Corazon Santiago smiled, but there was no humour in the expression. Behind that hard exterior and ice-black eyes lay a steely resolve to ensure the survival of her people on Planet whatever the cost.
And to that end, her eyes were turned towards the empire of the Cybernetic Consciousness.
At this moment in time, the Consciousness represented the greatest threat to Spartan sovereignty. Aki Zeta-5 was quite clearly bent on setting herself up as the only legitimate authority on Planet. She had swept to power as Planetary Governor with a landslide victory, gaining over eighty percent of the vote, with Santiago left trailing behind with less than twenty percent.
Since that time Aki had reinforced the UN Charter, a document which Santiago saw as worse than worthless, and instituted a Global Trade Pact, an agreement from which the Spartans benefited least out of all the factions. The Pact had been opposed only by Santiago and Sister Miriam Godwinson of the Lord's Believers, with the Free Drones abstaining from the vote.
Santiago's hatred of the Consciousness had first taken root when they had exterminated the Human Hive. The few reports that had filtered out to Spartan operatives before the Hive fell spoke of the incredible technological advances made by the Consciousness. While the best weaponry available to the Spartan troops was the newly developed missile launcher, Consciousness troops were reputedly armed with fusion lasers, super-powerful armaments which could burn their way through Spartan silksteel armour within seconds.
Now it had become apparent that the Cyborgs were emerging as the most powerful faction on Planet. While not strong enough to single-handedly take on all the other factions combined, Cyborg military might was certainly more than a match for Santiago's troops.
Santiago turned all these things over in her mind as she walked alone along a deserted corridor in the far reaches of Sparta Command. Did she dare to openly declare war against the Consciousness? She knew that Aki Zeta-5 had the backing of many of the other factions, including the powerful Data Angels and the UN Peacekeepers, but would any of the other factions actually help Aki Zeta-5 repulse an offensive?
Slowly, her cold smile broadened as she realised the simple answer.
What is easier to deal with than a united enemy? A united enemy whose every movement you already know...
* * * * *
Rachelle Alpha-Four sighed in contentment as the hot water cascaded over her. She had just spent a long, hard day teaching the rudiments of Centauri Meditation to prospective Data Angel Empathi, and right now this shower was everything she needed.
In the next room over, she could sense Deanna Nu-Eight preparing for the sleep cycle, and on the other side she could feel the comforting presence of their bodyguard, Iain Rho-Seven, as he settled down for the night.
Safe in the knowledge that both her fellow Cyborgs were near her, she deactivated the shower, dried herself thoroughly and donned her long, flowing white gown which she always wore in diplomatic missions.
Not feeling like sleep just yet, Rachelle walked over to the window and looked out at the incredible vista. The Sprawl had not yet lived up to its name, and the surrounding areas of Planet were reasonably unspoilt.
The soft light of Alpha Centauri B washed over the landscape, causing the xenofields to burn with a subdued red fire. In the distance, the lights of Data DeCentral lit the horizon with a muted glow, and the carpet of forest waved gently in the breeze.
She closed her eyes and opened her mind to Planet, as her Empath tutors had taught her, and also to the Consciousness. The pulsing background thrum of Planet's massive neural net was echoed by the collective heartbeat of the living Consciousness.
Softly, Rachelle began to sing, a song of empathy with Planet that she had learned from her Empath tutors.
«The xenofields stretch far, my love,
So far I cannot cross
The mind worms lie in wait for me
Upon the soft green moss
And so, because I cannot pass
I lift my voice and sing
Imploring Planet, in her strength
Her influence to bring
The xenofields part as a sea
Before my staff of hope
The mind worms shy away, my love
I walk on down the slope
Until at last I take your hand
And meet your eyes with mine
And we will be together, love
Both now and for all time»
As she finished the song, she closed the link and began to turn away from the window, but suddenly something caught her eye. Was she mistaken? A tiny flash of light, no more than a white pinpoint in the deep red of the xenofungus, flared for a second and then was gone.
Unsure as to whether or not her imagination was playing tricks on her, she turned away from the window again...
...and almost fell as an explosion rocked the base to its foundations. A second one hit a few seconds after, and again she stumbled, just managing to catch herself on the corner of a table.
She struggled to the door and hit the 'open' button, and the door swished open into a nightmare of running citizens, screaming children and yelling soldiers. Voices surrounded her, hemming her in on all sides. She could catch only a few words - 'Spartans' and 'attack' were the only two that stood out.
Instinct took over, and she reopened her mind to the Consciousness, intending to apprise them of the situation...and came up against a blank wall. All she could feel was the confusion and panic in the minds of Iain and Deanna, with the jumbled emotions of the other shells in the base coming through faint and indistinct.
They must've taken out the uplink node...
For the duration of their stay in The Sprawl, an uplink node had been set up in order to facilitate their interfacing with the Consciousness as a whole.
If the Spartans have hit it, I can't interface, nor can I communicate. How will Aki Zeta-5 know what's going on?
Of course, there would be a 'blind spot' in the Consciousness, but such failures were not uncommon - an uplink node failure had, in the early days, cut Pi Complex off for over a week. Consciousness operatives were likely to ignore this failure as a minor glitch in the network.
It was time for a backup plan. She extricated Deanna and Iain from their rooms and headed off with them towards the main dome of The Sprawl.
As they made their way gingerly toward the hub of operations, further explosions rocked the base, although by now they were become more sporadic, with greater intervals between then.
The Data Angel defenders must be rallying, thought Rachelle as she picked her way through the rubble of a ruined corridor. They don't stand a chance against a Spartan assault - they are poorly trained and nowhere near as well equipped as Santiago's troops.
Why is Santiago doing this? queried Deanna Nu-Eight. It is completely illogical - she stands to gain so little and lose so much from attacking this one Data Angel outpost.
She must have a reason, Iain broke in. Santiago doesn't just do things randomly. There is always method to her madness - she is cold and calculating behind all the macho posturing. We must find out what she intends to gain.
They ran on through the wreckage...
* * * * *
In the nerve centre of The Sprawl, Governor Lianor Tian ran a hurried hand through her tousled hair and turned to her communications officer.
«Rel, any advance on getting through to Data DeCentral yet?»
Lieutenant Dmitri Rellen paused in his key-tapping long enough to answer:
«No luck, Gov. They must have comm jammers - can't get a word out of Central.»
«Then it looks like we're on our own...»
Tian set her jaw as her gaze swept over the tactical scanners. The Spartan troops outnumbered her own by at least three to one, with no hope of reinforcements from Data DeCentral. The situation looked bleak, but while there was still a shred of hope...
She spun round in her chair as three Cyborgs entered the room. For a second, her tired brain failed her, but then her memory made a tentative identification - the Empath who had been teaching her citizens how to meditate, the diplomatic envoy who had worked hard to improve relations between the Data Angels and the Consciousness, and their bodyguard.
All three were covered in dirt and dust, but their faces were calm and serene despite the battle raging not far away. The Empath - Rachelle Alpha-Four, Lianor's memory reminded her - stepped forward.
«Governor, how goes the day?»
With a few key presses, Lianor brought up a tactical display. Data Angel troops were represented by purple dots, with Spartans represented in red for 'threat'.
Data Angel pinpoints were being extinguished all over the base. The Spartans were quite clearly winning the battle.
Rachelle spoke again.
«Governor, if you remember, we brought with us four fusion laser rifles as a gift to help you defend your city. Perhaps the time has come. With your permission, we would like to use them to help repulse the Spartan onslaught.»
«Be my guest! We need all the help we can get!»
Rachelle turned to Dmitri, greeting him with a dazzling smile.
«Lieutenant, since we have four rifles and there are only three of us, would you care to accompany us and operate the fourth?»
Dmitri cast a quick glance at his Governor and, upon receiving a nod from her, relinquished his chair, stepped towards Rachelle, and gripped her hand.
«Of course. We must all do everything we can.»
Quickly, they carried the lasers to the rooftops. On the way, Deanna fitted Dmitri with a portable fusion reactor to power his rifle, and he returned the favour by providing the three of them with rebreathers and Data Angel quicklinks.
«These quicklinks are tuned to a frequency above the range of the Spartan comm jammers. Unfortunately, they do not have the power required to contact Data DeCentral, and we cannot tune the rest of our communications equipment to this frequency, but they should suffice to keep the four of us in contact if we get separated.»
Finally, they reached the gently sloping roofs of The Sprawl. Below them, the battle raged, lit by the muted half-light of Alpha Centauri B. Spartan rovers raced in at Data Angel defenders, taking a few shots and then speeding away again.
The four of them quickly double-checked their rifles, then flung themselves flat on the rooftop to avoid a stray gatling laser bolt from one of the Spartan speeders. Despite the Spartans having access to missile launchers, some of Santiago's troops were still using the older gatling lasers and particle impactors.
Eventually, they were all ready. As an afterthought, Rachelle threw Dmitri a slim silver package, topped by a red activation stud. He looked at her quizzically, obviously wondering what on Chiron it was.
«It's a Probability Sheath. They're only in the experimental stage, but they give 50% better defence than anything the Spartans have. They could absorb the energy from one missile every minute and still leave you without a scratch. It draws its power from the fusion reactor on your back - just jack it in and power it up.»
Dmitri quickly clipped the power cable into the reactor and pressed the activation stud, with the three Cyborgs following suit. Faint silver coronas shimmered to life around the four of them, encasing them all in high-power defensive shielding.
As one, the three Cyborgs raised their weapons, sighted on a target, and fired.
For a second there was the faint hum of the rifles charging, and then three bursts of scintillating blue energy poured forth, homing in on their targets as though guided by some invisible hand.
One hit a Spartan soldier in the head, the body tumbling slowly to the ground. Another seared through the armour of a missile rover, leaving the smoking husk to smoulder gently in Planet's oxygen-poor atmosphere.
The third struck a Spartan on the chest, fusing his armour - and the man behind it - into a bubbling, hissing chunk.
Dmitri levelled his own weapon and fired into the thickest concentration of Spartan troops, wounding several as the burst hit a rover, which exploded in a cloud of shrapnel.
The ensuing burst of flame was reflected by a single pinpoint of silver in the half-light - a pinpoint which triggered a memory in Rachelle's mind. Producing a pair of binoculars, she quickly scanned the area, revealing a Data Angel sensor array, still untouched by the ravages of the Spartan troops.
This is turn gave Rachelle an idea. She activated her quicklink, and set it to scan for and lock onto the carrier frequency used by the station to send out its scan pulses.
Within two seconds, her link found the frequency and locked on. Rachelle then retuned her personal uplink frequency to match the sensor station's, closed her eyes, and sent her consciousness out along the link.
It was a big risk to take, especially since the link was very tenuous, but she made it without incident. She quickly downloaded the sensor data, intending to quicklink it back to the Command Centre at The Sprawl, then switched to her primary objective - drain the station's energy coils and use the power to boost a comm signal through the Spartan jamming and contact Data DeCentral, the closest Data Angel base.
Stage one went easily enough, although it seemed to take forever for the protesting power coils to discharge their energy into the transmission matrix. Eventually the transfer completed, and she stretched out into the matrix...
From here, the Spartan jamming was like a blizzard, a storm without end. She had to be the bright light which shone through the tempest to the calm on the other side...
Fashioning a link from here was one of the hardest things she had ever done, but finally Data DeCentral responded.
* * * * *
«Datatech.»
The voice was insistent. She couldn't just ignore it this time, as she had done before. She tapped her keypad, giving the speaker an open channel.
«Yes?»
«Communications here. We have an incoming transmission from a Cyborg claiming to be from The Sprawl, which she says is under heavy attack. She said something about every second counting.»
Instantly, Datatech Sinder Roze was on full alert.
«Put her through.»
Static obliterated the picture on her viewscreen, but she tapped a few keys and eventually managed to tune it out. The voice on the other end was insistent, but with the veneer of calm she had heard in so many other Cyborg voices. Her face, while calm, appeared...unreal, as though the user was merely projecting the image of a face...
«Datatech Sinder Roze,» she said, «my apologies for not approaching you through the proper channels, but this is a matter of international emergency. The Sprawl is under attack from Spartan troops who have deployed a communications jammer to blanket all transmissions. Luckily I managed to circumvent their jamming using a nearby sensor station.
It is imperative that you send reinforcements at once. I do not wish to impugn your more-than-competent defenders, but I fear they will soon be overwhelmed if not reinforced.
Please, Datatech, I beg you to act soon. We...»
Her eyes flickered for a second, and then the face of the Cyborg disappeared, to be replaced by static...
Rachelle snapped back to her body and suppressed a scream. She had been halfway through her speech to Datatech Roze when the sensor station's proximity warning had begun to shrill. Within a split-second, she had opened her awareness and found the cause of the warning - a Spartan missile headed straight for the station. She had quickly severed the connection and had transferred back across the link to her own body.
Only a second after she had left, the sensor station erupted in an incandescent flare.
Deanna cast her a quick worried glance in between firing rapid shots at any Spartan who showed his or her head.
Is something wrong? she sent. Rachelle was quick to reassure her.
No - in fact, everything is perfect. I just managed to contact Data Angel Command - reinforcements should be on their way very soon.
Deanna nodded, then was forced to duck as a searing burst of gatling laser energy passed by close overhead. She turned back to her rifle, firing with cool precision and hitting nearly every target at which she aimed.
Suddenly Rachelle spotted a flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye. A small, lithe Spartan figure slipped from cover behind a rover, dashing across to take up another position behind an ancient tree.
She sighted, and when the figure sprinted forward again she blew his head clean off, leaving the headless body to crumple into the mud. As it fell, she thought she caught a glimpse...
Yes. He was wearing plasma steel armour and carrying a probe operative's typical equipment.
Opening the quicklink, she shot a probe alert down to the command centre and warned her companions to be on the lookout.
This must be the reason behind Santiago's attack, she sent. She must want some kind of information. But why a Data Angel base? Surely they would be the best defended against probe teams...
Down in the command centre, Governor Lianor Tian was having severe problems. She relinquished her keypad for a second, yelling to a Talent in the corridor:
«Round up every single datajack you can find and get them in here right now! Tell them we're facing an enemy probe team incursion into our datalinks!»
She quickly turned her attention back to the screen in front of her. Three red infiltration points already burned, marking the efforts of the Spartan probe teams to hack into The Sprawl's extensive data nodes.
Lianor threw up firewalls and encryptions with the speed which had made her a legend amongst coders throughout the Data Angel empire. As fast as the Spartans broke a code, another algorithm was there to replace it.
It couldn't last forever, though. The red points were multiplying as more and more operatives penetrated the physical defences of the base and set to work to penetrate the digital defences. First one, then two, then three new points lit up on Lianor's screen, and she swore as she struggled to keep them under control. Until she got some help, she'd never be able to even contain them all, never mind eliminate them...
Luckily, at that moment a gaggle of datajacks entered the room, seating themselves silently at terminals around the room and working swiftly to prevent the theft of any valuable data.
«Block their access to the technology datafiles at all costs,» Lianor reminded them. «If they get their hands on any of our techs we're done for.»
The 'jacks acknowledged her with a series of tight nods. They all knew their survival was on the line - if the Spartan probes could scan the base's defences, they could pinpoint the slightest weaknesses and relay that information back to the attacking troops.
Suddenly alarms began to shrill. Screens flickered throughout the room as techs and 'jacks alike desperately tried to prevent the Spartans from accessing their technology store.
They succeeded, and reciprocation algorithms used the team's own equipment against them, isolating their position and relaying it to security forces who took only seconds to eliminate the teams.
However, one team survived, and managed to hack into geographical databases...
«Code Red!» yelled Tian, her composure completely wrecked. «They've infiltrated... Geographical! They have our maps! Find them at all costs!»
Lieutenant Jens Farren bent to his quicklink for a second, then looked up and shouted to his troops.
«Spartans! We have what we came for! Now we leave!»
Instantly a thousand shouts of dissension rose to meet his voice. He raised a megaphone to his lips and dialled it to maximum volume, then tried again.
«Spartans! We have achieved our objective! This is no retreat, merely a tactical withdrawal on completion of mission!»
Grudgingly, the troops began to retreat further and further from the base, leaving in their wake the scattered bodies of dead and dying soldiers.
Suddenly, the air was filled with the whine of fusial thrust engines, and then the sky was full of fire...