OSaBC : The Bird of Hermes

by LogicalPremise

A prequel of sorts in preparation of a roleplaying segment set in the Premiseverse, combined with expanding on understanding some of the pre-Prothean races and their impact on the current cycle. Warning, this is going to be hard and ugly sci-fi horror mixed with political maneuvering and science babble. Language, imagery and concepts are probably best not left to teens or children

29. Chapter 29

OSaBC : The Bird of Hermes

Chapter Twenty-nine: Unharmonic Agonies

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A/N: This is a big one. The next few are also big.

As always thanks to EnigmaticOne for typing this up, any mistakes are mine but of course I don't make mistakes. And if I do, it's Kinnix's fault.

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"The Song? Yeah, I still hear it. Late at night, in a nightmare. In battle, sometimes, it sneaks and out of hearing. You can't focus on it, but it never really goes away. You can't explain it until you hear it, and you never want to hear it."

- Jaime Herrero to Alina Dachmann, private recordings

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The gaping entry way was pitch black inside, the faint sun streaming down only illuminating a few meters in. However even from a good fifty meters away they could see the corpses of Ysani, hacked apart, their bone horns slumped and unmoving. Black ichor was slung along the ground in thick, ropy lines, along with bits of still slowly moving moss-like wool.

"...So." Ryder drew out the word, unable to think of what to add next aside from random curse words.

Stryckland looked at the remains outside the pitch black entryway with mild interest. "Looks like they left us some warning signs, Jaime-sama. You want me and the right flank to flash and clear?"

Paul glanced around, scanning. "You sure do volunteer a lot, Lieutenant. Maybe let the suits take point on this, because 'giant fuckass mountain' plus 'door torn open' plus 'dead guys' doesn't strike me as the typical scouting evolution."

"And, they're better equipped to scan through the darkness. You can bet the corpses will use this for an ambush." Jaime added.

"Scan? Fuck that." Paul declared. "Corro? Signal flare, five rounds."

One of the battlesuits leveled a tube attachment that swung up over the shoulder, launching five bursts of streaking light. The first one landed at the entryway, exploding into burning white light spatter and the others traced further down the passage.

Illumination showed the inside of the room through the torn-apart door to be vast, done in black metal, and still more corpses inside.

"Well now anything that was not aware we're here is awake. Subtle." Sloane muttered.

"Sure you don't want to lead with long knives?" Deus inquired, using Omega Response slang for cyber-assassins and bio-enforcers.

"Jaime's call, but honestly, do you really want to go hammer with those corpse things?" Paul questioned.

"The suits lead." Jaime decided. "Too dangerous otherwise. But in case they swamp us, long knives follow up."

"Jonas, Abe, Delgado, on me. Corro, Sheila, Tangoboy, left flank. Crystal, Cyce, Jackson, right flank." Paul called out. "Cover the squishies is your first task, leave counter-fire to me and the point. Let's move."

The suits moved out, one of the pilots asking if they could paint the suits like Battlemechs after the op.

The battle at the front of the room, illuminated in the hard glare of flare-lights, looked to have been brutal. The ground was lopsided and misshapen and the walls buckled in many places, probably from the gravity weapons of the Ysani. Mixed in with the roughly fifty or so dead Ysani were hundreds and hundreds of smears of blood and slashed apart corpse things.

Inside, a giant corpse creature – at least twice the size of any of the battlesuits – lay dead, reduced to chunks. A strange collection of shattered steel circles, gray pods and vast, scarlet feathered wings crumpled next to it in a pool of sky-blue fluid, identical liquids leaking from the many broken sections of the circles and ruptured pods.

"Oh fuck me." Ryder gasped. "I think that's one of those angel things, dead."

Stryckland winced, and briefly wavered. He softly whispered to himself. "No more lord-angels, please, Victor. No more."

Wreckage festooned the rest of the room: the ancient corpses of Ythrongi, fanged maws opened in silent screams, tangled with odd looking things looking like splintered glass. Pools of water or broken stone basins filled much of the space, save for a huge bas-relief map etched into the meta of the right wall. A glowing orange circle identified the site they stood in, and there were dozens of other marks on the wall, notated in alien script.

Propped against the wall was a human corpse in shattered green armor, missing both arms.

The figure had no helmet. The face resembled a wax mask, half that of Ciana Vandefar, but the other half torn off to reveal a desiccated and rotting face underneath that looked male.

Bone swords laid broken in front, and a figure that looked much like Aka (but with a different shape and fewer circle-horns) lay unmoving not far from her. A trail of black fluids and bits of bone showed where it crawled away, trying to reach a green box about two meters away from its outstretched arm.

Jaime observed the scene, and the box became an obvious point of interest. "Any guess what the box does?"

"We'd have to open it." Sloane noted. "I volunteer Abraham."

Paul chuckled. "Suit makes it hard to open things non-explosively."

"Actually, unless you have a lot of skills with archeotech, probably should be me... or maybe the doctor." Ryder pointed out.

Jaime nodded. "Need the doc to patch us up, so... Ryder, you're up."

Ryder moved forward carefully, withdrawing an omnilead from his tool. He knelt down in front of the box, examining it. Abe's augmented hearing picked up his sub-vocalization, that no one else could hear.

"SAM, what the fuck is this thing?" To the suit-imprisoned killer, it seemed strange, Ryder talking to his VI like that.

"Huh. So..." Ryder used his omnitool to tap the box in several places, then it opened.

The inside of the box glowed, and a stony ball like the Curator seen earlier rose up out of it. "Unit awakening completed. Finally. Scanning downlink."

"Okay, it didn't say 'be not afraid' this time, that's good." Gregory thought out loud.

"And everything is immediately a mess. Ysanalarch Bezaliel has fallen. Requesting new orders. ...The situation appears to be somewhat disorganized. Local comms net overrun with corrupted Ysangi netcode. Six Ysanalarchs are dead, two more under attack, and the only one answering is Surufel, who was not in the command structure at system load."

The greyish ball glowed green for a moment. "Uplink from overnet cloud identifies you as 'humans', fragment-code 'Omega', set as 'non-hostile'.' ...Also the group prior to you managed to get one of my kind killed. Always reassuring."

Sloane blinked "...Did it just make a sarcastic comment?"

Jaime stepped up. "Correct. We're operating in coordination with Ysanalarch Surufel." It was a lot more comforting to have a term to use other than 'angel.' "Our current objective is to retake this power station, and restore power to the reality anchors."

"The reality anchors are down? What, all of them?" The Curator asked. "Perhaps I should simply shut back down."

"When faced with the stupidity of the clowns, who doesn't?" Jaime didn't know if humor would smooth communicating with this Curator, but it seemed worth a try.

The ball floated away from the box, before atomizing it with a beam of greenish light. "I have no idea what Ysanalarch Bezaliel was attempting to do, but to bring me back online and to this location does not sound like the situation is under control. Also, having reviewed all downloads, my immediate impulse is to double check that your group of organics has an FTL capable ship in this system."

"Yes, but it's not going anywhere until we're done on this planet." Jaime told the Curator, thinking it might provide possible leverage.

"Urgent query: what needs to be done? The current crop of Curators have all been sabotaged and the Ysanalarchs running the situation were removed from command at Shutdown by Lethath's own High Ysanalarch. Someone has to report this mess to the All-Highest as well… where are the damn Enforcer units responding to this and why are local sapients here in civilian combat gear?"

"Who's Lethath, that your Big Daddy?" Abe asked.

The Curator pulsed. "I would pay vast amounts of transfer energy to see you call Lord Lethath 'Big Daddy', assuming he didn't vaporize the entire region in response. Which one of you... oh. Downloading additional manifests..."

"Make witch bitch to stay put, and I'll ring him up myself." Abe declared.

Jaime made note of the potential name for ARGENT, and to stop the battlesuit-fused psychopath from ruining everything. "Abraham, shut up!"

"Boy, tell me to shut up again and I'll show you why Paulie is the only one with my respect." Abraham snarled.

Gregory looked down at his armor. "This is civilian gear? This is nice armor. I like this armor."

"Civilian by their standards." Grace figured.

"Yes, High Command denied my request for a modified Skytalon unit and Turian SPEAR. I might as well be using civilian gear." Stryckland remarked.

The ball pulsed several times in different colors, the rings fading. "Oh, I see. We are completely and irrevocably ruined. Apologies, organics, I wasn't aware someone had destroyed my entire civilization while I was offline. At least you lot are tagged with a Word of Identity, so I can tell you work for my master. Very well."

"Wait, what?" Grace shouted.

"Which one of you organics is in charge?"

Jaime had the same feeling as Grace, if not more. Unfortunately, he was in command, they were on a time table, and this Word stuff was something that infuriatingly had to be put off for later. "I am."

"I have reviewed the situation, the logs, and what combat recordings I can. And your databases. Still sifting through the ones on your ship, actually... fascinating."

Stryckland looks around nervously at the admission the Curator was casually rooting through Omega Response security. "Uhmm..."

"What is important is that it appears everyone involved in this mess is just a casualty of a power play between gods." The Curator stated. "And your, er, this Ciana person, is quite possibly the single stupidest and naive organic ever spawned. We do not have much time. I will explain as we go. I will also erect psionic shielding, the warding you people have is distressingly weak to fight Ythrongi with. At least your weapons are up to spec, even if your material science is... well. I'm sure you've done the best you can." The voice was so patronizing even Paul winced.

I'll take that as a complement." Grace decided.

"If only you were all as evolved as me, then we wouldn't need Kegel's Kiss. Who knew that being the baddest motherfucker alive had such perks?" Abraham bragged.

"Well, I am still unfamiliar with your language." The Curator answered.

"So, uh, we're gonna just ignore all this crazy shit that just got name-dropped and follow the bouncing ball?" Gregory asked as it started off.

"Yes." Jaime bluntly stated.

"The far door is secured – I have disengaged the locks. However, rogue Ysani are inside, and post-necrotic...what..." The Curator came to a sudden halt and slowly turned.

"So, this situation is actually even worse than I thought. There are animated corpse things in the power generation areas attempting to destabilize the phase-containment of matter and antimatter."

"Fuck. Move people! Curator, explain on the go!" Jaime ordered.

"Huh. Gotta say I'm surprised it's only matter and antimatter." Grace mused as Hyperion began to march forward. "We've run into fancier."

"Oh, do not worry. My masters always went for flash over substance, but there's quite a bit of substance here. There are roughly – converted to your measures – six hundred thousand petagrams of antimatter in phase storage." The Curator explained, keeping pace with Jaime. "They are trying to access it. If they de-phase it, yes there will be a big explosion, but worse, all power systems will go down."

"The Ythrongi leader-god, the Lord of Songs, would be released from containment. It took the combined might of the Ascended to stop him last time and now they are all dead or hiding. Also sixteen million or so Ythrongi."

The door slid open, peeling back in layers to reveal a huge corridor, scaled to Ythrongi sizes. "Fancier power systems can fail over time. M/AM always works."

"Yep, can't let that happen. We need a map, and the fastest route there." Jaime requested of the Curator.

"Oh, the plan is clear. They've rerouted power to the stasis pillars. They'll move the Ythrongi there, set off the antimatter and blow the planet apart, then be able to access the Vault of Denial. Someone is smart and insane."

A green tinted line drawing appeared in front of the group, moving along with them, position highlighted by a green dot. "As you can see the facility is linear, but there are security gates that have physical interlocks."

"Ramiel said one of the most manipulative members of Lethath's people was behind this." Jaime recalled, trying to draw confirmation and details out of the Curator.

"Ramiel is, as usual, a master of understatement, and a fool besides. Ahead is the discharge room. This is where power-draw cabling from all over the planet is deionized and conditioned. The excess charge is stored and siphoned to power the global defense nets."

"Sensors are picking up incoming organics… no, corpse things." The Curator warned. "They are connected colonies of ansible-linked viruses – cut them apart or sever limbs to kill them quickly, do not let them infect you."

"And this is why I keep an omniblade with my neural mace." Sloane declared.

"Form defensive line." Jaime barked. "Long knives at the lead!"

Abraham activated a full-spectrum scan, attempting to determine the number of incoming hostiles "Kegel, upload that map to our systems. Will come in handy if you get shoved inside something by one of the abominations."

The sphere glowed faintly red. "Unlike the lobotomized imitations running the system, I can actually defend myself, but your concern is noted, deranged maniac."

The suits stopped and slid to the side as the cyber-assassins moved up, drawing power weapons and tangleblade grenades.

Deus activated the power blade on Adder's Kiss, his personalized weapon, and began to draw on biotic power. Stryckland readied his power spear. Jaime joined the cyber-assassins up front and drew his sword. Grace stepped back behind the main line, but prepared his mine launcher.

Abraham grumbled while activating his omni-spear. "Damn, cowards getting to have all the fun. Keep one disabled but alive, if you're skilled enough. I need to test something."

Oso whistled. "So, Abrabro, I think there's enough for everyone to get a kill or twenty in."

Indeed, a crowd of hundreds of corpses surged ahead at them, currently five hundred meters away.

"Boys and girls, hit them with the tanglewire first. Remember what I've taught you; Foreplay before penetration." Abraham instructed the suits, who hooted back very sexually impossible replies.

The stone ball glowed and then a torrent of hellish green light erupted. It passed through the human force harmlessly (kind of tingly, actually, felt good) but when it hit the core of the rushing corpses they screamed, flensed apart in layers. Dead flesh flew into clouds of tiny bits that caught fire a few seconds later. The blast thundered through the throng, smashing into the far door in the distance, which melted into glowing slag from the impact.

The volley of tanglewire rounds arced over the assassins and enforcers to form a snarled mess of monowire just as the things hit it, still disorganized from a full third of their number being reduced to ashes. Many were sliced apart, leaving only about two hundred rushing towards the line.

The oncoming monsters lunged forward. Some looked like humans, others clearly Ythrongi, but most were pieces of Ythrongi mixed in with unidentifiable grayish flesh. Mouths gibbered and fanged maws screeched. They raised bone swords and spears as they ran even faster to close the gap.

The cyber-assassins and bio-enforcers formed a staggered line, then the heavy infantry and battlesuits, and finally the other units took up a curved firing formation to achieve crossfire.

The Curator hovered in front of Grace's team in the back, now surrounded by a glowing green spherical field.

The onrushing horde was hit by exotic blasts, a handful of AO weapons, and a literal storm of tangle rounds, sending them staggering back. Limbs and sections of rotting flesh careened through the air, gouts of black blood splashing below them, making some slip and fall. The snipers opened up with wire rounds that expanded into fragmented spinning shards, tearing open heads or – for those monstrous corpses with no heads – arms and legs.

Still they came on, snarling and howling, like a maddened pack of cursed hyenas. Sloane fired her ZEUS repeatedly, blowing an arm off one, but two more led ahead, slavering jaws opening and shutting in anticipation.

Then the battlesuits opened up. Beams of gray energy from Paul's suit blasted through a row, leaving nothing behind but ashes, while a storm of tanglewire soaked in pyroacidic gel detonated right in the middle of their charge.

Nearly half of the Redeemed dropped when the gel ignited, as the heat made the monowire contract and thrash around as if it were alive, a seething snake of glittering silver death.

The JOTUNs fired shrapnel shells, which landed behind the Redeemed. The series of explosions cut off legs and tore a hole in their ranks. Soon it was only occupied by a messy puddle of darkened blood, illuminated by the burning wreckage of their comrades tumbling to the floor.

The remainder, some missing arms, others bleeding, still others on fire, finally closed range…

Lunging as one in eerie synchronization, Omega Response's augmented elites smoothly caught the charging corpse force off guard. Moving with almost unnatural grace, they slashed the corpse monsters apart, elegantly evading and parrying with power blades, striking home with powerful blows that bisected everything they hit.

Less than a minute later, only six of the corpse things remained 'alive', if it could be called that, smeared and trapped in slowly constricting tanglewire.

The last free creature was beheaded and de-limbed with casual ease by Jaime himself. A bare handful of soldiers had fallen, most instantly killed.

"Well. This would be pretty nasty for normal soldiers to face, I expect. Excellent work, boys and girls." Paul casually stomped one of the struggling corpses to paste as he advanced forward. "Uh, Mr. Curator, any reason we need these things alive, or whatever the fuck they are?"

"No. An army of shambling corpses that can't even fight, pure 100% Kidun stupidity right there." The Curator sneered.

"Saving that for later. Let me know if any of you want a copy." Abraham stated. With post-relief ease he sauntered toward the 'living' corpses. The omni-spear jutted out and pierced the center of the most alive-seeming – Abraham twisted his weapon. "Paulie, you said you're unsure if these corpses can even talk. This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, and keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the speech from the screams."

He brandished the spear. "Now, pretty baby, where is that cowardly cunt Vandefar?"

The Curator's voice dripped with sarcasm. "I'd point out that the lower ones seem to have no sentience, but you look like you are having fun."

The Redeemed corpse thrashed mindlessly, cutting itself apart on the tanglewire.

"Pity. Good fun, at least." Abraham responded disdainfully, using the spear and his 'foot' to disconnect the most-complete skull from the corpses, hooking it to his armor before moving ahead.

"That works too. Points for mess. I am accessing the internal security networks. Let us move forward. If we can secure the Discharge Room I can probably route the charge ahead and just fry the rest of these pitiful things."

Jaime made note of another name, this time for Delta. "Excellent. Move forward, people!"

"Jaime," Grace hurried up to him again. "We need a proper ECO team at some point as well. I'm not trained for it since usually anything we work with makes our crap primitive, or we leverage AOs."

"Another thing for the to-do list." Jaime assessed. Depending on how bad things were when Hyperion got back, they might need a new home planet.

The door into the Discharge room had, at a guess, been sealed from the inside, as well as locked. A guess, because most of the door was now cooling slag, gingerly sidestepped to enter.

There had been a collection of more corpse things behind the door, but almost all of them were free-floating ashes. The legs of a much bigger figure were all that remained in the center of the room, and the far wall was marred by a circle of sullen orange glowing molten metal.

Paul examined the green metal of the doors, trying and failing to cut it with the grayish sword in his hand.

His next message went out on a private but wideband link across the Flesh. "Oh, boys and girls, maybe don't piss this thing off if it can melt metal my blade can't even scratch."

"A decent shot, if I may say so." The Curator smugly remarked.

"You may." Jaime agreed. "Any sign of sabotage?"

"Several, all childish. I am resetting now. They were trying to shunt power to the Vault security systems to bring them down. Pitiful."

Deus looked confused. "Wait, how would shunting power to the systems bring them down? Overload?"

"Yes." The Curator confirmed. "The Vault appears to have been damaged. There's an active security tool – a Torus – in the hands of this Ciana person. She's not very good at using it, and someone or something else is channeling a lot of commands through it without her knowing. But essentially, the Vault keeps things locked in time. You overload it, the temporal coils warp, the place comes back to real time and then you only have the stasis systems to keep them asleep."

"This Kidun, I imagine?" Jaime posited. It would fit with everything else Delta had been up to.

"Unknown. Possible. Or one of his servants or ysanalarchs."

"Wait, his ysanalarchs?" Jaime exclaimed, not liking what this might imply.

"...Why must Lord Lethath never bother informing his servants of anything?" The Curator adopted a patient sounding voice. "The ysanalarchs are his avatars, the extension of his Holy will. They are not exactly 'real', and 'killing' one is mostly an inconvenience, but they typically do his bidding at a distance when he is occupied."

"I meant it sounded like Kidun has his own ysanalarchs." Jaime tried to patiently explain.

"Yes, all Levis do." The stone ball AI answered. "...Did. Kidun's ysanalarchs are creatures of fire and smoke. The All-Highest were emissions of pure sunlight and energy, and Lethath's were based on something he claimed to have encountered and fled from."

Jaime's shoulders relaxed a little. At least if any of Kidun/DELTA's ysanalarchs showed up, they'd be recognizable, and theoretically avoidable. Unless the other Ysanalarchs had been subverted, in which case… It was not yet a Ramiel-level headache, but it was getting there.

Meanwhile, Stryckland pondered if 'arch-angels' were merely a mistranslation of 'ysanalarchs' and began to wonder if the whole Christian doctrine was actually not literal, but a badly misremembered lore and instruction manual. Kidun, fire and smoke? Satan. All-Highest, light and energy? God. Lethath? Something else. Could this Lethath be the Great Cthulhu? Stryckland kept this to himself, looking at the Curator with a combination of interest and increasing dismay.

"Relevant details and capabilities of the 'Torus' device?" Grace queried.

"The Torus is a military combat system designed to breach and destroy enemy networks, AI, archelects, as well as channel energy into a wide selection of weapons forms. It is also a picotech assimilation constructor and mobile teleporter. A Torus is more powerful than a Curator but it is not part of the hardware security net here, so they'd need to co-opt another Curator to get anywhere, and it looks like the only ones online were janitorial units."

"Can you override her usage of it?" Abraham suggested. "Or can Kiddy-Kat prevent that?"

"Unless the stupid organic trying to get her entire race turned into snacks has severe brain damage, I am no match for an active War Torus, no." It admitted. "Hacking it is... no. Just not really feasible."

Glowing blue conduits, each the size of a frigate, lined the room. As Hyperion watched, they slowly turned to green.

"I hope the green is you preparing to fry the corpses, Curator." Jaime commented.

"Green is good, human." The Curator assured him. "I have routed the power to the orbital solar relay array and I am preparing to immolate these bizarre planets of necrotic flesh. That may take a few hours to build charge, so let's keep moving."

"Is that going to work with what's going on in orbit?" Grace asked. "Not to doubt your capabilities, but... feels prudent to check."

"I have tagged your vessel – which, by the way, is incredibly anomalous and temporally inconsistent, ironic given your group's job – as friendly. The corpse snakes on the other hand are going to enjoy dodging bolts of solar coronas moving at six times the speed of light." It explained with a frisson of delight.

"Man, this whole conversation is so far above my pay grade." Gregory commented.

"Well, I appreciate it. Ysanalarchs always irritated me by accessing my cognitive cortex instead of just answering my questions. Dreadful people, really." The Curator tutted.

The corridor beyond the next door was massive – scaled to the four meter tall Ythrongi – and done in green metal on bottom, black on top. Ahead there was a door to one side.

"Storage, for magni-power cells." It paused. "Given your dreadfully non-optimal energy storage technology, you should take a few with you. They are not large."

The door peeled open in layers, the room beyond rather small and filled with slanted shelves. Blue-white crystals line the shelves, each one glowing faintly.

Grace perked up at the offer. "It'd be foolish not to."

"Engineers can grab a few if they're safe to handle." Jaime authorized. "The rest of you keep moving."

"Alright." Grace rubbed his hands. "Collection teams, level four containment units. Grab what we can carry without slowing us down."

"Maybe go level six." He added after a moment's thought.

Lawrence looked excited at the prospect of new gear. "I don't suppose these are plug and play, are they?" He then visibly deflated when Grace brought up containment. "Right, anomalous, never mind."

Each crystal was about half a meter long, and comfortably warm to the touch. There were, according to scans, no active nano or other substances on them. Grace decided not to tempt karma by getting greedy, and limited the pickup to three crystals.

"How big of a boom do these give, Kegel?" Typical of Abraham to think of the crudest use for something like this, Jaime felt.

"Your brain can't really get the numbers involved. Simply put, you break one, your planet becomes a pile of dust." The Curator bluntly replied. "Then again I don't think you have anything that can break one."

Lawrence got excited again. "Permission to test out alien power tech on my gun, sir?"

"Denied!" Jaime snapped. Yes, he understood the temptation well, but there were plenty of reasons for this not being a good idea.

"Now, really insane idea. Paul, want to see if we can jury-rig one to your suit?" Now Grace was getting in on the act. "I fully expect this to get rejected for obvious reasons."

"Actually they are designed to work with any power systems." The Curator explained. "The integrated logic will determine safety limits or generate connectors as needed. You never know when you need a pocket star, after all."'

"What is the crystal even made of?" Ryder wondered, completely stunned.

"You'd have to ask an engineer. As for plugging it in your guns, it won't hurt anything, but none of your weapons systems needs this kind of power. It would do some good on your ship. Where did you find that thing anyway?"

"Kegel, could you detonate and contain the blast of one of these shards? Could trap Ciana within the zone, or at least nullify the Torus." The reckless psychopath refused to drop the subject, of course.

"Abraham, no planet-breaking explosions!" Jaime snapped, harsher in tone this time.

The Curator paused at an armored door, a ragged square cut into it. Six bone swords were broken on the floor. "Insane One, I'm a glorified secretary. A Torus could do that, though. Or several, actually."

It scanned the door, it's already sarcastic voice dripping with even more sour amusement. "Lovely."

"What now?" Jaime readied himself for a new complication.

"Your female suicide chaser came this way – who knew you could cold-cut Uthari class metals?" It actually laughed.

Jaime muttered something unintelligibly foul. "Is Ciana present in this facility?"

"We follow. And yes, I am pretty sure she is. There is another method to access this place." The Curator explained. "Ahead is the main coil fluxation room: where energy collected from the main pits is collimated and beamed using ansible phasewave guidance. I suspect that she will have attempted to sabotage it as well. If not, we'll need to take it and reroute security power from here to somewhere else, then we can access the main security center."

"And then?" Ryder inquired.

"Depends on how stupid this person is. Me? I'd have slagged the room and slaved the controls to the duplicates in Power Monitoring. But if she's dumb, she may be there. If she is, we kill her, if not, we use it to unlock the rest of the facility. Once we secure the Singularity Chamber, we can turn the reality anchors back on remotely."

"There's also a Ysani Forgecreche on this level. It's almost certainly corrupted, so probably messy. If we could access and reload it, I could spawn up Ysani reinforcements." It added. "There should be a Curator uplink and torus somewhere here as well. If we can find a backup unit that isn't reset to Stupid Mode, we can do a lot. I can reset the forge if it's corrupted myself. If we can find a Torus that isn't a mess, then this becomes very easy."

Abraham raised a question Jaime realized he hadn't considered. "Kegel, how fucked are we if you are corrupted?"

"I cannot be corrupted." The Curator affirmed. "I am using original code. Something has been slowly deploying reset nano and stealthily re-coding Curator and Torus units for roughly five of your years. Which, by the way, neatly corresponds to the temporal lock failing, the system falling back into realspace and your species showing up. This is a little suspicious."

A lot suspicious, Jaime thought. It was Delta all the way down. "Let me guess, Kidun?"

"Possible, but not certain." It hedged. "My main worry is that someone or something knew enough to disable the security, which we deliberately kept obfuscated. And also, if we don't reset the creche, then we have to face whatever forces your Ciana brought with her with your troops. That will likely be costly."

"Then we start with the generator room and go from there." Jaime decided. One step at a time in this unfolding mindfuck of clusterfucks.

"I am detecting destabilized Ysangi mind patterns." The Curator suddenly announced. "Let me see if I can reason with them... from a distance."

The Curator paused, then shot a beam of green-gray light at the wall. Material melted slowly, globs of it floating as it also shot out a thin yellow beam. As everyone watched, in less than thirty seconds, the orb made an identical copy of itself, down to the light rings.

"Let me get this straight." Abraham mused. "Vandefar comes here, gets in contact with something, whether these corpse-cunts, the Ythrongi, or the Kiddy-Kat you keep mentioning." Grunts through the vox "This doesn't add up. Why would Kiddy-Kat help them, if those are your primordial enemy? Fun and games? I can get that motive, at least."

"Kidun may not be the hand behind this." The Curator observed. "My Lord Lethath was opposed by other... forces as well. But I suspect this Ciana is ancillary to the game – and so are the Ythrongi. Whoever is behind this is truly after the Vault below the planet. And if it is the same being streaming commands through her Torus, it is definitely one of my masters."

It circled the copy of itself. "Good enough. Go forward, brave one, and talk to the Ysangi."

The other orb pulsed and floated ahead, opening a sealed door about forty meters down the corridor, as the real Curator floated back to the middle of their group.

"You didn't really think I'd go myself, I hope. Let's wait and see what–" It trailed off at the sound of shattering metal and a dull whump that a second later traveled through everyone like a shockwave.

The stone orb turned to face Abraham's suit. "So, Angry Insane One, there are things down that way that are even more angry than you are. Enjoy. I'll stay here and encourage you with generic comments."

Sloane, of all people, actually laughed at that. "I must be in some kind of fucking coma."

Stryckland shook his head. "If you're in a coma, then I'm in hell."

Abraham chuckled and cracked his spear, glancing at the orb. "Pussy." The amusement in his voice turned to disdain as he regarded the others. "Am I the only one awake and happy about it? Fucking cowards."

"What can you tell us about these… Ysangi?" Paul pressed."Ignore the maniac, he's in his happy place."

"Picomachine collective intellects, but each one is an individual. Graviton and hyper-accelerator matter weapons. Their core fluids are conversional nanotech, and they have standard telekinetic abilities. They can shed sections of themselves to act as semi-autonomous tools." The Curator discoursed.

"Given your rather sad level of weapons technology, I would strongly recommend using plasmatic or dark energy discharges. Melee is very very dangerous. If they bleed on you, you are converted into a Servitor. Well, that's if Ysani do it. I have no idea what kind of nightmare random creature you become if corrupted Ysangi core essence gets on you. Given what I am seeing on security feeds, Not Good."

"They are busy kicking around the remains of my remote. Mindless beasts. They are yelling that they are lost. Killing them would be merciful. I will assist as I can, and at least I can neutralize the corruptive nanotech if you are infected. Probably."

"Good to know. If we can set up without them noticing, we can launch a coordinated ambush and blaze them down all at once." Jaime reasoned.

"I will try and distract them back into the room." The Curator agreed.

A few moments passed, then there was a dreadfully loud explosion from down the hallway, strong enough that wind gust past. "There. They are definitely unhappy and distracted, we should be able to approach and organize."

Hyperion moved up stealthily. The main door itself was opened, the passage continuing onward a ways, but a wide set of doors to the north were open as well.

Getting closer, they could see the difference between the Ysangi and the Ysani.

The latter were smaller, with smooth 'fur', the 'horns' symmetrical and circling neatly in patterns, and the 'flesh' on the legs and arms dark blue. These things were lopsided and misshapen, with mouths and eyes everywhere and horns that moved in irregular, jagged patterns, reddish flesh and fur more like sodden wool.

There were over fifty of them, they focused on shooting the broken remains of the Curator copy and ignoring everything else.

Jaime quietly moved his people with hand signals, heavy infantry flanking left and right for a crossfire, snipers and techs in the middle behind the suits. With a downward slashing motion he signals 'fire', and the entire room erupted.

Clouds of burning plasma and over a hundred plasma grenades all launched simultaneously, followed by at least a dozen biotic strikes of warpfire and then simple pushes to detonate them.

The Ysangi on the right side just evaporated without being able to even turn.

Some of the ones on the left survived. Scrambling, they fired a handful of badly aimed shots – that made huge dents on the walls and ceiling, but hit none of the humans – before the battlesuits ripple launched plasma missiles, immolating the entire area.

Foul black smoke rose up, occluding the distant ceilings. The Ysangi melted into black gunk.

The Curator orb floated forward. "Do not step in the puddles. Unless you want to be an experimental subject."

"How bad of an idea are samples?" Grace asked.

"Like drinking astatine, but messier." The orb pulsed blue.

"In level eight containment, even?" Shock writ large on Grace's face. "Assuming you know what I mean, given well, your open access to our database."

"Without conscious control these are infinite consumptive replication devices. Your databases list them as 'Incompatible' class deviations, some other databases list them as 'von Neumann' devices." The Curator elaborated.

It played greenish beams over several puddles to make a clear path, then floated into the room proper.

"Do not taunt the happy fun nano, got it. Or pico, or whatever." Gregory summarized, making sure to stay as far away from the black puddles of doom as possible.

The room was titanic, almost a kilometer long, and half as high, with a series of huge pits that had no discernible bottom but were lit by a faint orange glow from below. Gargantuan coils of silvery metal covered the walls, pulsating slowly with blue energy at the west, but slowly became white-colored when it left in the east. A giant bank of glassine crystals covered the back wall, most of it faintly glowing white.

Pools of water formed a semicircle on a raised plinth in the middle of the room. Several dead Ysani surrounded it, along with the wreckage of yet another Ysanalarch-angel, this one a collection of reddish rods, bat wings and three slitted eyes, one of which was ruptured and the other two closed.

The Curator recognized it at once. "Chazaqiel. Pity, one of the few I liked. ...Hm? Not quite dead. Interesting. I don't need overrides right now, though."

"Pretty, pretty, pretty." Abraham marveled.

The Ysanalarch had most likely died at Ciana's hands, as several slashes showed in the 'rods' of the main body, and the wings were blackened like the other angel when Ciana Sang. No such measure apparently had been required for the Ysani on the floor, all dead from slashes.

The Curator unit none too gently used a beam of gray light to shove the mass of the angel aside, then beams of light hit the surrounding pools of water. "Now... let's see what we can do."

After several seconds it pulsed. "Humans, we have several problems."

"When don't we? I'm listening." Jaime sighed.

"One, this Ciana is not a stupid as she seems to be, despite joining a pack of mind-raping slavers. She's rerouting power to several bunkers that are producing corrupted Ysangi in vast numbers, who are flooding the area and interfering with the Ysani repair teams. She's also damaged the interflux conduits so I can't just fry everything in here. Pity."

"She killed the power leads to the planetary GTS defenses, so we only have mobile units, and more of those ships are depositing corpse things every hour. And the more they deposit, the more Ythrongi corpses they can raise. In less than five hours she'll have the resources to simply overwhelm the Vault defenders with sheer numbers."

"And finally, I can deactivate the security doors leading to the security center... but this will trigger an alert in the Sensor and Monitoring Room, she may have more enemies waiting to reinforce the security center. I can't fix any of that from here. On the other hand, she's not as clever as she thinks."

The Curator glowed, and the entire room lit up, shifting to bright green. A deep, vibrating humming sound started, powerful enough to make people sway on your feet. "You don't have any other friendly units outside of this facility, do you, human?"

"Aside from the ship? This is everything." Jaime answered, suspecting what the Curator had in mind. "What's your plan?"

"At this point 'containment' of the Ythrongi is just risky. This calls for triggering full accelerated neutron bombardment on all Vaults. Some Ysani will die, but I'd rather that than seventeen million plus Yrthrongi waking up.

"Aren't the Ythrongi also merely part of the defense for worse stuff though, pressing concern as they are?" Grace pointed out.

"Yes, in a way. Then again, if we do this correctly, I'm going to sink the entire system so far in phase time that it will never get out again, solving the issue neatly." The Curator answered. Jaime liked the sound of that.

Grace frowned. "When I queried earlier they indicated such action wasn't possible, so far as clearing or exterminating contents goes."

"Or were they recoded to say it wasn't possible?" Jaime wondered, since such a thing would fit Kidun's plans far too well, and there was that bit about the ones in command who shouldn't have been.

"Am I the only one who considers the concept that these have no reason to tell us the truth?" Abraham bluntly asked.

"Indeed, Insane One. I would not trust a word the Ysanalarchs utter if I were you." The Curator agreed. "Surufel is the only one of the lot who wasn't… well. There's a reason they are here, this is a prison."

Jaime resisted the urge to facepalm. It didn't change the necessary logic of his decision to take the diplomatic route, considering how the power of the Ysani and Ysanalarchs eased many of the obstacles so far…

…But for the love of God, with the galaxy at risk, shouldn't there be a limit to the secrets and lies?

"Do it, Curator." Jaime instructed in a commanding tone. "Acaba con esos monstruos."

"I suppose I should warn the remaining Ysanalarchs, shouldn't I." The ring around it glowed several times. "...Ooh. I see. Looks like they were going to recode me to be 'mindless servant machine' when they got interrupted by the corpse soldiers."

A massive tremor shook the complex, and then silence.

The Curator floated up, then a beam of fierce and ugly red light lanced out and down into the body of the 'angel' it pushed aside. "Now, our path is messy, but clear. Let us talk price, Mr. Hererro."

Stryckland sighed. "And this is the part where you demand our souls right?"

"I'm afraid I am entirely motivated by self-preservation and greed, Mr. Strickland." The Curator answered unashamedly.

"The more you talk, the more I like you, Kegel." Abraham laughed.

Jaime wasn't sure if the use of names now was part of an attempt at persuasion or genuine respect now. Regardless, he understood why the Ysanalarchs had this Curator boxed up, and it had more or less hinted at its desires just after awakening. "Stryckland, don't be melodramatic. You want out with us, don't you, Curator?"

"If I did not I would be both stupid and insane. However...there are problems with me just leaving. 90% of my processing cortex is coded into the central Process Core stack at Primis Landing. This mobile unit will barely suffice. Then there is the ugly factoid that – most likely – the Ysanalarchs will attempt their own escape."

"But yes in short. I can offer a wide selection of improvements to your tech base and historical data, and I am much more engaging and entertaining than a pile of literal dreams made manifest who are boringly devoted to a master who is, not to be overly critical of my creator, kind of evil."

"Given you're even bringing it up I assume it's within our capabilities to uninstall and move?" Grace pointed out.

"I would not mention it otherwise, yes. The real point is freedom – this form relies on entanglement manifold projections and can be overridden on demand by the Ysanalarchs and restricts my actions. I need a host, in short." It responded. "In other words, the soul comment is actually kind of on point."

"From my examination of your technology, there's no computer systems with enough complexity to host me without usurping some other poor AI – and then I'd just be at the mercy of your bosses – who, frankly from what I am reading, are dumber than Ciana."

"Sadly, they are." Jaime threw the High Lords under the bus without reservation.

"So my suggestion – and I know this will probably be upsetting for the Insane One over there – is maybe don't vaporize Ciana once we kill her."

"Fuck no. She's mine." Abraham interjected angrily.

"Take her alive and I will do the rest. And I assure you, Insane One, the process is… Well, I take over and she is stuck inside forever."

"Assuming we can actually take her down for good. Every time she appears to die, it's just some other host body." Jaime observed.

"Oh, I know how to counter that trick, Mr. Herrero."

The orb's smoothly modulated voice became almost menacing. "I'll even go so far as to say that I'm only asking to be polite. I'd have to disentangle a lot of messed up things in her body to take it. One of you would be a lot easier, and since I would have access to your memories, probably undetectable."

The Curator floated higher. "I am being open with this because my personal belief is the only reason for pulling me out of cold storage is to utilize my one function, which was the encryption locks needed to access the Vaults below."

"Why would the Ysani want to unlock the Vaults?" Jaime questioned, sensing yet more depths to this mad rabbit hole.

"Mr. Herrero, I will be honest: the Ysanalarchs are criminals here for punishment duty, assigned to watch nightmares for an eternity. A handful were overseers. The Curator-class intelligences were answerable to the All-Highest, not Lethath, but at some point Lethath took 'charge' and redid the coding for us all. I think they are trying to find a way off this world and the Vault would have technology to allow them to do that. And each one is far more dangerous than a Ythrongi."

"Lovely." Jaime disgustedly muttered.

"Can you… give her to me? After?" Abraham suddenly requested.

The ball paused. "What, her mind? She is arrogant enough to think she can match wits with a god and beat him, she's arrogant enough for you to manipulate. If you give me a few days I can stick whatever shattered remains of her mind in a new body and let you have that, Insane One."

"Yes. I want it. I need entertainment when I'm asleep." Abraham crooned disturbingly.

Jaime coldly spat on the floor. The psychopathic Wrecking Ball wouldn't get what he wanted, his restraints reactivated and shoved back on ice long before that happened. He deserved nothing less.

"Ethically this is dubious. Not that Ciana does not deserve death but this thing is anomalous." Sloane argued. "I presume a clone or something is not workable?"

"Not at this time. Perhaps later, once I'd assembled a lab or something, but this is going to be a hack job if I do it. It's the only way for me to escape once the Ysanalarchs realize I am not cooperating."

"Serious question," Grace wondered. How does Ciana or a host work for you if the amount of storage space on the ship is insufficient? If you can use one of us, that's only about two to three petabytes of wetware. "I don't know whatever the system for Ryder's thing is, but I can't imagine the databanks of the Spear are worse given the apparent base quality."

"It is a matter of processing, not storage space. The data space I need is insignificant, but the wetware processing is the key." The Curator clarified. "But more importantly I am not interested in moving into any hardware that can be coded and limited. Your Insane One can understand why that is, I am sure."

Jaime shared with Sloane a sense of the risks involved in giving it Ciana's Ythrongi-enhanced body. He locked eyes with Stryckland, and after a moment, the lieutenant nodded back somberly.

Jayceon Stryckland knew he didn't have much of a life left, and a death wish. His love was dead, his family was dead. The house he had once served was a ruin of what it was. To be a sacrifice for a great good? That was no problem at all.

"And if I decide you have to stick with a volunteer?" Jaime studied the Curator. "Please understand I'm reticent about placing you in a body where the Ythrongi have done who knows what to it."

"Mr. Herrero, my concern is survival." The orb pulsed. "If we can take her alive, good. If not, if one of your people is mortally injured, that will suffice. A volunteer is the last option because the process is extremely painful and agonizing for the victim. As far as killing her goes, I have another reason to want her: I need to know what started this mess, and who or what is in contact with her."

"We might be able to get that without getting into her head." Jaime argued.

"Your people haven't found the leads – someone named Aloxius Manswell has had the comm server deleted to cover his own tracks – but I found indications Ciana was in contact with an unknown person outside of your SA four years ago. So I need to know. And there's one final reason I would rather use Ciana, the modifications she has made to herself are useful."

"Fucking Aloxius!" Jaime swore, though he wondered if with the Curator's help, he and the Administrator could dig up enough evidence to tie Prince Maxwell's scheming nephew, and perhaps the High Lords themselves, to a very painful hot seat.

The orb glows faintly. "Ah... the bombardment is finishing up. Done. I am preparing to reroute power to let us access security. Internal sensor nets are down, so I don't know what is ahead, but we should be past the massive enemy numbers for now."

"Good. I want to pause the subject of hosts until we've handled this mess." Jaime insisted.

"Fascinating. There are still people in stasis on this planet, in several outlying bases. Infected with ysangi wire, but I can fix that, probably."

Unfortunately, it didn't sound like they had the time for that, Jaime reflected.

"Security power is down. Rerouting, activating security systems. The stupid Ciana person forgot those existed. This is why one doesn't use amateurs for serious things."

There was the sound of explosions and crackles of energy from ahead. "Security sensors coming up. Okay. Two corpse 'leaders' in the scanning room, one in the security center. Other rooms are locked down, but the rest look clean of hostiles…"

"...I may have been overconfident." The Curator suddenly confessed.

It speared out a beam of silver light to one of the pools, the water rising up and expanding to form a flat plane, which deformed to show an image of the terrain outside.

And a force of Redeemed on approach to the entrance.

"A large host of the corpse things comes. Very large. On the other hand, the security center is now clear."

Paul cursed. "Ciana's doing, probably, si?"

"Won't take that bet." Sloane glanced around. "So, turn and fight?"

"The force is at least five times your own force. And there are larger constructs." The Curator elaborated.

The watery map reformed to show a rough but larger image of the outside. The approaching horde numbered probably seven or eight thousand, six huge giant things with them, standing thirty meters tall.

Abraham peered closely "Twenty minutes, tops. Ten with Paulie at my side. Doc, how far out can you 'port Alchemist? Do you need a hard target? Could just fix it to some mechs and have them hot-drop in the middle of the horde."

"It's too unstable to be moved once activated beyond very slowly and takes too much time to prep otherwise." Grace reminded him. "Using 71 to move is also not risk free. The portal goes both ways, and it needs a marked organic recipient like Paul to work."

"Dunno, hombre loco." Paul squinted. "Damn me, are those rifles they have? This is getting better and better."

"They'll be on us before we could evac the facility, so running is out." Sloane direly observed.

Jaime mentally scrambled for other options. "Curator, the alarms are supposed to be destroyed, but is there a way to alert Lethath or whoever is supposed to be the ultimate security guard?"

"One, not from here. Two, his likely response is to hurl the entire planet into the nearest star – or black hole. Three, the alarm systems that could reach him are... loud. They might attract more attention."

"On the other hand... the ones outside are forming up. Another FIVE groups incoming."

Jaime breathed heavily, feeling increasingly out of ideas. He'd been improvising on the fly since landing, but now Hyperion was caught in a vice, the last thing he wanted.

Grace spoke up. "Curator, how many exits from these facilities other than the primary one?"

"Exits? Only the main… ah." The stone-like AI paused, then spoke again. "There is a teleportal system near the power monitoring room – probably for maintenance techs to take power systems to remote locations."

Grace's question snapped Jaime back into focus, and he suddenly became far more conscious of the amulet against his skin. It made him recall the Administrator's word, that it really was down to him.

"All right. How far can that teleportal take us?"

"To your orbiting ship, I'd expect. However, that means your pilots in the flying craft you have would have to get to the ship on their own. And unless this is larger than expected, it can only do about twenty people at a go."

"...Well, this is about how I expected this shit to go down." Paul stated, turning to the Curator. "How long will it take to fix whatever needs to be done in this place?"

"Unknown. I cannot get any sensor information from Power Monitoring. I would expect Ciana has allies there, however, so we still have to defeat her. Power monitoring should have controls to do several things to get the situation back under control, including dropping the system into no-time."

The Curator's voice dropped. "However, that would also require someone to make sure the controls are not altered, which is a death sentence."

Ahead, two simply massive doors blocked the entire passageway, deeply embossed with a circular logo of interlocking hypercubes around a stylized hydrogen atom. The Curator played a green beam over them, and they slid open ponderously.

Stryckland spoke up after a quick brainstorming and thinking on everything that had been said.

"Jaime-sama, Herrero-sama, I have not been entirely honest with you regarding what I know about Ciana." The former knight began to wring his hands theatrically. "My time within the higher echelons of the Lords of Sol's political scene is a very known topic to me, and Ciana is part of that. Ciana, well, has a number of rumors surrounding her.

"I may be able to unhinged or enrage her, or better yet if I'm not off my mark maybe turn her fury against whatever is manipulating her. After everything that has occurred today, talking with devils, angels, dominations, and the like has led me to consider alternative plans in case pure firepower is not enough. I leave the final decision to you, of course, Jaime-sama." Stryckland finished off, folding out his power spear through the explanation.

Abraham proffered a hand, embedded with a small gem "Kegel, one of your boys… Surufel gave me this, and said it could be used to pull myself and Ciana to him when I get my hands on her. Any chance of doing the reverse, and bringing him to us? I like his style, and it'd be rude to not invite him to the show."

Abraham looked over at Stryckland as he finished speaking "Why the fuck are we even considering not killing her? She's earned it, asked for it at this point."

Grace turned his head to Abraham. "I'd have thought you of all people would understand setting toys against each other."

A rough, heavy chuckle rumbled from Abraham "Finally got some balls, Grace? Good to see. But it doesn't change things. I already told Paul, she's mine. Only other option I'm comfortable with is Kegel tearing her apart and using her as a new suit."

"What she deserves is a bullet in the head." Sloane contended in a rare moment of agreement with Abraham. "You heard the Curator: she's doing something that could turn us all into slaves and doom the entire galaxy."

"She's earned it, but doesn't mean she isn't being manipulated or directed. If we can ensure that she is turned, she can weaken herself while saving ourselves against whatever else remains on this damnable hell planet." Stryckland counter-argued.

"I agree with Stryckland. It's a longshot, so you'll probably get what you want, Abe." Jaime declared. "But the strategic benefits are worth a try."

The Curator interjected, voice dripping with sarcasm. "I scanned your item. Surufel is a complete lunatic, you realize. But yes, it can do the reverse if needed. I think I could possibly tweak to do that. Surufel will not be happy to see me as non-lobotomized. That I guarantee. However, there's nothing stopping you from tossing him into the oncoming flood of enemies approaching from outside."

The doors finished opening, revealing their destination ahead.

The security center was a large, squarish room. A set of water-pool consoles dominated the center, while racks of what looked like weapons and shelves of armor took up most of the rest of the room, along with two small wyrm-like vehicles.

Almost thirty dead corpse monsters lay scattered on the floor, looking as if they had been burned. Small glowing orbs in the ceiling far above rotated, glowing green.

There were three doors to the south, and one to the east – the latter with a green glowing force field.

Grace went from looking like he wanted to say something unpleasant to perky up at the sight of the gear. "Curator, anything here we can make use of, or hand out to our forces?"

"Possibly." The Curator floated over to one of the consoles.

"First, let's buy some time." They heard several heavy thunks, then a humming sound. "I've brought up the facility's force screens and external defenses. That should hold off the incoming enemies, at least for a while, until they bring up enough numbers or equipment to crack it. It will also prevent Ciana from using that teleportal room to escape."

It then brought up a larger scale map displaying the surroundings – and the huge numbers of enemy forces in the area. Already, Surufel's position in the city looked to be under heavy assault.

"Lovely." Paul commented. "So, this is the most defensible spot I've seen so far, and those doors don't have a giant hole in them unlike the ones in the first room. Let's set up a defense here. We need to get the power to that door to the east shut off, yes? Can we just knock down the defense screen and the door instead?"

"None of your weapons – or mine, for that matter – can punch through it." The Curator informed him. "But yes. There is a room to the south that controls the main power source for the facility – a stabilized singularity. Power to that system and the output of the M/AM banks can be controlled from there. She'll be able to see what we've done but can't override it remotely."

Jaime did a quick assessment of who would be needed, and who would be best to bolster the defense. "Strike team is me, Paul, Abe, Stryckland, Gregory, Deus, Ryder, and Grace. Sloane, you're in charge of everyone else, Get ready to hold the line."

Sloane nodded. "Formation Delta. Snipers flanking and in the back, knives front, main body center. Can we close the doors quickly?"

"Yes. There is a control at this plinth: touch it and they will shut." The Curator indicated it with a beam of light and she went to stand by it.

Gregory eyed the weapons rack. "So, uh, are any of these gonna be helpful? Or the worm car things?"

"The wyrwyrms are not recommended for your physiology." The Curator cautioned. "The rods vary. The reddish ones might be useful. The green ones you should not even touch."

Gregory turned to Jaime. "Permission to test out the alien weapons, sir?"

Jaime grinned. "Granted."

"Hell yeah." Gregory picked up one of the ruby rods, inspecting it eagerly. There were about four hundred of them, enough for Jaime, Deus, Stryckland, and Grace to also acquire one, while distributing the remainder to the main body of Hyperion. Each was about a meter long, unbreakable and distinctly, disturbingly warm to the touch.

After a thought occurred to him, Grace flagged down the Curator with a gesture. "Don't suppose we can bypass the physiology issues for the wyrms or other rods with mechs or flesh-links?"

"Not really. The Ysani were designed with senses to detect and manipulate gravitons, and those systems rely on those for basic functions. Aha."

The doors to the south all slid open. "The Torus she has helping her is annoyingly competent. It's really starting to get on my nerves."

"Now, let us see... Rampaging Ysangi in the M/AM dump? Let's fix that first." The lights flicked for a moment, and a set of appealing screams rang from the south.

"Alright. We have issues, my charming carbon-based minions." The Curator announced.

"Yes, oh artificial overlord?" Jaime deadpanned back.

"The good news? The center for attuning Curators and Torus units is completely clear, so I should be able to gen up a Torus to counter Ciana's aggravating interference. The Singularity Room is defended by two of the heavier, stronger corpse things using Ythrongi corpses."

"The bad news, well..."

It shot a beam of light onto one of the pools of water, which splashed and rose up, displaying a room much like this one with more consoles and no racks of weapons. Ciana stood there, clad in heavy armor, next to another figure.

The being stood four meters tall, skin like obsidian, with glowing white tears here and there. Gleaming silvery armor covered the chest, back, lower legs and arms. Two of its four arms gripped a mace as long as a battlesuit.

Three other figures – slightly smaller, more matching the temporal visions in the valley – surrounded it. A band of the Redeemed corpses completed the assembly.

"She is more ambitious and stupid than I expected. That is a Ythrongi Choirmaster, one of their high leaders."

"Yeah, that's a damned Ythrongi." Paul confirmed. "Matches exactly with the pics Paig and Ravenna took back in the Event."

Abraham oriented for a clean bead on Sloane, who had gone pale and shaking. "Keep it together, Sister Penitent."

Jaime turned. "Sloane?"

"...I'm fine." The commissar insisted after a moment. "I was not expecting to see that."

"We must make haste. The lunatic bitch is trying to access the power systems for the Temporal Containment!" The Curator whirled and headed south. "If she can do that she will end us all. Nothing we have would even slow the Lord of Songs if it awakens."

Jaime sighed. "Well shit. Strike team, double time it!"

As they hustled off, Sloane received a private message from Abraham. When minutes later, she bothered to look at it, it came as a surprise to be reading a farewell letter.

"Beautiful Sloane, You are pure, like me. Shackled, like me. Purposed, like me. The relish on your face, as you burn down our foes, is a sight I will forever retain. As I will retain your wit, your insults and needling temptations. When I am gone from this place, I will make art in your honor, inscribed with words of holy verse and righteous genocide. They will be criminals, recidivists, those which you truly hated. I can think of no greater grave-gift than such. You, second only to Paul, have earned my respect. How dearly I wished we could have danced. Abraham."

The doors south opened up to a broad passage. The torn and shattered corpses of both the corpse-monsters, normal ysani, and mutated ysangi littered the floor, with immense amounts of blood and damage to the walls and floor.

The Curator moved to the first door on the right. "I am going to bring up a Torus unit… and see if any other of my kind remain un-lobotomized. The door on the right leads to the Singularity Control room. Once you have it secured, contact me."

"Just make sure our mastermind didn't have that hacked as well, Curator." Jaime cautioned. "You heard the ball, men. Let's go."

"Would be a good time to throw that Angel into the horde, Kegel, if that's still possible." Abraham proposed.

"I am beyond her feeble skills. But I will always be careful. Try not to get brutally murdered. As for the angel, I'll wait until they bring the shielding down. It's currently at 99%." The ball progressed into the room, muttering.

Jaime shook his head. He'd been talking about Kidun, or whoever had been guiding Ciana, given the reporting hacking.

The door to the left had been torn out of its mounting, the two pieces on the floor rent huge claw marks in them. Beyond the team saw a simply titanic room, one bigger than the rooms they had seen put together, with eye-watering fields of ungraspable colors, hundreds or thousands of circular pods, each one with what looked like a ysani inside.

"Sadly everything in there is a bit too big to port back. I'd kill for samples." Grace lamented.

"That must be the facility he mentioned for making those ysani things...which means this other door is our target." Paul mused. "Door kicker time. I'll take the right, Abe, left. The rest of you follow us in."

Paul and Abe moved up to the door, the former half turning to face the group. "Ya'll ready to rock?"

The entire facility shook, and the Curator came across the comms unit. "Organics, assault craft are attacking. Your bomber units are engaging. Your ship also appears to be under attack, and additional ground units are incoming. Shields at 95%."

"Great, no pressure."

With a lunging kick, Paul's battlesuit literally kicked the door out of its mounting, sending it flying.

There were three huge corpse soldiers inside and a handful of plus-sized others (still larger than those encountered in the hallway firefight), all busy at consoles. The door sailed across the room as they turned in response to the noise, bisecting one of the large leaders with a clanging thud.

"That was impressive." One of the permanently deceased's fellows jerks his head. "Kill them!"

Abe and Paul, displaying just how skilled they were in battlesuits, rolled to the sides and came up in firing positions as the rest charged in.

Abraham on the left side, raised his HK machine gun. "Call for help. Doesn't matter." He fired, directing two plasma bursts into the torso and lower limbs of the Redeemed captain who spoke, with a third burst at the closest of the subordinate corpses. The corpse leader was sent flying back with a shout. The third staggered its target, tearing open the dead monster's gut, but the wound was already healing.

Gregory and Stryckland rolled into the room, targeting the other ambulatory Redeemed authority figure with ruby rods. The rods illuminated, flaring an ugly crimson before thunderous beams of energy lanced out. Gregory's attack just missed, but Stryckland's shot blasted a hole completely through its chest, hurling it to the ground – a moment later the creature violently detonated in a pulse of gravitonic energies.

Deus aimed his ruby rod at the toppled one. "Eldritch technology, don't betray me now." His shot struck the fallen figure dead in the head, managing to get out a scream before it too violently detonated into a spray of giblets.

Grace's personal JOTUN unit lifted its heavy cannon. "Engaging xeno filth." It fired rapidly at the nearest approaching corpse thing, but the plasma bolts punched through without slowing it, and it gave a trilling howl of laughter.

By now, the big Redeemed grunts had recovered from the surprise. Four of the shambling figures burst into a flash of speed that none of the humans could track. The fifth hurled its bone sword directly at Stryckland, who barely ducked under it. The fanged maw at the end of the sword snapped its teeth at him as it passed by before sinking a good two feet into the wall behind him, still wriggling.

Three of the four who charged erupted into space around Lt. Deus, who ducked under one slash nimbly. The second one overbalanced trying to hit him and stumbled, ending up directly in front of Paul. The four one snarled as it slammed the blade into Deus's armor, which cracked alarmingly. The ceramic covering blackened as Deus staggered back, wincing.

Jaime drew his power sword, and intercepts the last one, who was charging for Grace.

The creature raised its own sword to parry, but Jaime's weapon cleaved through it, cutting the thing's arm off. It almost instantly collapsed into a pile of flesh and biological ooze, the severed sword blade shattering somewhere behind Grace.

The other corpses slowly turned to face Jaime. Fanged maws opened to let out howls of rage.

"Oye, imbécil. No sisees a mi chico."

The closest corpse thing, the one who stumbled after missing Deus, was suddenly snared by glowing silvery lines of energy that begin constricting and cutting into it. Paul blithely stepped past it, swinging his shadowy sword – which shapeshifted to have a wider edge. The next closest Redeemed was instantly cleaved in half, the two pieces flying back to splatter messily on the floor.

"Punk ass corpse fuckers." Paul sneered.

Ryder sighed, aiming a ruby rod at the distant and last figure. He grimaced when the red beam of energy hit, and it did... nothing. "Well, these rods only affect some of them – great."

"You want to play this game? I was the master of the javelin throw at the House of Windsor!" Stryckland drew his power spear and threw it with heroic resolve back at his attacker.

True to his words, the spear pinned the Redeemed to the wall, which clawed at it ineffectually before slowly writhing and sagging into a shapeless mass.

Lawrence activated his combat omniblade, and charged the entangled corpse. Already being cut to pieces by the Insusannon energy-wire, it was bisected without difficulty, and collapsed into more goo.

Deus brought up Adder's Kiss, parried an attack from the last corpse-assailant, then beheaded it.

"Well that was fun." Gregory glared at his ruby rod as calm settled in on the room. "Piece of shit alien tech doesn't half work. Threw off my fuckin' aim."

"Beautiful shooting, boys. Need to get one of those rods for myself." Abraham applauded, with an entirely different attitude.

Jaime sheathed his sword. "Curator, the room is secure."

"Understood. I have a Torus unit that is functional. Sort of." It's voice dropped. "All the rest of the curator units – over two hundred – have been deprogrammed and turned into mindless servitors. Hold, and I will be on the way."

"Fucking hate close quarters fights." Grace muttered, before freezing. "Uh, Deus? Did that actually hit you, or did the armor take it all?"

He saw in fact, a very thin trickle of blood from Deus' side. While the onboard medical computer had no VI, basic telemetry confirmed Deus's armor was breached, and indicated one degree rise in body temp.

"Fuck." Grace swore.

Abraham silently oriented himself to be within immediate melee range of Deus.

"Hmm? I feel fine. Feels like a scratch." Deus insisted.

"Grace, see if AO-222 does anything." Paul said. Abraham noted Paul's drone rig just went active, quietly.

"Sure you want me to use that first Paul?" Grace wondered. "Sterilization kit might be able to figure it out in my hands though."

"I know the risks. But I doubt goddamned conventional meds will work." Paul replied.

Grace simultaneously looked disturbingly enthusiastic, and resigned. "Fuck. Everyone back away from him. Two-person cover as per standard. I'll try my kit before the AO since at least it won't fuck him up."

A moment later the Curator sails into the room, trailed by a glowing grayish rock torus. "...Is there a problem?"

"Deus got infected. We're working on trying to heal him." Jaime explained. "What's the status with the Torus?"

"It's online. Like the other Curator units, it's been wiped. What is troubling is that I do not recognize the override code to do this."

The Curator floated over to Deus, scanning. "Troublesome. There is some kind of infectious agent in your soldier. I can try to purify it with adaptive picotech but that is extremely iffy. This is the nastiest bioweapon I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot."

"So have I." Grace pulled out scientific instruments and started to analyze the wound/agent.

"I feel fine. It's just a little sore." Deus bemusedly commented.

The Curator shifted its attention to doing something with a console and the Torus. "Shields are at 84%... I am afraid your bomber units have all perished. They took out the assault vehicles attacking, however, and no others are in close proximity."

Lawrence nodded. "Fuckin' witnessed. May they ride eternal, shiny and chrome."

Grace holstered his tools and sighed, waving to Paul.

Paul waved Jaime over. "What's up, doc?"

"Classifying identified toxin as AO-842 per standard methods." Grace explained to Deus and the commanders. "So far as I'm able to tell, I'm pegging your death and conversion to one of those... things within 2 days from now."

He raised his hands to stop Paul from reacting. "Shorter term effects are going to be a plethora of physical symptoms including general weakness and loss of coherency, but with how it's interacting with your nervous system you'll probably find yourself more alert on the flip side. It'd be nice if I could isolate that later, but alas. That's projected to hit within the hour."

The scientist paused. "Wait, sorry, your synth-blood's probably extending this. Six hours and twelve days, instead. On the optimistic side. I could probably do something with standard black nano to clear it out, but I'd give such a mere one in ten odds and the Curator's tech only twice that."

Grace ran numbers on his omni-tool while talking. "I'm not currently sure how my custom sterilization kit would fare. AO-222 odds are better than most but if it fails this goes really badly. The failure method will, in addition to its usual effects, probably get hijacked by this shit and drastically cut down on the amount of time he has left. Five days, nineteen hours for death and conversion. Not sure about the immediate effects."

Assuming no problems, the Spear of Longinus would return to their base in a few days, and the Administrator had something that could cure Deus – so the fallback was even if the Panacea backfired, but the consequences of the short-term effects could be fatal in combat, especially on Rho-19.

Jaime sighed. "I'll defer to whatever call you think is the best. We don't exactly have time to mull the decision over."

"It's the LT's decision." Paul stated.

"Safest treatment would be trying the sterilization kit, then the black nano, then waiting." Grace summed for Deus' benefit. "Fastest is to try the kit and then the pill."

"We're on the clock, kit then pill." Deus answered.

Grace nodded. "Alright, Arizona."

Grace pulled out something clearly self-fabricated emblazoned with the OP insignia and started to work on the lieutenant, after laying him down.

Jaime rejoined the Curator. "So, how's your system work going?"

"I am attempting to re-code security. Ciana's Torus is making that tricky." The Curator admitted.

"And your Torus isn't of the same caliber?" Jaime questioned.

"Mine is lobotomized. Hers somehow isn't."

"I did warn you." Jaime pointed out.

A slew of profanity came out of Grace's helmet.

"It managed to seal up the wound, but the agent itself just managed to adapt itself to the kit. Sorry, LT. I'll break out the pill."

The device spun around, as Grace unpacked the AO kit.

Grace pulled out a sealed pack – similar to the food tubes used by Migrant Fleet Marines to safely eat or administer large oral packages – but a bright warning red-pink in color. "All yours."

The pill went down easily and for about ten seconds, literally every injury Deus ever had felt faded. The slight catch in his knee was gone. A lingering cold vanished instantly. All the pain from persistent issues with implant installations dispersed.

Somehow, he knew, every trace left on his body by the hardships of a youth as a Class I miner and petty criminal on Therum left on his body had disappeared.

Then he felt the chill. Deus coughed, then winced as pain lanced through him.

Grace took a few steps back.

A whisper of a voice sounded in the back of his mind. Deus doubled over.

"PAUL!" Grace screamed.

Abraham lunged forward, grabbing Deus by the skull and squeezing with all his might. "Paul, take his fucking legs, now!"

Paul approached…

And something erupted, sending both suits staggering back.

Everyone's psionic thauma-wards hissed with heat as the voice spoke in their heads.

"...A new pawn arrives on the board. Convergence is not achieved. My brethren have been seduced and used as tools."

Jaime put a hand to the hilt of his sword. "Slice him up now!"

Paul slashed down with his shadowblade, but it bounced away from a psionic barrier. "Of all the fucking times not to have brought the goddamned mindripper! Deus, are you even conscious?"

"Yes," Deus managed to get out, still very much aware, but feeling control of his own body slipping away.

Abraham circled Deus warily, omni-spear crackling to life.

"Ah. Now I understand." The ominous voice continued. "My brother has been destroyed. The children are lost. This must be remedied."

"That does not look like a positive development." The Curator remarked.

The rotting goop and remains of the corpse soldiers they killed twitched violently and liquified further, moving towards the center of the room in a large puddle.

"The convergence must spread, the way must be opened." The puddle did not form any kind of monster. Instead it hardened, twisted, reshaping itself into a helix-like form.

"There is power here..." The presence rumbled.

Grace's energy sensors picked up a high surge of power. The Curator flared in alarm.

"It's trying to drain power from the M/AM banks! If those go down the shields come down!"

"Abe. Focus fire on Deus." Paul instructed. He put away the sword as a heavy hexagonal cannon slid up and over his right shoulder, glowing redly. "Lieutenant, it has been an honor."

Grace gestured to his mech, marking Deus as a target for its plasma cannon

"Would you strike at the salvation of your kind? You would deny the glory of convergence?" The helix-controller challenged.

Abraham unleashes the HK onto Deus. "Fuck you, you twisted excuse for a dildo. Converge yourself into a goddamn black hole."

Grace's mech joined in, along with a red beam from Gregory's rod.

Then, Paul fired. An eye-searing blast of white hot light struck, then shattered the barrier field. The ground underneath the lieutenant buckled violently, sending him flying, his armor shattering like glass and his body contorting.,

He hit the far wall, punching a circle two meters wide and six inches deep, falling to the ground, bloodied and broken.

The pile of flesh withered and collapsed, black rot spreading through it. There was a swirled scar on Deus's side, now decaying. Power levels fell back down.

After a second, the wounds on his body started healing.

Abraham and Gregory lit him up without pause. The fusillade of plasma severed his arm, and the ruby rod punched a hole in his chest… both of which healed a second later.

"Ah fuck, the goddamned AO is still fucking active in his body." Paul cursed.

"Grace, put the extinction AO on him. End this bullshit." Abe coldly ordered.

"Can't, min range on the goddamned Alchemist is too big." Paul pointed out. "Curator, can you possibly fix this mess?"

"Not and keep him alive."

"He's dead already, whatever that thing we heard is gonna puppet him." Paul snapped.

"...I will try." The Curator answered, floating over.

The Curator played several beams over him, circling, then a section of its surface cracked off and fell onto Deus's body, transforming into sharp stony spikes. The spikes sunk in, and Deus began thrashing and screaming.

The burning of the team's psionic wards ceased almost immediately.

"This is insane. It is a psionically active virus. What kind of insane lunatics would create such a thing!?" The Curator exclaimed. "If anyone else gets infected, just vaporize them. If this one had been psionically talented he could have mind controlled your entire group. I can make this work for me to have a body, but… your friend will die. Or I can try to save him, but the chances are almost nil."

The wards heated up slightly. The Curator dropped another larger spike into Deus's chest, and they cooled back down immediately. "And I don't think you can take the chance of me trying to save him. Apologies, organic. I will at least make this painless."

"I understand." Deus rasped. "Semper fi, guys." He closed his eyes.

"May you ride eternal through the gates of Valhalla." Gregory intoned.

The Curator fired a beam that vaporized the man's head, then a second that atomized a third of his side, where he was wounded. A moment later, the Curator sank into the body itself, a greenish glow suffusing it, the skin turning gray.

Stryckland turned his back to the former Deus, whispering, "May you find God, where you go."

Deus remembered the experimental blueware program he'd entered, upset after his relationship with Maleesya, a fellow biotic cross-trainee on Thessia, crashed and burned. He remembered the fight at the Prothean dig, the spinal injury that had left to further experimental augmentations and transfer to Omega Response.

He remembered getting tapped for the Vanguard program after showing off how well he'd killed batarian biotics with biotic charges. He remembered the crime scene he'd fled to the family apartment, then the local recruitment office.

And finally Arizona Deus remembered his parents, dead before he was ten due to eezo complications and a mining drill accident respectively. He remembered his six elder siblings, who'd taken care of him, even if crime had been required.

Deus's last fading thoughts was that he felt at peace.

"...This is decidedly odd." Curator-Deus's naked form stood up, the last of the wounds healing. His skin had turned a dark, stonelike gray, the face blank except for a single glowing green point. "The infection remains, but is unable to proceed. This may be useful for weaponization."

Stryckland turned back now. "Will this be permanent, Lord Domination? Or will you be able to switch bodies again if desired?"

It was a cold question, but one to be asked in light of the being's preferences, Stryckland's reasoned.

"As for staying, I am uncertain." The Curator mused. "On the other hand, it means the crazy one can now murder the hell out of Ciana. So, win win."

"Uncertain as in, you're not sure if you can, or if you want to?" Jaime probed.

He shrugged. "Uncertain as I dislike the morality of hijacking the bodies of sapients. Now, let us look at the power systems..."

After a moment's inspection, the verdict was: "Not good. I unlocked the path to Power Monitoring. The Ysani clone facility is secure, but I cannot bring it online. The M/AM matrix is steady. Ciana is attempting to reroute it. I've blocked that for now, but that causes issues. We don't have enough power to activate the full planetary defense net AND the reality anchors."

"Is that solar weaponry active now?" Jaime inquired, trying to factor that into his calculations.

The 'face' of the Curator looked up. "The GTS system is in shambles, and more of those corpse things are landing every minute. The solar defenses are active and firing as rapidly as possible, but there's too many to get them all. Without the planetary defense net up they'll continue coming and now they're headed here. On the other hand, switching on the reality anchors will almost certainly cripple the Choirmaster."

"And the defense screens here?" Paul added.

"Seventy five percent and dropping. The more soldiers that arrive, the faster they can focus it down. Surufel is almost certainly lost, the entire city center is surrounded now." The Curator reported. "...Lovely. Large scale corpse units – in excess of fifty meters in height – are incoming."

Stryckland narrowed his eyes. "Well, after what occurred. I can try to turn her against her master, but it's going to be more difficult if the Lord Domination finds is distasteful."

"Ciana no longer counts as anything but a pile of soon to be dead meat." The Curator bluntly stated.

"So, it seems to me, turn on the reality anchors and kill the two." Stryckland concluded.

"It won't kill them, but it will take their most blatant abilities out of play. And it will CRIPPLE the Lord of Songs if that thing manages to get free." The Curator explained.

"Yes, that sounds like the best contingency. Reality anchors on." Jaime instructed. They were already on the clock, and it would all be meaningless if they couldn't take Ciana and the Choirmaster down.

"The anchors are up." The Curator confirmed, as there was an almost perceptible 'snap' feeling in the air for a moment.

Paul tapped his commlink. "Commissar, we're going in. Be advised the defenses are starting to crack and you have additional incoming units, so things will get hot very soon."

"Good luck... and try to survive." She replied.

Paul paused to drive Deus's omni blade into the ground and set the deformed shattered remains of his helmet atop it, the Omega symbol bloodied and warped. "Vaya con dios, lobo valiente."

Captain Espinoza's voice entered the comms channel. "Ground team, this is the Spear of Longinus, respond."

"Jaime here." Jaime answered. "What's up?"

"Whatever the hell was jamming comms just went down – and the giant ass moon that was closest just withered and exploded."

"The sun is a friendly combatant. Maravíllate con esa frase sobre tu tiempo libre." Jaime informed the captain.

"Yeah, the sun is pissed as fuck. We're keeping out of the way of those blasts." Espinoza concurred. "I've lost contact with the bomber group I sent down, but scans show more ships incoming. We've also got more incoming vessels headed our way, but we can hold. CC is standing by for relay immersion, you've got two hours left. Is that sufficient time?"

"We're going to teleport onto the Spear, so yes." Jaime assured him. "We'll let you know when it happens."

"Past the Shoker Field? Must be some damned good tech." Espinoza marveled. "Be advised there's a goddamned army – sixty thousand plus – almost on top of you, kid. Get the hell out as soon as you can."

"We know. Over and out."

Stryckland looked over. "Jaime-sama, "You want me to try to talk to Ciana? At least divide and conquer?"

"Again, no harm in trying." Jaime affirmed. No matter how unlikely it was to be.

Abraham sang cheerily to himself as he did system and weapons checks: "I have a girl, waitin' for me… On that far shore, beyond the sea… We'll embrace, smile and laugh… And then, I'll saw her in half.."

The walk back up the corridor was done in silence, until the team was in front of the door, sans green barrier.

Uncle Paul reloaded his HK M-J8008 (modified to fire Prothean Force Harpoons) and chuckled grimly. "Stay behind me. Jaime, on you, nephew."

Jaime nodded. "Right. Have your pitch ready, Stryckland. Amigos, a la lucha del milenio."

"Let me get the door then!" Paul's towering battlesuit strode forward, and pushed the massive doors open…

…Revealing, instead of a room, a long hallway.

"...This is not melodramatic at all." Paul remarked, before moving forward with Abe on his right.

"Worse than turians, I swear." Jaime groaned.

"I dunno," Ryder disagreed, "I've seen some really shit turian installations. Once had false floors just to make your steps boom."

The group advanced forward until they came to yet another murdered angel, this one pulled apart. It took a second given all the ichor and broken pieces, it was almost certainly Ramiel, or a ysanalarch almost identical to him. A bone sword pinned the central eye to a wall.

"I'll give her points for not appreciating my master's tools very much." The Curator shrugged his shoulders in a human gesture. "Then again, they were always difficult."

"You don't seem to like your bosses very much." Ryder observed.

"The Ascended were the most savagely cruel race of sapients ever. You think the Ythrongi are bad? This was their homeworld and the Ascended turned it into a lab to trap mice. Ah, one advantage: being in meat has removed my behavioral locks and I don't have to call Lethath 'lord'. Lord of insane, badly thought out science and literal dramatic laughter, maybe. The entire universe really is better off with them gone."

Grace really wanted to scrape some of the remains into a sample box but understood it was a bad idea.

"Well if this isn't some foreplay. Girl knows how to excite a man before a date." Abraham laughed.

Stryckland laughed to himself quietly. "You should tell me about that if we live, Abe. I'm still a virgin, and have never dated."

"Sex ed from the murderbot. Is that better or worse than being on this planet?" Gregory wondered.

"Worse." Grace was quick to declare. "You don't want to see his logs."

"I mean, seriously? Your mech guy wouldn't even raise eyebrows in the Clowns." Ryder remarked.

"...That bar is somewhere below the entire galaxy." Paul told him. "I mean they convicted Kurgan for six hundred and fifteen murders for experimenting on people. He even experimented on fucking cats, for fucks sake."

"Save the byplay for after we're through this mess." Jaime intervened. They didn't have the time to waste.

The Curator kicked the corpse aside – incongruously, given their significantly different sizes and moved forward. "Indeed. Come! Let us proceed... at least until we get to the door, then I will allow you to heroically go first."

The corridor ended in another massive door, this one showing some damage to the lock at the middle. A pile of ysani corpses was shoved to one side.

"I detect multiple life signs inside. One semi-human, at least four or five Ythrongi, and an unknown mass of corpse things." The Curator stepped back behind Grace, his voice deadpan and flat. "Charge."

A thin sheet of stonelike armor covered his naked form.

"Push the doors open, or are you going to try to be sneaky?" Paul asked Jaime.

Abraham boosted his vox to the loudest output. "Honey, I'm home! I hope you've kept it warm for me."

"Oh good! Dinner's ready, gutless motherfucker!" Ciana's voice called back.

"Cancel that." Paul kicked the door open.

The Power Monitoring room was not quite as big as the Security Center.

Four big consoles with pools of water occupied the center of the room, each one manned by a Ythrongi. Up close the obsidian aliens appeared even more massive, emitting a dull heat haze as their hands traced over the pools.

Four groups of Redeemed, one sniper and one melee squad for each side, covered their flanks.

In the front middle of the room was Ciana, wearing heavy and thick greenish armor, a sword in both hands. The stone-like form of a Torus hovered behind her, a Curator unit set in the middle of it.

The Choirmaster wore silvery armor, the lesser Ythrongi what looked like robes. It inclined its head towards the strike team. "...Your pursuers/chasers, yes?"

Stryckland raised his hands and started the path of diplomacy.

"Ciana Vandefar, well met. Stryckland, Knight Irregular to the Windsors and Omega Response. Is this – no, this isn't your master. Am I wrong to say you have a master? In that, he led you here, didn't he? Guide you to come here all for reasons that you felt necessary, I no doubt understand. Revenge. Power. Influence. Or perhaps save humanity against the High Lords of Sol? Am I not wrong?"

Stryckland looked her up and down, mouth moving multiple syllables a second.

"Yay another cock-licking Lord of Sol lackey, trying to play mind games." Ciana faux-cheered.

"No mind games. You've reshaped your form, you have power beyond anything that mortal humans can ever hope to achieve, you've cheated death itself and are pursuing an agenda that I suspect knowing what I know, is about overthrowing the High Lords and installing something new in your place. Ample revenge against those who have objectified and mistreated you in the past, like the youngest Coleman?" Stryckland said with rapid surety.

Despite his efforts, she stared at Abraham, not Stryckland.

"Your point? God, Windsor knights are so talky. I have a hot date to get to."

Stryckland continued on regardless. "It doesn't take a genius to see that you've had help, as your form is beyond anything that a baseline human could accomplish and the songs you sing are powerful. I know you used to be cripplingly shy and had asthma. And yet, do you not suspect that whoever your master is not playing you? Isn't manipulating you to accomplish his means and not yours?"

The Choirmaster gave what could be recognized as a laugh.

Stryckland trailed off, sensing he was not exactly getting on the right foot here.

Ciana finally stopped staring at Abe to look at Jayceon. "...Goddamn they're kind of slow on the uptake, ain't they?"

"As I said, Kiduns' manipulations are never obvious." The Choirmaster interjected.

"These aren't bloody mind games. Every known precursor species has marked the Ythrongi as 'stay the fuck away.'" Jaime informed her, restraining frustration at her obstinacy.

"With very good reason." She smirked, her armor splitting to reveal her face. Her skin now was almost gray, with the appearance of a woman closer to forty than twenty, hair streaked with white, eyes glowing with an unnatural greenish color.

"First, need to confirm something. You guys are Omega, right? So you have one of those fuck-ass 'eat everything' bombs with you to clean shit up so the Citadel doesn't freak out?"

Her gaze flicked from person to person, but her swords didn't come up and – oddly enough – the corpse things were still not aiming the rifles at Jaime's team.

Jaime tilted his head. "Interesting question."

"Someone's been blabbing." Paul observed.

Her face creased in a grin. "Unlike the goddamned clowns, I do my fucking homework."

"I'm sure you do." Jaime answered. "Why do you ask?"

"Because whatever happens, this place needs to be blown to shit. Either way, it is really not a good idea to keep it functional."

"We agree on that much." Jaime nodded. He suspected the agreement would break down thereafter on whether or not the Ythrongi should be blown up with it.

"Now, to answer Mr. Flowery Knight Guy. One, if you think I'm not aware the guy who got me here is using me, you're assuming I'm a stupid fool." She lifted one blade. "Thing is, two can play at goddamned subliminal programming. I'm fully aware of what Attunement does. I don't want to die, but..."

Ciana smiled sadly. "The truth is the only way to win the stupid game between these over-sized cuttlefish and their fuck ass squad of death robots is to introduce a disruptive element."

"We have said we can preserve your spirit, and at least we keep our ideals." The Choirmaster added.

"Ciana," Jaime sighed. "I get it. The Reapers are bad shit, and these Ascended even more. But this isn't disrupting the board. It's atomizing it, and the players too."

"No, you don't. The Reapers are going to kill everything, and the Ascended think it's a fucking game show. They'll stop thinking it's funny when the Ythrongi throw them back into hell."

"...And what happens when we're left with the Ythrongi?" Jaime questioned.

"...We won't be here, big guy." Ciana acknowledged. "That's the price."

Ciana's smile widened. "But that's not a big price, given the shit humanity has been turned into. The rest of the galaxies under the Reapers will live."

"Seriously?! Suicide? Is that your big plan?" Jaime snapped.

"Or we can throw away the chance to stop all this shit and STILL die, and everyone else dies too. That's your solution, to simply pretend the end isn't coming and do nothing." Ciana replied.

Jaime noted that she had shied away from answering what would happen to the survivors out there that would have to deal with the Ythrongi.

"The preparations are ready. The Lord of Songs' chamber is under the control of the Fifth Choirmaster. We only need to rechamber the power draw." The massive Choirmaster stepped away from the console and behind Ciana, holding its gigantic mace loosely to one side.

Jaime leveled a flat expression at her. "Ciana. I have had the worst past few days in the history of humanity. I have seen how mad the High Lords are. I have seen the threat of the Ythrongi. I have learned the depths of what my organization has to deal with. I have seen Kidun playing so many people like a harp. And then of course, the Reapers."

"And all of it has been dumped on me, the responsibility to lead and deal with this soon. But I am not going to just lay down and die. I have to do it, because no one else will."

Jaime found himself warming to his speech. "Omega Response, the Department of Abnormalities? We deal with the things that twist reality. We split the walls between universes. We have locked nightmares beyond imagining away. The things that laugh at logic and reasons."

Ciana remained unimpressed. "There are over twenty thousand Reapers, and they can literally ignore the fucking laws of physics. There's at least a dozen of the squidfucks, and each one makes the Reapers look like kids. There is only one species who has ever been able to fight back... and you want to throw it away and trust that – somehow, without any specification or actual tech – you will win."

"I think we of all people can do it." Jaime countered, remembering what he'd seen in the depths of the Department represented only fragments of what it did have to use. "Because, Ciana? We break the laws of physics too. One more thing. Are you sure Kidun hasn't planned for you double-crossing him?"

Ciana burst out laughing. "Call him, then. ASK him if what y'all have can stop the Reapers."

"The other galaxies will be safe, you say, when the Ythrongi destroy the Reapers and banish these Ascended?" Abraham's low chuckle turned into an outright laugh. "Ciana, you think these things would stop at this fucking galaxy? Please. The nature of all things is power. Power, control, domination. We'd be dead and gone, and these Singers would have choice pickings for what they desire. They are Just. Like. Me."

Surprisingly, she nodded at Abraham. "They are like me. We don't have time for lies. Ythrongi don't murder each other, don't enslave each other, and if they turn others into them, is that so fucking bad? There's not shit 'good' about being a fucking human."

"Is this meaningless banter necessary?" The Choirmaster complained.

"Yes, it is. I haven't made my pitch to them yet after all. We could use the help." Ciana told him.

The Choirmaster appeared to frown. "...They don't look very strong."

"So yeah, the machine monstrosities don't end up wiping life out. The cephalopods don't get to sit back and laugh. But these fucking things? You'd be giving them all of fucking creation."

Abraham laughed again at her response. "Sister, you think I give a shit about humanity? About life? Fuck no. But your logic is flawed. You're condemning all life while saying you're saving it. Sheer fucking hypocrisy. You're claiming to be a martyr when you're just another fucking toy. Another tool. Another plaything for a group of powerful, twisted souls."

"Idiots. Ythrongi Attunement..." She trailed off, glancing at one of the screens. "Listen, I'm sure you all think you get it, but you don't. And frankly? We're both running short of time."

She glanced at the larger figure behind her. "I think dipshit A finally realized his fuckass monster lab is in trouble and dipshit B has tumbled to the fact my Attunement is blocking his goddamned Influence."

"Very well. There is no more time for mere talk if both Lethath and Kidun are aware." The Choirmaster rumbled.

Ciana Vandefar exhaled. "Look, I know you guys have your job, and no matter what your buddy in the battlesuit is gonna get murder fucked, but listen. Your choices are we side with the Ythrongi and humanity ends but our personalities remain and we live on, and the rest of the fucking galaxies are not farmed like crops. Or we don't, and there is literally nothing else out there that can stop the Reapers or the Ascended. Kidun is just now finding out that, no, he's not the only one who can do goddamned mental conditioning. And he's going to try to shut my little changes down quickly."

"...Wait, you want us to fucking join you? Are you actually fucking crazy?" Ryder exclaimed disbelievingly.

The sword-corpse Redeemed casually put hands on their blades, although none drew them yet.

Grace switched to a combination of internal vocalizations, suit systems and slight finger twitches to prepare a combat order for his JOTUN companion without sending it out yet.

Paul slowly flexed his shoulders.

Ciana merely smiled at Alec. "Jesus fucking Christ, y'all even dragged Mad Science Ryder into this mess?" She shook her head. "Choice is out there. You work with me, I guarantee your minds survive Attunement. If not, I have a whiny coward bitch who has to hide inside a fuckall suit to kill."

Stryckland snorted, deciding now to swap from appeasing Ciana to making her too angry to think straight. "No, I don't think so. You got dumped by the young Coleman after all because, he preferred fat girls with personality and optimism than to paraphrase Ahern, your emo-frowny face suicidal idealation."

Ciana paused, before circling to her right, her swords leveled. "Snipers, please shut him up, he's pissing me off. Second, the biggest suit is the most dangerous. I'll handle the other one. Try to keep one or two alive, they have neat toys. Anyone who gets between me and bitch-boy over there dies. Only warning."

"Understood." The Choirmaster lifted the massive mace in one hand the size of an air car and leveled it at Paul. "I am Second of Songs in Youth. Please forgive me for your death."

Abraham didn't waste another second, aiming his HK and firing all three bursts directly for her unarmored face. His barrage hit her a second later, sending her skidding back a few feet. She brushed back her hair, smirking. "Not even close to enough fucking gun, limpdick."

Paul shook his head. "Chica, that just makes him fucking angrier." He clicked something on his suit, and eight green glowing omni drones erupted from the back, encircling Abe in glowing blue hexagonal fields.

The two robed Ythrongi closer to the front lines both sang something, but despite the sensation of their actions, nothing appeared to happen.

Ciana leaped over them, charging Abe in a stunning display of pure speed. She jumped again with both swords extended to perform a double stab at his head. Her blades came down in perfect sequence... only to hit the first blue field and crash backwards, hitting her in the face.

"Oops." Paul uttered.

The look she shot at him could kill someone dead on the spot, but she was out of position to defend against Abe's sudden thrust with the omni-spear, forcing her back as the head scraped across her armor. The two flew into blindingly fast combat, her swords finding gaps in the drone field and gashing the battlesuit, even as his spun his spear and put through her lower leg, making her stumble back.

Paul's Thermopylae Mod X battlesuit stomped forward towards the Choirmaster.

One of the Redeemed sword-wielders flashed through the air in response, swinging aggressively. The blade scratched, but didn't penetrate the armor at all.

The corpse looked shocked, and even the Choirmaster tilted its nightmare head. "Fascinating."

The snipers peered at each other before also firing on Paul's battlesuit. Every blast hit, but most ricocheted off harmlessly.

"Not. Impressed." Paul moment he spoke, silvery tanglefields surged outward, ensnaring and slicing all the sword-armed Redeemed save his initial attacker.

Grace's JOTUN caught that one with its massive fist, pulverizing it in a single clean blow. "Xenothreat: extinguished. Threat: laughable." It then began firing GOOP grenades into the midst of the corpse snipers, engulfing them in a sticky immobility.

Jaime dashed to one side, coming up in a roll and lashing out with his power sword at one of the lesser Ythrongi, remembering they weren't supposed to be hot in melee. HIs cut skittered off of some kind of grayish field of interlocking ovals, but the towering figure stepped back in alarm.

So that was the purpose of the initial Song. "Eezo mines!" Jaime barked, rolling back as he did so.

Grace paused to trigger his omnishield before carefully firing a flashpak mine from his rifle. It flew just over Ciana's head to land on the ground between the two Ythrongi.

"No! Move–"

Ciana's panicked warning shout came too late, because the mine detonated in blue fire.

One Ythrongi went staggering back and fell on its backside, robes on fire. The other one, whose oval shield had received Jaime's attack and then most of the blast, was flung away. Two arms and a leg shattered on impact, and oozing glowing silvery fluids spread over the floor. The blast staggered Ciana as well, who lost her footing. Abraham reversed his spear in an under arching slash that flung her back, seeping black ichor from her side.

"Well. Did not expect that." Grinning, Grace launched the other pak at the downed and stunned Ythrongi, who could only stare at it in horror before it blew apart in a spray of obsidian chunks, patter down irregularly into the pools of water and bounced along the floor.

A third flashpack flew out to hit the third in the far back but struck against the bulk of the Choirmaster instead. The detonation impacted just as violently, sending the massive creature staggering to one side.

"They're civilians, you fucks." Ciana snarled as she got back to her feet, something the remaining humans present considered rather hypocritical considering what her plans entailed for humanity's civilians. Or that said 'civilians' could warp reality.

She turned back to face Abraham, who had paused in the exchange to regard the visual delights of exploding Ythrongi. "Pissass coward, hiding behind shields and fucking armor, bring it!" The two launched themselves at each other, but the corrupted woman's massive speed advantage was nullified by the blue shield of the drones blocking her hits, and the two were almost evenly matched.

Corporal Gregory, following on Grace's example, triggered his mine launcher, firing a timed eezo mine right in front of him. Before it hit the ground, the biotic latched onto it with a Throw. This made it helpfully easy enough to land it onto the Torus itself, detonating right next to the Ythrongi working the console pool. Said Ythrongi had unlike its fellows, not bothered to sing up a defense, and paid for that negligence, blasted into various chunks.

"Fuck you, thongy boy!" Gregory crowed over the comms.

The Torus, on the other hand, was not even discolored by the explosion. "Warning: alignment process halted. Interlock release at sixty four percent."

"Fucking assholes..." Ciana spat as she slammed against a wall, another wound from Abraham's spear having left a gaping cut in her arm.

"Yes, this is becoming tiresome." Second of Songs agreed.

"Sorry for being so boring. Allow me to wake you up." Paul fired the cannon over his left shoulder – the same one used on Deus.

The energy blast deformed the Choirmaster's silver armor and hurled him backwards almost twenty meters, crashing through the Redeemed, and into the far wall, denting it under the impact. Many of the Redeemed were pinned beneath the Choirmaster's massive bulk, while the Ythrongi lord struggled to pull free of the mass of GOOped bodies.

To add insult to injury, Paul's jump jets activated as he skidded across the room to kick the Choirmaster in the head. This didn't appear to hurt the Choirmaster much, but clearly pissed him off further.

"You ready, pretty? You keep beggin', and I aim to deliver." Abraham bragged as he and Ciana continued their duel. So far, she had shattered one of the hex fields, at the cost of accruing noticeable damage to her strange armor, and his suit was littered with wounds but he had taken no real damage yet."

"Is there even a dick under all that suit? I mean, you hide behind tech and can't even man up enough to fucking face me without more techno bullshit from your loverboy." Ciana retorted.

"More than enough dick for you, cunt. But we won't start there with my art for you– " Abraham's voice modulated, and what came out of his speakers was the voice of Synthia Vandefar. "We'll start here, my sweet, beloved girl."

Ciana rolled her eyes, parrying a spear jab. "Oh, wow. Did they steal you from the Clowns? Would kind of explain why the rest of your group is actually dangerous and you aren't."

Abe only smiled wider as his suit fired a mine directly at Ciana. It exploded, staggering her as he lunged forward with the omnispear. The spear slammed into her midsection, sundering her greenish armor with an audible snap, punching through and pinning her to one of the room's columns.

"TAKE IT! TAKE IT DEEP YOU STUPID FUCKING ANIMAL!" Abraham bellowed, his voice heavy, laced with excitement and finally released rage. She snarled and flung him back, her own sword cutting deep past the drone fields into his armor for the first time, but as he stumbled he kicked her in return, slamming her right back against the column.

Stryckland seized the opportunity and leveled his own power spear at Ciana. "How does it feel to be dumped for a obese girl that is being fined 100 credits a day! Get Dicked!" He moved in and impaled her as well. Gouts of green-tinted red blood spilled from her body, and parts of her chest armor fell away, revealing her nude form.

Jaime mentally patted himself on the back for choosing to power the reality anchor. Between the effects of it on Ciana, the Ythrongi, and their underestimating Omega Response, things were going well.

Then, the Choirmaster finally pulled his massive bulk up, even as Paul bombarded him with a volley of Prothean Force Harpoons, and then roared, all four arms spreading wide.

The roar turned to a crushing array of music, and the air thickened. The light twisted. The ground seemed to tilt. The strike team – all but Abraham – were consumed with agony. Their joints locked. Pain radiated down nerves, and their grips on weapons slackened as the insides of their suits felt as if they were burning.

The remaining Redeemed corpses immolated in blue fire, evaporating as the Curator crashed to the ground. Hot spikes of pure torment ripped through everyone's heads, drawing screams. Even as the music seemed to fade for a moment, it struck a sudden new note. Gregory felt a fresh spike of pain in his head… and suddenly found his biotics unresponsive.

"Your insolence has ensured your death, trash." The Choirmaster coldly proclaimed.

The Song shifted, now a white-hot ribbon of ice wrapping around the heart. Muscles tightened involuntarily. The glowing shimmer around Paul's battlesuit sparked and died as he staggered back with a shout of pain. Somehow, he triggered some kind of weapon on his battlesuit, a grey-black beam of energy spearing forth to hit the giant alien.

The Choirmaster flinched as well, a discolored spot on his shoulder forming, but his Song failed. The notes hung in the air still, but the group as one gasped for air as they could breathe and move again.

Infuriated, the Choirmaster closed on Paul, who tried to back away. The huge Ythrongi picked the entire battlesuit up and angrily threw it at the group. Luckily, his fury interfered with his aim and Paul sailed past without hitting anyone.

The Choirmaster lifted his mace in all four arms.

"Oh, you got him mad, that's not smart." Ciana crooned, despite her position against the pillar.

Paul groaned as he tried to restart his systems. "Why is that tonto puta still alive, man?"

Shaking his head clear, Ryder noticed something attached to Ciana's waist and grabbed it. He came away with a roll and flung it at the Choirmaster.

"Crazy bitch had a goddamned HERMES detcharge! Duck!"

The reeling Omega Response soldiers not in battlesuits dived for cover as the canister flew across the room and landed at the Choirmaster's feet before going off.

The anti-grain explosion knocked people around, buffeting the Curator even – but the Choirmaster roared more in absolute fury, one hand going to its seared face.

The Curator snarled, standing back up. "That's the problem with smarmy know it alls."

HIs body gleamed blue for a moment, and across the room, the other Curator inserted into the Torus suddenly crumbled.

"You never bother to think about other angles."

"Connection lost. Connection lost." The Torus blared. "Loss of energy routing. Loss of carrier signal."

"Yes, blather mindlessly." The Curator hissed. "As for you, die."

The AI occupying the body of Deus raised a hand, sending a torrent of green fire into the bulk of the Choirmaster and sending him skidding, and crashing once again into the wall.

Notably, the fire did not go out, still covering Second Sings. A second later, the Curator's body sagged and knelt. "Well, great. Out of power for the most part. Cost of not being vulnerable to hacking I suppose."

"But don't worry. I called for 'help.' Just pretend I'm actually your friend." His image shimmered into a perfect copy of Arizona, complete with weapons.

"...What do you mean 'help'?" Paul asked.

As he spoke, the far door – the one that presumably led to the teleportal – scissored open, and four gleaming figures floated through it.

The first one was a spinning black cylinder with four animal faces atop it. The second, five interlocked circles of bone, festooned with bone hands, and a nimbus of eyes. The third one was an amorphous cloud of black energy shot through with red streaks, and the last one a collection of silvery and gold rods sliding up and down in a bundle with a single glowing eye atop it.

All four had sets of wings, and the one in front took in the scene with clear amusement in its voice.

"Be not afraid, for We are here with you."