Elsewhere, Fefnir was enjoying a quiet night with a female companion. A tall, buxom female by the name of Hook, she was wearing a tasteful teddy of navy blue silk that accented her lush curves and hard muscles. Very fine, dark brown hair had been cropped close to her scalp, then spiked into a cute modern hairdo. Like Fefnir, her cheeks were tattooed, but with dark blue bolts that matched the main color of her armor.
"They're onto us," she stated, and twitched in slight annoyance as Fefnir nuzzled her throat.
"Oh, they can't be," Fefnir murmured softly into her ear. "And even if they are, so what? It's not illegal." Hook started to pull away, then relented as his grip on her waist tightened.
"If they find out the truth, it'll fuck everything up. Harpuia'll be an asshole about it, you know he will." Fefnir frowned, and kneaded her skin, making her sigh.
"Don't diss our fearless leader, Hook. Always show respect." Hook sighed, rolling her eyes. That response was so typically… Fefnir. Always the loyal master sergeant, although technically, that was no longer his rank.
"This is private, not public, and I didn't curse his name or say he molests small farm animals. I just said he'll screw us over, and he will. Or are you telling me I'm wrong?" she asked, and Fefnir winced.
"Well… you could be right. But it won't just be up to him," Fefnir said consolingly. "And that's even if he finds out the truth, and I don't see how he could."
"No, just put us under a permanent cloud of suspicion… ah. Mmm. That's nice." Hook wiggled a bit in pleasure as Fefnir's hand started wandering.
"Don't worry about it," he advised her with a grin, as he continued to explore her well built, appealing body. "S'not like we can do anything, so just go with the flow. It'll all turn out in the end."
"Famous last words…" But Hook didn't protest further, turning her head to meet his lips for a deep, passionate kiss.
There really was very little they could do about it.
"I can't believe you hid this from me," Leviathan fumed. "I put so much effort into talking to those people! Wasted! We don't even know who they were!" Harpuia pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache coming on. He hated dealing with Leviathan when she was on the edge of a temper tantrum.
"I already explained this, Fairy. I needed you to cover for Padrick's activities. And," he overrode her next protest. "I've heard enough. What have you found out?"
"Bleh." Leviathan scowled. Harpuia had explained the situation to her, and asked her to look for any common physical threads in the soldiers Padrick had identified, over a secure communication channel precisely so he could avoid this confrontation. Unfortunately, time didn't simmer Leviathan down much, unlike Fefnir. "Oh, alright, but you OWE me Sage. I've found a few oddities they all have in common, from physical scans."
"What are they?" Harpuia asked, and Leviathan flipped on a schematic of Fefnir.
"See how much memory is being used on memory files? It's way more than a pretty young Reploid should have used up. They're all like that, although Fefnir's about the worst. It's totally harmless, though, so we never really looked into it."
"Hmm. And what else?" Harpuia said neutrally, watching as Leviathan pointed to a second point in the schematic.
"This is his data ports. He's got more than one, and they run really, really high speed for a super efficient data transer. It's sort of unnecessary, but again, not harmful, so I never thought much of it. They all have that, too." Harpuia's eyes narrowed as he considered that. "And the only other thing that they sorta-maybe have in common is really well-developed neural nets. I mean, more developed than I would expect from a random sampling of young and old Reploids. Usually, that's a feature of older Reploids and deep philosophical thinkers."
"And Fefnir is neither," Harpuia said dryly. "You said there's too much information being used in memory files. Could the efficient data transfer have been to get it there? And could it be hidden instructions?" Leviathan frowned pensively at that question.
"Yes and no. The data transfer probably was used for it, but… memory files don't contain instructions. They're pretty passive, sort of read only. You remember things, but your memories can't tell you what to do. If that was it, the instructions would be in some other place, not data storage. And nothing else looks unusual at all." Leviathan could speak with assurance on that… she had helped fix Fefnir up so often, she was quite familiar with every aspect of his schematic. "Except for the well-developed neural nets, and I'm guessing the extra memory usage somehow caused that."
"So essentially, this tells us nothing." Harpuia summed up their findings, and Leviathan shrugged.
"Why are you making this so hard, Sage? Why not just pin Fefnir to the wall and question him until he spills his guts? He would, to you, if you push hard enough. You're his idol." She studied Harpuia's grim face for a moment. "Harp, you're letting this get to you. You don't really think Fefnir's a cold-blooded traitor, do you? And all these other people? Muffy works under you, and she's one of the best flyers you have. Sylph is one of mine, and she's a good team leader. All of these people are good, in fact, and they seem pretty darn loyal. Do you really think it's just an act?"
"…I don't know anymore." Harpuia said quietly. "They've been keeping a secret from me, something that must be Earth shattering. I just don't know anymore."
"So… ask." Harpuia considered that, and finally shook his head.
"No… I want to find out more first. Right now, I don't even know what questions to ask." Harpuia said. He still had no idea what they were hiding… what secret there was about their origins… and he desperately wanted more information before he confronted Fefnir on it.
"Are you going to put Padrick on it?" Leviathan's tone was neutral, and Harpuia smiled wryly. He knew she didn't like him much. Leviathan had been promoted to Guardian from the ranks, and one of her direct competitors for the position had been Padrick. He'd accepted his failure with something approaching grace, but Leviathan still harbored a grudge over some of the tactics he'd used in his attempt to beat her out. To alleviate any tension, Padrick had been transferred to Harpuia's command after Leviathan's promotion.
"Yes. I'm thinking of making it his trial, to see if he's fit to replace Phantom." Padrick's fighting ability was very close to Guardian level already, and with a few upgrades, he would be fit for it. And this kind of sneaky investigation was exactly the sort of thing Phantom would have excelled at. Leviathan's eyes widened, then narrowed as her nostrils flared in an expression of suppressed anger and disgust.
"Oh, are you…" her voice was very soft, and Harpuia gave her a hard stare.
"Leviathan, the trouble you had with him was years ago, and you won. Don't you think you've nursed this grudge long enough? Much longer than he has," Harpuia said, annoyed. The main problem with promoting Padrick and the reason he hadn't done it already was the likelihood that he and Leviathan simply wouldn't be able to work together. He doubted Padrick held much of a grudge, but Leviathan would surely prod him into reacting. Leviathan turned away, crossing her arms in a way that Harpuia could only think of as a pout.
"He's a damned backstabber. Oh sure," she waved, cutting off Harpuia as he opened his mouth to object. "He's dandy to have for a subordinate or a superior. But if you're his peer and you have something he wants, you better look out for a boot in the nuts."
"That's a nice way to put it," Harpuia said dryly. "But I don't think that would be an issue for him as a Guardian. Besides, you've competed with Fefnir often enough. What's the difference?"
"The difference is, Fefnir wouldn't cut my throat while I'm sleeping. Padrick would, if he thought it would get him ahead." Harpuia considered that, then shook his head. He thought she was wrong… not about Padrick, precisely, but about the difference between him and Fefnir. Fefnir could be just as competitive, but he was cheerfully straightforward in his tactics, while Padrick preferred to strike surreptitiously. Fefnir's style was easier to forgive afterwards, because it felt less underhanded, but it was only a difference in style. The motive and goal was the same. And besides…
"I assume you mean that metaphorically," he said dryly, and Leviathan nodded reluctantly. Padrick was devoted to Neo Arcadia, and would never actually assassinate another soldier. "And if you are… that pretty much describes Phantom. He never attacked directly when a backstab would do. Until Zero…" Harpuia closed his eyes in remembered pain. Phantom had chosen to attack directly that once, for good reasons, but… now he was gone. If he had been able to use his chosen tactics, maybe he would still be here. Leviathan stiffened for a moment, then her shoulders sagged.
"Oh… alright, Sage, promote him if you want. I'll do my best to work with him… but I don't have to like him." She said sullenly, and Harpuia breathed a silent sigh of relief.
"I'm not asking you to. Cooperation is enough." That was really all he needed between the Guardians. They usually fought separately, in any case. Leviathan nodded reluctantly.
"Well, Padrick should find out what you want to know. He's a natural snoop," she said sourly. "But keep me in the loop this time, will you Sage?"
"Of course, Fairy."
North of Neo Arcadia, the day dawned cool and crisp. The landscape was lush forest, and someday, when the power grid had stabilized and population was going up, it would be colonized. For now, it offered many hiding places for Maverick Reploids and Rebellion sympathizers. There were no actual Rebellion bases or emplacements here… it was much too far away from their prime base, which was far to the South. But it still called for the occasional patrol, to look for any signs of Maverick nests forming. Runaway Reploids often traveled this way, returning to raid for the supplies they needed to survive in the brush. So this dawn, the peace was broken with the soft sound of hoverjets as an airborne patroller cruised over the forest.
"Teeny tiny meenie miny…" Muffy sailed blissfully through the air, riding what, for most people, would have been an illegal high. For Muffy, it was her natural state of being. Mind completely blank, her wide green eyes scanned the ground in practiced movements. She would register anything out of the ordinary and act on it long before her mind began to function.
"Patrol. High, low? Low." Muffy's habit of talking to herself severely annoyed many of her teammates in the aerial group, but she could sooner stop breathing. "Low… like the soles of my shoes… like the belly of a snake…" She dropped height to explore a twisting river, eyes roving around alertly. The surface of the river was so still that if she stopped and hovered over it, Muffy could see her own reflection.
Muffy was not unaware of the fact that she was quite attractive, but she was indifferent to it. Her face looked slightly gaunt, as though she hadn't been eating regularly, and her eyes were extremely large, giving her the look of a startled fawn. Along with her dreamy expression, it was a look many men found quite fascinating. Her hair was light purple, long and very fine, flowing around her shoulders like a pile of spider silk. Her armor was very light, and done in black and silver, with a helmet that fit snugly to her head except for the small antennae that extended from the left side. It had no real purpose, except allowing her to listen to the radio at all times. Which she often did, music being her second passion in life.
Her first passion was flight. Music made the times she was on the ground tolerable, but nothing pleased her more than to be flying. Flying was everything to her.
"Kiss me, hold me, squeeze me, love me, give me your soul… to eat… tastes like chicken…" Muffy's head snapped around as something disturbed the brush, but her mind briefly roused and ID'd it as a bird and no threat. She went back to her scanning. "I am… a rhythm nation… a ration tin…"
Suddenly, something attracted her attention. A glitter, perhaps, on steel. Instinctive evasive patterns sent her swirling through the sky in an insane corkscrew, and there was a startled cry from below. Then alarms screamed as a missile targeted her, and she blazed away in an attempt to outrun and outjinx it.
"I am under fire, repeat, under fire." Muffy's voice was cold as the arctic as she transmitted the co-ordinates. "Heat seeking missiles, repeat, heat seeking. Have caution." Heat seeking missiles were something most Mavericks would not have. But Rebellion soldiers often did. "Attempting to evade."
Hang on Muffy, reinforcements are on the way! Muffy ignored the voice, concentrating on her own survival. Reinforcements would be of limited help if the missile blew her out of the sky. And it seemed doggedly determined to run her down.
"Oh, it's a good one it is. Class A, class A… ah!" There was a clearing ahead of her. Well, not precisely a clearing… more a place where the trees weren't growing as thickly.
One common, but slightly dangerous method of shaking off a very good heat-seeking missile was to duck close to the ground. Confused by the signals from the ground, the missile would lose lock and expend itself harmlessly. Then, a highly skilled flyer would pull up and return to the battle.
Muffy's task was complicated by all the trees, which she couldn't punch through without taking significant, even fatal damage. But here, they were growing less thickly, and she at least had a chance. She angled down sharply, aiming with pinpoint accuracy for a break in the tree cover.
She almost made it. In fact, she did make it, but the break was just a tiny bit too small for even her thin form. There was a smashing sound of metal breaking, as her left arm and shoulder hit a branch. That staggered her, put her off balance, and she careened wildly into another tree. That tree shattered under the impact, and she found herself lodged in the trunk, quite a ways up from the ground and in tremendous pain.
However, she did succeed in her main task… confusing the missile into losing lock. It slashed through the trees to her left, impacting the ground with a tremendous explosion, but did nothing to her except add a few splinters to the general mess. Muffy winced as the thermal bloom sent a wave of heat rolling over her and started a few trees burning.
For a long time, she stayed limp, half in, half out of the broken tree trunk. Moving sent great spikes of pain through her body, and herjet boosterswere out of commission… if she did get free, she'd be falling. Not to mention that her mind was feeling very hazy, and she seemed to be dipping in and out of consciousness… and there was a tremendously annoying sound…
Muffy, answer me! Where are you? Are you alive? Muffy! She stirred with a sigh, and struggled to raise her right arm, finally activating her com unit manually.
"Mommy, it hurts…"
Muffy, thank goodness! Where are you? Muffy gave that question some concentrated thought before she answered.
"I am in a tree." She glanced down, seeing a large shaft of wood that had impaled her left arm. There were actually leaves sticking out of it. "I have splinters." There was a pause on the other end. Muffy was well known for her strange habit of talking to herself in weird, random sentences. But usually she was crisp and informative over the com. So it was likely she was badly injured, indeed.
Okay. Muffy, activate your beacon so we can find you. Alright? Activate the beacon. That was very simple procedure, unlikely to go offline unless a soldier was dead. Muffy blinked muzzily.
"Okey doke." Muffy issued the mental commands, and sighed as she began broadcasting. Soon enough, her friends would find her.
As it turned out, Harpuia was the first to find her. Surface to air, heat-seeking missiles were rare enough that he had led the reinforcements personally. None of the Mavericks… and they appeared to be simple Mavericks, not Rebellion soldiers… had stood a chance against a Guardian.
Harpuia regarded Muffy dispassionately as he hovered beside the tree, taking in her wounds. He couldn't help but remember that she was one of the ones he was worried about, one of the Reploids with a false past.
"Jesus loves me, this I know… for the bible tells me so…" Harpuia lifted an eyebrow at Muffy's choice of songs. It was peculiar for a Reploid… some churches felt they had souls, but it was not a widely accepted view. And even those churches that did admit them usually felt that Reploid souls had to be inferior to human ones, having been created by humans. Harpuia tended to agree with the second sentiment. "For we are weak and he is strong… and I can't tell right from wrong… or left…" Harpuia grimaced. He was quite sure that was not the right words.
"Muffy." He said firmly, attracting her attention. She turned her head, gazing up at him with limpid green eyes.
"Lord Harpuia." A relieved smile blossomed on her face. "Did you get them? Is everyone okay, sir?"
"One dead, from the missile launcher, and two injured, but that's all. We killed them all."
"Oh, good." Muffy looked away, towards the nearby fires that were still burning. "Did you bring any marshmallows, sir?" Harpuia blinked, then chuckled before he could stop himself. Muffy's odd turns of thought could be very amusing. She turned her head back to smile up at him, pleased to have penetrated his usual reserve.
"Sorry, Muffy, you won't have roasted marshmallows today." Harpuia began to remove the remnants of the trunk, and had to catch Muffy as she started to slide free. She groaned softly, shutting her eyes tightly as the pain from her shattered arm and damaged body increased.
"No… smores? That's so sad. Only good think about Girl Scouts is smores. Gotta have smores." Muffy mumbled as Harpuia flew towards the rest of the team, carrying her in his arms.
"Reploids don't go to Girl Scouts," he told her absently, scanning for the others.
"Sad thing, that. Gotta say the promise… to do unto others… before they do unto you…"
"Somehow, I don't think that's the promise." It sounded right for his unit, but not the Girl Scouts. "There they are. You'll be home soon, Muffy."
"Oh, good. I want some chicken noodle soup and a nice warm bed…"
Once Muffy was ensconced in the repair bay… without chicken soup, but with several technicians taking care of her repairs… Padrick, who was outwardly calm, but whose eyes were sparkling with excitement, immediately accosted Harpuia.
"Sir, can I speak to you for a moment about that assignment you gave me?" he asked respectfully, and Harpuia nodded.
"Of course." If Padrick had any news, he wanted to hear it. As soon as they were in his office, Padrick began to speak.
"I've found some very interesting things, Lord Harpuia." He passed over a small report. Harpuia looked over it carefully, and frowned. It was meeting transcripts from the human Council, from almost ten years ago. Such things were not open to the public, but weren't that hard to get a hold of, either. Especially a report that was ten years out of date. "If you look at the parts I've circled, you'll see a mention of something called the Translation Project. Unfortunately, it looks like the minutes were edited before I got to them… probably when they were originally typed."
"And this means…?" Harpuia prodded him. For all he could tell, the minutes had been edited to conceal some padding of the yearly budget. Padrick smiled.
"The date is the important part, sir. I checked the records carefully to find out exactly when the anomalous Reploid histories began, and it begins only a few months after these minutes were filed." Harpuia's eyes narrowed at that. "Even more interesting, sir, is the fact that Phantom was among them."
"It's been going on that long?" Harpuia asked, feeling slightly sick. He'd been kept in the dark for that long? Padrick nodded.
"And for that first period, almost seventy-five percent of all the Reploids being brought in had errors in their records. The numbers after that go down to something like twenty percent. Lord Harpuia, was there something odd going on just then? Something to do with Reploid production?" Harpuia opened his mouth to say no… then shut it as something occurred to him. He hadn't thought about it in so long, he'd almost forgotten…
"Yes," he said slowly. "There was. A rebel group, not the Rebellion, just a bizarre splinter, had blown up the main manufacturing center for combat Reploids. We still had plenty of X drones, but the supply of intelligent recruits was severely pinched. The civilian facilities tried to produce what we needed, but they were having problems, mostly on the skill set programming." Military recruits needed extensive, accurate programming on their skill sets, unless there was leisure time to train them. "The casualties were horrible." There had been no leisure time, then. He had been forced to take the new recruits into combat as if their skill set programming had been flawless, and the results had been tragic. "Then… it got better. I assumed the civilian facilities had corrected the problem." Padrick's information put a different light on things. Had they corrected the problem using a different method entirely, something no one wanted out in the public eye?
Oddly enough, that thought reassured him slightly. The Council at the time had been taking his casualty rates seriously… it had been a drain on resources, if nothing else… so it was quite likely whatever step they had taken had been intended to be benign. It still left him with a burning need to know what they had felt the need to hide, but at least he could begin feeling safe about his soldier's loyalties again.
"Ah, that explains it." Padrick murmured, eyes bright. "Sir, I worked in a manufacturing facility for some time before I was transferred. Correcting a faulty skill set can take as long as two years. At the minimum, it takes six months." Harpuia nodded. His problems with the new recruits had only lasted three months.
"What other information do you have?" He asked. Padrick frowned slightly at that question.
"Not a lot. I haven't been able to find any trace of where these Reploids may actually have been made, or what the secret is about their creation. Or the reason why Leo killed that woman." Padrick grimaced slightly. "It still seems insane. I did have a thought, though, sir… you said that these Reploids have overused memory space?" Harpuia nodded cautiously. "Could that have been the result of some strange way of bypassing pre-programmed skill sets? Maybe by… implanting memories from someone else?"
"That could be." Harpuia wasn't certain how it would work, but it was certainly possible. And it was supposed to be illegal… giving one Reploid memories from another tended to create mental instability. "Perhaps that is why Leo did what he did." Harpuia blinked, then focused on Padrick again. "Go look through the woman's history. Find out about anyone who might have had a motive to kill her, not just Leo." That would get him the names of any Reploids whose memories might have gone into Leo. Padrick nodded.
"Right away, Lord Harpuia." Once Padrick was gone, Harpuia thought for a moment, then decided to go visit Leviathan. She would know if it was possible to bypass skill sets with memories.
As it turned out, Leviathan had heard of it, but not as a technique for bypassing skill programming.
"I guess maybe you could do it that way," Leviathan said, highly dubious. "I wouldn't want to try it, though." Harpuia had spent the past few minutes catching her up on the information Padrick had found, and was now getting her input on the feasibility of his conclusions.
"Why not?" Harpuia asked, and Leviathan chewed her lip, thinking.
"From what I understand, when you give a Reploid a different Reploid's memories, it's really jarring. Especially for a newborn… I thought it was made illegal because of the potential for insanity."
"That could explain Leo." Harpuia pointed out, but Leviathan only frowned.
"But… just Leo? If that's what they've been doing, it should have been more. And Fefnir and Hook and a lot of the others are as stable as rocks." Leviathan shrugged. "I don't think that's all they've been doing, Sage. Maybe that's part of it, but if it is, they must have found some way to stabilize it. It's just too dangerous otherwise."
"Well, we'll see." Harpuia said with a thin smile. "At least we know it isn't enemy action." Leviathan nodded. For all the conflicts they had had with the Council, there was no way they would have been sabotaging Harpuia's efforts for almost ten years. "How is Muffy doing?"
"Oh, dandy. But she's demanding some chicken soup." Leviathan rolled her eyes as Harpuia chuckled. "What is with her? I swear, she must have read up on every human cliché in existence."
"That's Muffy," Harpuia said, a bit fondly. He rather liked the spacey flier, and she was one of his best aerial warriors. "Thanks for the help, Fairy."
"S'nothing, Sage. But you might want to put Fefnir out of his misery soon… he's getting all tense and picking fights with the newbies. I think he knows something is up." Harpuia winced slightly. Fefnir in a bad mood was a trial for everyone around him.
"Once I get this last information from Padrick, I'll consider it." He wanted to be absolutely certain he had the right questions before he went to Fefnir…