in the ass has already stolen and wrecked half a dozen of my suits, that really annoys me. Not to mention the number of people he's killed as collateral damage."
Davidson's mouth hardened into a thin line. "I understand, Ma'am. He and his friends won't be going anywhere, trust me."
"I do, Trooper. Thank you." Satisfied, and internally snickering at the apparently fairly effective hatchet-job she'd managed to do on Saint's reputation, she nodded politely to the man and headed for the entrance to the Rig itself while he put his radio to his mouth and called for backup. Rather more of it than strictly necessary, from what she could make out, which definitely amused her.
Running her ID card across the reader on the door she waited for it to beep and unlock, the autogun turrets either side of it slewing into a muzzle-up safe position in the process, then entered, heading for her friend's lab and wondering if he'd stopped trembling yet.
"What are we going to do about this?" Armsmaster said, waving at the monitor on one side of his long workbench, which was displaying the last clear frame of whatever it was that had eaten Dragon's probe. The sight was horrifying, giving him a sudden intense dislike of deep water every time he looked at it. The glowing yellow-orange eyes, pupils contracted in the bright light from the underwater device's lights, were just visible around the sides of the enormous toothy maw that was about to consume two hundred pounds of machinery like a potato chip. It looked, somehow, maliciously amused, very intelligent, and somewhat hungry.
The draconic power-suited form of his friend inspected the image, then she emitted a slight sigh, moving to the special chair he'd build for her visits and sitting down. It held the weight of her suit without protest. "I'm not entirely certain, Colin," she said after a moment. "We have evidence of something being out there, but I'm not sure what. Let's look at this carefully for a moment to make sure we're not overlooking something obvious."
"Go ahead," he replied, motioning to her to continue.
She did so. "OK. We know that we tracked the acoustic signature of something moving at totally silly speeds up the East Coast of the US, then out past Nova Scotia, and up to the coast of Quebec, apparently originating some distance to the north of here."
He nodded, listening and trying not to look at the monitor. After a few seconds he deliberately turned his back on it.
"We also found evidence in an adjacent location of both enormous kinetic energy strikes, presumably from a weapon of some sort, and something else that could be nothing other than a weapon, a truly devastating beam one of some sort. The physical evidence as you said suggests someone testing something and learning its capabilities, all of this done in the remotest area easily reached by water yet still fairly close to the US. Add to that the fact that it was all at a point where the surveillance assets we have in play were at a minimum, it suggests someone or several someones with more knowledge of both Protectorate and Guild operations than I'm entirely happy about."
Colin waited, agreeing with her summation but not saying anything yet.
"We also were guided, very cleverly although very strangely, to Saint's base, which had been totally disabled in a manner that removed all his weapons and any life support but left him and his comrades completely unharmed. Whoever it was had left, leaving only the weapons damage, something that looked at least by implication to be impossibly large footprints in the mud, and three terrorists for us to simply collect."
"OK, that's all factual," he admitted, reaching behind him and put the monitor in standby with press of a finger. He could feel it looking at the back of his head…
"Then, after all that, we tracked another set of acoustic data back south, even faster than the outbound trip, and attempted to intercept it for identification. Not only did we not manage to see it until it let us see it, it somehow detected my probe from several miles away and engaged some form of amazingly effective countermeasures that made it drop off the SOSUS network completely, and also go for all intents and purposes invisible. After which, during the second intercept attempt which was at least partly guesswork, something… ate… my probe."
Dragon shook her head a couple of times. "When I say it out loud like that it sounds even more ridiculous than when I think it."
"We both saw it, though."
She shrugged. "We saw something. There's no other data than the short video clip and some very dubious sonar data that could well have been spoofed."
"For some reason I tend to believe what we saw at the end was exactly as it appeared," he said, while agreeing with her point. "There was something about the way it was looking at the probe. That was real, and it wasn't an animal, it was an intelligent being. It knew exactly what the probe was and what it was doing."
"To be honest, I agree," she nodded. "But it could also be explained by other things. There are also problems with the interpretation of the data." Ticking the points off on her metal-clad fingers, she said, "One, we don't know for sure that what we tracked north is the same as what we tracked south. Two, we don't know for sure that what took out my probe is actually what we tracked south either, although it would be a hell of a coincidence if it wasn't. Three, we don't know that the weapons test evidence is conclusively linked to either the outbound or return SOSUS traces. And four, we have absolutely no idea who is behind any of it."
"All true," he finally replied with a nod of his own. "What do you think, though? Are all of those things connected?"
"I'm pretty sure they are, yes," she said, lowering her hand. "There are certainly other possible explanations but it stretches credulity to the breaking point that all of these things are just coincidences. I think they're linked although I must confess at this point I can't see how."
Accessing the monitor controls by remote she took it out of standby again and somewhat reluctantly he turned to look at the image. "Look at that," she went on, playing the short clip of a few dozen frames in slow motion, which made it all the more horrifying. "That thing moves like a living creature, definitely. Enhancing the video as much as possible reveals more detail, you can see that it's probably somewhere in the region of a couple of hundred feet long. About half the body is visible in this frame from a rather bad perspective, but interpolating the missing parts gives this..."
He watched as a computer generated outline filled in the rest of the creature, which seemed to taper to a long slender tail, the entire thing looking like a vast lizard crossed with a gigantic eel, obviously capable of extended deep water swimming. "The details might be wrong but I think it's broadly correct. But it doesn't match anything on record, fossil or otherwise. Nothing like this has ever lived, certainly not at that scale. The thing is at least twice the length and probably three times the mass of a blue whale. It's basically a sea serpent right out of classical myths."
"A biomimetic machine of some sort?" he mused, looking at the graphic, playing devil's advocate. She shook her head.
"I don't think so, no. The motion is too fluid."
"A projection, then."
"Probably not. Or a hologram, or anything artificial. I think what you see is what you get." She indicated the light emitting organ between the thing's eyes which was the source of the electric blue glow they'd seen before he turned the probe lights on. "The emitted spectrum of the blue light is consistent with a luciferin-based bioluminescent organ, such as some jellyfish have, rather than an artificial source. There was no mechanical sound of any sort, even before it went silent. I think it really is a living organism. One larger than anything else on the planet."
Colin couldn't help the shudder he felt go through him, but managed to suppress most of the visible indications of it.
"I suppose the question is, is it hostile?" Dragon continued in a thoughtful voice.
"It ate your probe! I'd call that a hostile act."
"Only after we provoked it. The first time it only looked at it then left the area. We followed it and pushed too hard. You can't honestly say that was an unambiguously hostile act." She shrugged as he sighed very slightly, then nodded a little.
"All right, that's a good point."
"One big problem, though, is that I can't work out how it connects to mystery weapons tests and all the rest of it. This thing could well, in fact probably does, account for the SOSUS traces both up north and back again, but what happened in between those two times? There's several hours of something wandering around destroying the landscape wholesale, using something we don't yet understand, then the little matter of Saint and his friends. I'd put it down to a very powerful Tinker experimenting but that then leaves the damn sea monster hanging! Not to mention, were all those depressions in the mud actually footprints or not?"
"I really can't see how they could be," he sighed. "All the rest of it, yes, it's a stretch, but it's at least possible if unlikely. A three hundred and fifty foot bipedal… something… wandering around off the coast of Quebec, on the other hand..." He looked at his best friend with a slightly lost expression very unlike his normal demeanor, not something he'd ever show to anyone else. "That's just too much. The depressions have to have been made by something else and just coincidentally look like huge footprints. They were only round impressions in the silt when we got there anyway, they could have been almost anything. Craters from explosions, for example. But not footprints. That's just… absurd."
Dragon looked at him, then the monitor, before nodding slowly. "I tend to agree. It seems a little too far-fetched. But I still have no idea where that thing came from, and how it connects to the weapons tests." She indicated the huge creature on the monitor with a gesture. "It's very puzzling indeed."
"As is how whoever is behind all of this knows so much about our methods, capabilities, and protocols," he remarked, getting another thoughtful nod in return.
"Yes, that part is almost the most worrying one of all. I can't see how it could be accidental, far too many things needed to line up perfectly to result in what happened. I think you were right, I was neatly manipulated into ending up in the right place at the right time with the right equipment, but I have no idea how, which is both confusing and irritating." She made a small sound of annoyance. "Although, since it resulted in the capture of Saint and his crew, I'm still grateful."
"It does suggest that the people behind all this are at least somewhat heroic in outlook even if their methods are very unorthodox," he agreed after a moment.
"I think unorthodox is an understatement, Colin," she snickered.
They both fell silent for a little while, looking at the image on the monitor. Eventually, he stirred. "The other big unknown is what connection does all this have with Brockton Bay, Saurial, and Raptaur?"
Dragon gave off an air of deep thought, nodding a little. "Yes, that is indeed a good question. Looking at that thing I have to agree that the eyes suggest that there is a connection with those two, Raptaur particularly. They look just like hers, only much larger. The PHO thread on her first appearance did devolve into speculation that she lived in the bay, which an interesting coincidence. She jumped into the water at the end of that encounter you had with her, after all. And there are rumors that at least one fisherman reported a sighting of something that could have been a similar creature to her, only vastly larger." She shrugged slightly. "He was allegedly drunk at the time so we need to take that with a huge pinch of salt, but it's a fascinating data point even so."
"I wonder if they really are related," he finally said after thinking it over. "They look nothing alike except for the eyes. I could see Saurial and Raptaur being sisters, or something along those lines, I suppose, and Clockblocker did describe Saurial as having eyes just like those, but this aquatic creature doesn't look at all like them."
"Different stages of life, like caterpillars and butterflies, perhaps?" she suggested thoughtfully. "There are many cases in nature of animals going through wildly different morphological stages as they mature."
"It could be possible," he replied after thinking it over. "But it still doesn't explain the sheer size of this swimming one. It's absolutely vast. What does it eat? It would need a huge amount of energy to move at all, never mind manage three hundred miles an hour for hours on end. Even given the sheer ridiculousness of a thing like that having a biological supercavitating drive, it would still need a source of power that is far larger than any living system I'm aware of would produce."
Dragon sighed a little. "Another good point, of course. I don't know. This whole thing is one impossibility layered on the next. Somehow, I think Saurial, Raptaur, and this… whatever we call it… are related. There is a link with Brockton Bay that seems real but very unclear. We don't know why either of the first two seem to be on such good terms with the Dock Worker's Union either. We don't know what did all the damage in Quebec, or how it found Saint, or how it knew enough to ensure that I went to investigate at exactly the right time. None of it really makes any sense."
They looked at each other for a while.
Colin finally asked the question he'd asked earlier, one that was still bothering him. "How many of these things are out there, though? We know of probably three, although the last one is by far the most worrying. There could well be more. Where did they come from, and why are they here? And where did that thing go after we lost it?"
She shrugged. "In answer to all those questions, I don't know," she continued after a moment. "We simply don't have enough data to go on. It's quite possible we have two different unrelated things happening, one being this sea monster and the other being some unknown group which would on the face of it have at least a very talented Tinker and most likely one or more high-level Thinkers. The weapons used and who used them are actually easier to explain than the creature."
"I suppose they are," he commented, looking at the monitor again. "It still doesn't explain what it or they are."
"Aliens, perhaps?" Dragon asked in a facetious tone, making him smile a small amount, then suddenly look worried. "I was joking, Colin," she added, shaking her armored head good-naturedly. "I don't think they're aliens. Probably."
"I almost wish it was that simple," he muttered.
"What do you want to do about it?" she asked after a short pause. "We seem to be agreeing on the details even though we have no idea of the cause for any of it."
"I'd prefer to simply forget about all of it and go back to something that makes sense," he grumbled, "but that would be highly irresponsible. I'm going to have to write up a report and hand it to the Director when she gets in, which is in…," he glanced at the clock on the wall, "… one and a half hours. Will you still be here then?"
"I'll stay, yes," she nodded. "I'll go over my data while you're working on it and add what I have to your report."
"Thank you, Dragon," he replied gratefully. "I'm not looking forward to the meeting I'm going to have. I expect Director Piggot is going to react somewhat excessively to this information."
Turning to his computer he pulled the keyboard closer, then dismissed the unnerving image from the monitor and pulled up a report form, beginning to fill it in. "And after all this, I still need to contact either Saurial or Raptaur, or both, to ask about their aid in constructing the weapon."
"You could ask about their really big brother or sister swimming around in the Atlantic," Dragon commented, making him look at her.
"Do you think I should?"
"No, Colin, I don't think you should," she laughed. "It's probably best to forget about it for the moment. Just remember, be polite. Don't push. I'll help you if you want."
"That would be very useful," he admitted, feeling a little less concerned. "I'm not good with people."
"We seem to understand each other pretty well," she noted.
"You're different," he muttered absently, concentrating on the report he was writing. "I like and understand you. Most people are irritating and very inefficient."
She watched him fondly, smiling in the innermost recesses of her processors, trying to work out how she was going to tell him what she was. Sooner or later she'd have no choice.
At least Saint was now out of commission. She owed whoever had arranged that a big favor.
"I'm telling you, that machine is going to be the death of everyone on the planet," Geoff tried once again, pleading with the PRT sergeant to see sense. The man simply looked at him. "You have to listen, we need to stop it."
"Dragon, you mean?" the man asked slowly.
"YES!" he shouted.
"The best known Tinker in the world, one of the most respected parahumans alive, the one responsible for the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center, the inventor of containment foam, and a personal friend of Armsmaster? That Dragon?"
"YES! For god's sake, we may not have time, it could be plotting to overthrow the government right now!"
"OK. So let me get this straight," the man said thoughtfully. "You, a well known international terrorist who has been directly or indirectly responsible for numerous crimes against people and property throughout Canada and the US, are telling me that Dragon, the aforementioned respected Tinker, inventor of containment foam, etc, etc, is an artificial intelligence bent on ruling the world?"
"Oh, for fuck's sake," Geoff screamed, staring at the ceiling in the hopes of some divine guidance, which seemed to be in short supply at the moment. "How many times do I have to say it? Yes, Dragon is an AI, and yes, it's a risk to the entire world."
"Hmm." The man rubbed his chin for a moment, eyeing Geoff closely. "And obviously you have some form of proof of these accusations?"
Geoff stared at him, then slowly deflated. "Ah… I have… or I had… I mean, there's..."
"About what I thought. Good story, eight out of ten on delivery and passion, but about two out of ten on plausibility, buddy. You might want to work on that. I'm sure you'll get your day in court." The PRT man stepped back from the force-field door. "Your ride back to Canada will be here in about two hours, so just relax until then. You look kind of stressed."
The force-field went mirrored and opaque with a short humming sound, leaving Geoff staring at his own reflection. A moment or two passed before he yelled in impotent rage, kicked the force-field very hard, then hobbled to the bunk and collapsed on it, trying to think of a way out of the situation.
"You were right, Davidson, the guy's completely nuts," Sergeant Sawyer commented, entering the break room and taking off his helmet to scratch his head with his free hand. "Absolutely barking mad. Won't shut up about Dragon and artificial intelligences. He's obsessed with her."
"She warned us he was," Davidson laughed, popping the tab on a can of soda. "His friends are nearly as bad, but that guy is one of the craziest people I've ever met. I nearly had to foam him again just to get him to shut up for five minutes."
"Well, in a couple of hours he's the Canadian's problem again, which is none too soon in my opinion," Sawyer said, shaking his head for a moment. "Poor bastard. He'll end up in some sort of institute, mark my words. Drugged to the eyeballs on Thorazine or something."
"At least he'll be quiet, then," Davidson replied sourly, sipping his drink. "Noisiest prisoner we've had for years."
"True, that," his superior snickered, heading for the fridge and something to eat.
"Lisa, look at this," Alec said, waving her over when he saw her come out of the kitchen of their base. She glanced at him, seeing he was rather pale, then approached, her power giving her data as she did so.
Scared, found out information that worries him.
Reading PHO.
Report on PHO that is terrifying.
She deliberately clamped down on her abilities, then accepted the notebook computer he handed her. "There's more information on that Raptaur thread that was posted by the guy who was saying he'd heard a drunk fisherman talking in a bar on the docks," her colleague said, pointing at the entry she'd already noticed. She read it quickly, then blinked in horror and read it again. Slumping onto the sofa beside Alec she stared into space, her power fizzing and speculating wildly.
All she could think was, 'There really is a bigger one!? That big?'
She could only come to one of two conclusions based on the available data. Either the speculation on the PHO board was right and there actually were a family of preposterously large intelligent reptiles, possibly of alien origin, which for some reason were living in and around Brockton Bay and sending their little ones to shore, or this mystery girl was the most overpowered and versatile Changer she'd ever even heard of. She really wasn't sure which conclusion disturbed her more.
"What do we do, Tats?" Alec moaned. "Raptaur was bad enough. I don't know if I could handle there being something like her but eighty feet or more tall swimming around out there."
"Don't worry, Alec, it's PHO, so it's probably wildly exaggerated even if it is true in parts," she assured him, lying through her teeth with a calm expression that was costing her a lot to keep on her face. "Even the guy who posted it says the fisherman was drunk. He probably saw Raptaur swimming around in the dark and his imagination did the rest."
She was actually pretty sure, based on what her power was telling her, that the man in question was not only being deadly accurate but had been stone cold sober at the time, but she wasn't going to say so until she had more information. This whole thing was driving her a little nuts, not only because of the effect it had on her abilities, which even now were going erratic as she tried to draw inferences about the new report. That alone convinced her there was something to it and it related to Raptaur, the brunette, and probably Saurial. Very reluctantly she came to the conclusion that she was going to need to seek the reptilian cape out to see if she provoked the same reaction as the girl did.
But she was going to do it discreetly, from a safe distance, and very unthreateningly.
Another thought made her stop, then internally smirk. 'I wonder if Coil is having as much trouble with this as I am,' she mused. 'Knowing him, sooner or later he's going to try to get involved. I bet that ends badly.'
The thought cheered her up immensely. Enough that when Alec in an attempt to stop thinking about alien megafauna swimming around in the water only a couple of miles away challenged her to a video game, she accepted with a smile.
He still won, the bastard.
Reading through the PHO thread, Hannah stopped on the latest report from the contributor who had started the rumor about there being a family of even larger Raptaur-like creatures out in the bay. She read his entry and felt a momentary chill go through her. "God, that would make it bigger than Leviathan," she mumbled to herself, before shaking her head abruptly. "No evidence except a tall story from a drunk fisherman in a bar, though. It can't be true."
She thought for a moment, then added, "I hope to hell it isn't true, at least." Considering the idea, she decided she wouldn't report it just yet to Director Piggot, genuinely worried about the reaction that would ensue. Raptaur was bad enough and she was a known factor. Adding unverified and probably unverifiable rumors of hugely larger related constructs swimming around in the water would only make the poor woman have some form of fit, most likely.
'Anyway, it's very unlikely that there could be anything that large out there anyway,' she thought. 'I doubt we'll get any proof of huge sea monsters any time soon.'
Feeling that she was correct, she closed the web browser, made a few notes in her notebook, then went back to the rest of her work, sighing about the way Colin seemed to have neatly, and without actually noticing, maneuvered her into doing a lot of his as well. If it wasn't for the fact that it gave her something to do while everyone else was asleep, she'd have been very annoyed, but as it was at least it kept her busy.
Shaking her head in fond mild irritation, she opened the next report and started going through it.
Colin leaned back and stretched, making Dragon look up from her own occupation. "Finished," he muttered. "I'm not looking forward to the next part."
Picking up the phone, he dialed a three digit internal code, then waited for a moment. "Director? I need to see you as soon as possible."