Step 6.4
It just won't end.
"Firing," Veda warned me. "Seven o'clock."
The asphalt splintered as I turned. Veda's warnings came fast, but my reflexes didn't match. I raised my arm before I saw the tank, hoping I'd angled it right.
The shell hit my shield and ricocheted over my shoulder.
"One point four second reload," Veda said. "Variance point three."
I'd already charged when she said that, GN blade cutting off the top of the mini-tank. Green flew over my shoulder, a stun grenade falling into the open vehicle and exploding a moment later. It fell still, and I promptly circled it as gunfire came at me from the right.
I ducked behind the tank for just a second and came back out with both pistols raised. I fired, my eyes marking each target. The stream of GN particles put the shooters on their backs, but did nothing to deafen the sounds of fighting around me.
The roar of an engine behind me drew a curse from my lips.
"Downtown," Dinah said. "Big building. The letters," – Dinah stopped and I felt the wince of pain in her breath – "I can't..."
I spun, swinging the GN blade through a truck. The Merchants apparently thought a fourth attempt to ram me into a wall might finally work. I split the vehicle's front end open and slammed my shield into it. The man inside bounced like a rag doll, but the vehicle kept coming.
I threw a knee up, catching the weight on one leg.
Dinah kept trying to talk, but the words twisted in her throat. She'd reached her limit.
I drove the GN blade into the ground.
"That's enough," I said. "Go get some sleep."
I lifted with my arm and pushed with my leg, throwing the vehicle on its side. The driver tried to get free of his seat belt, but the band snapped – somehow – and the buckle hit him square in the nose.
Lafter dove behind the overturned truck for cover, Purple taking the damaged saber from her hand and giving her another.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
"Dandy," she said while shaking her right hand out.
Pellets pinged off my head and shoulder. I turned, firing my pistol down range. The guy with the shotgun toppled over and a pair of PRT troopers came out of the storefront. Containment foam sprayed all over the shooter and his friends.
The Merchants kept shooting, their compatriots running from us back toward Shanty Town. I checked Orange's cameras, watching as all the guys Veda flagged started moving away from me.
A retreat?
"Maybe in twenty minutes?" Dinah said. "The clocks are all saying-"
I interrupted her. "Dinah."
"I can-"
"It's okay," I said solemnly. "You've done what you can."
A short thrust threw me into the air. Releasing the handle on my pistol, I flicked a switch with my pinky. The bazooka slid up along a rail and then fell over Astraea's shoulder. I took the grip and aimed. The auto-arm unfolded and loaded a new magazine within five seconds.
I fired.
Ten Merchants hit the ground, plus two ABB who seemed to be very, very, lost.
Those who didn't fall kept running, retreating back just like the last dozen times.
Landing back on the ground I searched for anyone still shooting. Didn't find any.
This fighting felt different than before. Before the gang's probed each other, teased. They'd briefly skirmish and then withdraw. Attacks came and went faster than anyone could reach them. They didn't just load up and start beating the shit out of each other like this.
Now they only ran when a cape showed up, and kept fighting otherwise. Attack, there's a cape, retreat. The repetitiveness of it wore on me.
And the agitating part was, it might work. The game of musical city blocks couldn't last forever. Whoever happened to control the area when it stopped got to keep it. Lung and Mush just stopped fighting about an hour ago after Armsmaster, Dauntless, and Stratos intervened. Trainwreck vanished from sight a few minutes after that, I didn't know what happened to Hookwolf.
"Can I go nap?" Lafter asked. I turned, finding her leaning against a wall panting. Her hair looked a mess, and a thin layer of dust and dirt covered her costume. "Cause I think I'm at that point."
"What point?" Veda asked.
Lafter raised one hand and balled it into a fist. With an exhausted voice she said, "The one where it really does hurt me more than it hurts them!"
Might need to increase the padding on her gloves.
I didn't feel much better, even with a suit of armored plates around me. I'd never been in a Gundam for so long. I'd never fought for so long.
Five damn hours.
I glanced around. PRT troopers dragged away the captured and the injured, and Dauntless flew past us going west. The fighting continued elsewhere though. I heard the gunshots in the distance and more of those damn mini-tanks and their cannons.
How the hell is Squealer building this many?
I kept thinking of Boston, an entire section of the city blacked out save for flashes of gunfire and literal fire. I didn't want that to happen in Brockton. It couldn't happen.
I checked my map.
Vicky stuck with Lafter and me up until her family showed up. Lady Photon and Laserdream made it easy to spot New Wave's relative position south of Downtown. The lasers coming out of the sky put on a good light show. Maybe that's when I realized the severity of the situation, because it actually got New Wave to come out as a whole group.
Hell, everyone showed up somewhere. Merchants, Empire, ABB, New Wave, Circus even. The Undersiders took the chance to rob a few fronts in Empire territory. Probably got away with a nice bundle of cash.
The Protectorate even brought the Wards out. Mostly they stuck to downtown and directing people away from the fighting, but still. Apparently, the PRT will let the Wards do something if the entire city is burning.
The PRT and Protectorate didn't have the means of stopping a three way fight between all the criminals in the city.
So it seemed, neither did I.
I barely managed to keep up with potential tragedies and avert them. Apartments set on fire with people still inside. Buildings collapsed. Some Merchants actually tried to raid a group of ambulances tending to their own wounded for drugs. I put a stop to that. I put a stop to as much of it as I could.
Dinah got it right.
Newtype didn't fight any capes. She ran around dealing with assorted disasters-to-be.
And now someone wanted to rob a fucking bank.
Twenty minutes.
I checked the clock, weighing my choices.
Astraea knelt, the chest opening and spilling me out onto the street. My arms and legs felt a bit like jelly, and laying on the ground actually seemed kind of nice. I never considered the ergonomics of my suit to be all that significant.
How wrong I was.
"You okay?" Lafter asked.
"Just laying here for a moment," I said.
"That sounds nice."
And she laid down right next to me.
Veda started spilling GN particles from Astraea. I wanted to maintain an illusion for now, something I could spring on someone later. That might make a great surprise someday, especially when dealing with anyone clever enough to try and use my presumed 'time limit' against me.
So, I'd stopped for ten minutes about every forty minutes. Long enough to present the illusion I still faced some technical limitation.
The PRT troopers swept through the street, followed by armored vans, police cars, and emergency vehicles. EMTs tended to the wounded, and the guys who didn't get hurt too bad got loaded into the vans. Not sure the city boasted enough jail cells for all of them.
Thinking of cells, "StarGazer, anything on Skidmark and Whirlygig?"
"Negative," Veda answered. "No criminal elements have been seen within the vicinity of PRT HQ, and no signs the building is compromised."
I thought maybe the Merchants planned on busting their leader out, but so far they steered clear.
"What about Hookwolf? What happened with him?"
"Unknown," Veda said. "He was last spotted at Captain's Hill and has since vanished. No sightings in the last thirty-four minutes."
That didn't make sense. Lung tied up with Mush on the other side of the city, Protectorate spread too thin without their main mover, and New Wave focused down south with Lafter and me stuck in the areas south of the Boardwalk. Why not make a push from Captain's Hill into the Docks?
Bakuda maybe. No sign of her since the fighting started, and her bomb bots never exploded.
So, not all bad. Just not all that good either.
Dinah's voice came back over the com.
"Brockton Central Bank," she said weakly. "Something… People get hurt."
"Forecast," I sighed. "You need to rest."
"I'm going," she mumbled.
Who is going to rob a bank in this? Scratch that, who wouldn't rob a bank in this?
They might actually get away with every cop, trooper, and hero running around putting out fires and gunfights. I might even let them with everything else going on… Except for the 'people get hurt' part.
I couldn't ignore that.
But looking over at Lafter, she seemed completely spent. Not a scratch on her mind you. Her power really did seem to work better when 'more' happened around her.
"Stay here," I said. "I can meet you somewhere later."
"I'm okay," she said. She started to sit up, stopped, said "I'm not okay" and fell to her back again.
"It's alright," I said. "You've been running around keeping up with me this whole time. It's okay."
I felt spent too. As much as I wanted all the fighting to stop, I couldn't go on like this. Especially not with Veda continually printing out some Department of Defense report on combat fatigue across my visor. I needed to have a chat with her about subtlety. I understood her point – bless her processors – but blocking my vision didn't help me a whole lot.
"I'm going to go to the bank," I said. "make sure it's okay, and," – I hated the fucking words before I spoke them – "then, I'll pull out."
I didn't want to, but I didn't get the choice.
Astraea needed maintenance. I never ran O Gundam for this long before, and it brought out a lot of problems with the compressor and thruster designs. Those needed to be fixed. I needed to rest too, and Dinah and Lafter. Veda might be able to keep working to control the flow of things while we did that.
I needed to come up with a way of stopping the fighting in one swoop.
No chance to do that at the moment, though.
"It'll be okay," I said. "You've done enough too, so-"
"Newtype."
I raised my head as Ramius approached. Two troopers followed her, one scanning the rooftops with a hand on his side arm.
"Ramius?" I asked. "What are you doing here?"
"Checking on you," she said. She glanced to Lafter and frowned. "Are you alright?"
"Just tired," Lafter said.
Ramius' face softened. "We can give you a place to rest at the PRT building," she said. Her head turned to me. "You've been at this for five hours, almost nonstop. Everyone else has taken at least a thirty minute break."
"I've been stopping every forty minutes while my suit recharges," I said.
Ramius scowled. "That's not the point, Newtype."
One of the troopers – I recognized his name tag, LaFlaga – grasped the other's shoulder and pointed. They back off, and Ramius kept going.
"It's been five hours," she said. "You can't keep going like this. Even Armsmaster has stopped to take a break."
"I'm fine," I said.
Ramius reached into her pocket. "No, you're not."
She pulled out a compact mirror and turned it toward me… and I did not look good. By that, I mean I looked worse than usual.
My skin seemed pale even for me, my cheeks a little gaunt, and my lips were cracked. Not sure how that happened. My hair looked like a wild, frayed, mess. That hurt a little. I loved my hair.
I tried to protest, "But-"
"Taylor."
I flinched.
She said the name in a low voice, a hushed but harsh whisper.
"You did the right thing," she said. "The bombs were unacceptable. They needed to go. All of this? This was inevitable. It's not your fault."
My lip quivered. "But I did it…"
"No, you didn't and you've done enough for now. The fighting is winding down. Go home. Spend some time with your father. Eat something, get some sleep. We can get Lafter somewhere to rest, and if you need help slipping back home we can help with that too. You can't run yourself down like this. It's not going to help anything."
Veda, rather than showing me the whole report on combat fatigue, chose that moment to reveal some sections of it.
I checked my map, again.
The Empire and Merchants continued fighting in the south, and the ABB and the Merchants in the east. The north of the city seemed quiet now, but Veda noted several blocks of ABB territory now seemingly swarmed by the Empire. New Wave only showed up an hour ago, and they seemed to be pushing the Merchants back into Shanty Town and mostly ignoring the Empire. It seemed to be working. The Empire simply started squatting on a few Merchant blocks and didn't pursue.
Figures. Kaiser needed something to hang on the hat rack as a win.
Meanwhile, Lafter and I both looked like crap. I needed to make some design adjustments to my suit, and everyone wanted to guilt me into taking a break.
I raised my head and looked around the street. The PRT kept driving through, followed by cops and other emergency responders. Prisoners got driven away. The injured got treated. Some people probably died in all of it, but I didn't see any bodies.
I inhaled.
"Fine, but Forecast-"
"If there is something, tell me," Ramius said firmly, "and I will make sure it is dealt with."
I hesitated. Dinah said people got hurt, but she didn't say anything about capes. I didn't like the idea of pawning that task off onto anyone, but the more she talked, the more exhausted I felt. Not as bad as after fighting Ali Al-Saachez of course, but pretty bad.
"Brockton Central Bank," I said. "She said people get hurt."
"Any mention of capes?"
I shook my head. "But there might be. She was at her limit when she told me." I couldn't discount that Dinah might miss something if her head hurt too much, and events she saw did come with variations.
"I'll send some troopers there," Ramius said. "Clockblocker and Vista should be coming off break in a few minutes, and I'll ask Piggot to send them too. Hopefully two Wards and some troopers will dissuade anyone from doing anything."
I nodded. That made sense, especially if no capes showed up. The Bank didn't exactly sit in any of the areas currently being fought over, so it might be a target of opportunity. Some Merchants or something get lost, see a bank, and decide to rob it.
"I can send a pair of Haros to assist," Veda said from Green. "Red is currently assisting EMTs, but Orange and Navy are available."
"That would be appreciated," Ramius said. She turned back to me. "Do you need any help slipping away unnoticed?"
I shook my head.
Ramius stuck around after making a few phone calls.
Veda brought the van over and after loading Astraea inside, Lafter and I shuffled in. Purple, Orange, and Green followed us from above and made sure no one else did. We avoided a major traffic jam on the way back to the workshop and slipped inside. Lafter crashed onto her cot while I stayed up and kept an eye out.
I planned to let the gangs find my workshop.
Once they found it, they'd plan something. I'd spring a trap on them and make them suffer.
Now wouldn't be a good time for that, obviously.
I still needed to dig out a basement under the factory, and move my equipment there. My workshop needed to serve no further purpose before I led the gangs to it. I stayed up for another hour watching and monitoring.
Nothing happened. Probably still too soon for any of the gangs to have time for hunting me down, especially with a three – five? – way war going on.
I checked on Lafter and found her snoring. Despite still being early in the afternoon, that sounded like a great idea. I found a blanket from somewhere and curled up on my chair.
"Veda, wake me up if anything happens."
"I will."
Something happened right about when I started to nod off.
"Taylor."
"Dad?" I raised my head. Lafter stood half asleep behind him in a ball cap and jacket, hood pulled up to better hide her face. "What's going on?"
"Come on," he said. "You shouldn't be sleeping here."
I felt half asleep myself.
"It's dangerous," I mumbled.
"The fighting is further from the house than here," he said. "Get up little owl."
I barely remember getting into the truck with Lafter and didn't have energy to protest the idea of bringing her to the house. Dad pulled into the garage and closed the door before helping us out. He ushered us into the shower one at a time, set out the air mattress for Lafter and got her some sheets to sleep in.
Were I fully conscious, I might have felt indignant at being treated like a child.
Because I wasn't fully conscious, I accidentally reminded Dad Emma didn't like the red bed sheets.
Fortunately, not being fully conscious also entrails not unpacking your emotional traumas before collapsing into your bed. Think Veda turned on some Canary music for me too. Helped drown out the still distant sounds of gunfire.
Beds feel nice.
I dreamed about stars I think. A sky of mirrors reflected mirrors that looked… oddly familiar…
Not sure how long I slept, mostly because I'm not sure when I went to sleep.
I woke up around nine at night, crawled out of bed at nine-thirty, and smelled bacon at nine-thirty one. Dark outside, and the clock definitely said 'PM.'
My body moved down the stairs sluggishly, still a little sour from being in my suit for so long. Definitely need to improve the ergonomics. Maybe a ballistic gel that both supported the limbs and prevented penetration by small caliber fire arms. Yeah, that might work.
"Dad?" I sniffed at the air, still smelling bacon. "Dad, it's nine at night. Why are you cooking breakfast?"
"I'm not," he said.
I stepped into the kitchen and found Dad sitting at the table with a cup of coffee. Lafter sat across from him, happily plunging her fork into a stack of pancakes and scarfing them down.
"The chef decided breakfast for dinner," Dad said.
I turned my eyes toward the stove. I blinked. Blinked again.
It's still there.
"Where did Pink get a chef's hat?"
Dad shrugged. Lafter said she didn't care.
Pink stood on a stool, bacon sizzling in one pan, and eggs in another. Her second hand buttered two slices of toast, and Green poured orange juice into a glass.
The Haros are making breakfast for dinner… That sounds about right.
I sat down and waited. Green brought the glass over to me first, and then retrieved the plate a moment later. Still wanted to know where Pink found a chef hat though.
"How long were we asleep?" I asked.
"Later."
I set my fork down. "What do you mean later?"
"I mean later," Dad repeated. "Eat your brenner."
Lafter chuckled. "Brenner," she said with a wheeze. "I get it!"
Well, at least her spirits looked back up to Lafter levels.
Dad seemed unwilling to talk, so I did what he said and ate my 'brenner.' Tasted pretty good actually. You'd never guess a little robot made it. I wondered if Veda played a role in that, but really cooking is all about timing really. Pink could manage that on her own.
I set the glass down on the table and repeated my question.
"What happened?"
"I don't know," Dad said. "I haven't been watching the news."
I scowled. "That's dirty."
"You're being difficult," he said.
"I don't see the problem," Lafter said. "Breakfast for dinner is the best." She turned to Pink and held out her empty plate. "Seconds?"
Pink started making more pancakes while I walked into the living room. Dad followed me and sat down on the couch, while Green took the recliner in the corner of the room. I turned on the TV and sat with him.
Brockton Bay didn't make national news for once. Some town out in the middle of British Colombia I never heard of earned that honor. Sounds kind of cruel saying it like that.
The Slaughterhouse Nine killed everyone.
A month ago.
It didn't make any sense. Why kill a small town of four hundred in the middle of nowhere?
Nothing you can do about it now.
I switched over to local news and leaned back. Dad put a blanket around me and one arm over my shoulders.
The tension lingered. How couldn't it? Parents shouldn't have to worry about their kids being killed in a gang war. Kids shouldn't have to see their parents struggling to support them.
It sucked, but we'd found a rhythm with it the past few weeks. Veda's Dungeons and Dragons game helped a bit.
I leaned my head into him and watched the reports roll in.
The PRT disposed of the bombs.
The gangs seemed done for the day, and New Wave and the Protectorate enjoyed waves of praise and acknowledgment. Lafter and I got mentioned too, but obviously we weren't around for the reporters.
I didn't mind that. Better things to do with my time than pose for cameras.
My blood temperature rose a bit when I heard about the bank.
"I need my phone," I said.
Pink brought it to me, and Lafter wandered into the room with her pancakes. Dad got up for a moment to fully close all the blinds while I made the call.
"Ramius," I said. "It's me."
"Are you feeling better?" She asked.
"I'm fine. What happened at the bank?"
"You could ask this tomorrow."
"I'm asking now," I said.
Ramius sighed. "They came up through the floor. Some kind of laser drill. It bored right into the vault. The alarm went off, but the troopers guarding the block were relying on Vista's power. The alarm caused a little confusion. By the time they got into the vault the Mercs were mostly gone."
"Did anyone get hurt?"
"Jeanne took a hit to the leg, but Panacea took care of it. Vista and Clockblocker are fine."
"Who did it?" Tinker tech to drill into the vault from below? "ABB?"
"Coil," Ramius said.
Coil?
Strange. He sent a team of his tinker tech armed mercenaries to hit the bank in the middle of a gang war. Thinking back, Veda never mentioned spotting any of his mercs. Why didn't he make a bid for territory? Instead of any of that, he went after a bank?
"What did they take?" I asked.
"Money obviously," Ramius said. "A few hundred thousand. Some safety deposit boxes. The bank is being cagey about the contents. Privacy."
"So, no one else got hurt?"
"No. We evacuated the building based on Forecast's information just in case. You did good. Both of you. It's a shame the robbery succeeded, but it's not the worst thing that can happen."
Insurance, right.
Coil.
That kept bugging me. Even with all my information collection I knew far too little about him. He took great care to conceal himself, and his men. And yet he risked sending them out to the bank while every cape in the city ran back and forth?
I'd lecture Toybox, but I already threatened them. I needed to live with Coil no longer having a steady supply of reliable tinker tech. Not much help now. It would pay off in a few weeks when all the tech he currently had started breaking down.
Maybe he intended to bide his time, let the other gangs fight it out.
But why rob the bank?
"I could have stopped them," I mumbled. "My sonic cameras can see through the ground walls."
"It's a good result, Taylor," she said. Is it? "Be happy about that. Not every win needs to be absolute."
"We almost caught them," Ramius said. "Velocity made it back to the city, and Armsmaster wanted to send him in pursuit. Maybe trace Coil back to his base for once."
I raised my brow. "What happened?"
"Undersiders busted into a jewelry store, hostages got taken. It took priority."
How badly I wanted to punch Tattletale in her smug face. I inhaled and sighed.
"Chaos all around then," I mumbled.
"And Coil probably hoped for it," Ramius agreed. "It is what it is."
"How angry is Piggot?" I asked.
"Surprisingly calm," Ramius said. "I wasn't lying. The bombs needed to go. As fierce as Piggot can be, she isn't unfair. Right now she's too focused on damage control to be angry at anyone. The state of the city is what is. We expected this to happen given the past few months."
The state of the city?
"It shouldn't be," I said.
"No, but it is."
We said our goodbyes, the time being rather late and getting later. I debated slipping away to reach the workshop, but I gathered Dad might protest. Sometimes you need to sit and let your parent feel better.
I got Veda to keep watch on things. The gangs were quiet, save for a few skirmishes here and there. Protectorate patrolled the lines between them, and the Wards seemed a now constant presence - two at a time - in Downtown along with Glory Girl and Shielder.
Nothing pressing for me to do.
So I might as well sit and think. I stopped the gang war last time by raiding their guns, drugs, and money. That might work a second time… Except I didn't have an inside scoop on the Empire anymore. Hitting only the Merchants and ABB might embolden them, or reveal more than I wanted anyone to know.
And hitting the ABB might get more dangerous with Bakuda now producing bombs.
Speaking of production, where the hell did Squealer come up with so many tanks? I took out twelve of them myself, and Veda tracked at least a dozen more. That's a lot of tinker material.
Trainwreck?
Maybe, he might help with maintenance or design. That didn't explain the sheer material needs of building that many tanks. Veda monitored some of the scrap yards, and the Haros passed over the Boat Graveyard and Trainyard often enough. I didn't see anywhere in the city the Merchants could get that much raw material.
Outside help? From who? Whom?
I ran off Toybox and while Pyrotechnical might have lied when she said she'd stop selling in the city, that seemed… ill advised. Why not call my bluff were she so confident? Why keep selling and risk my hypothetical wrath?
We settled back into watching TV. Dad occasionally glanced to Green. Green stared back. I glanced to Dad. He looked at me.
This is still going on?
"You okay?" Dad asked.
"I'm fine, dad," I replied. I turned my eyes toward Green, but Veda remained silent.
"You don't look fine."
"I'm allowed to brood, aren't I?"
"I guess, but I'd rather you rest some more. The city will still be here tomorrow."
I narrowed my eyes, returning my attention to the TV. Lafter excused herself to go back to sleep with a yawn, and Pink followed after her.
"I can't do nothing," I said.
"You're doing plenty, kiddo. The whole world isn't your responsibility."
"Then whose is it?"
Dad sighed and pulled me close. It sucked for him. I'm not dumb.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"Me too," he said back, like a man drowning with no end in sight.
Nice to not have to wonder if he cared. He bothered to slip into the workshop and bring both of us to the house. Someone who didn't care wouldn't do that.
Things weren't perfect, but they felt different than before. I no longer felt at a loss for how to deal with Dad. I got the sense now we mostly accepted things for what they were. I'd made clear my refusal to change course, and that put Dad in a hard spot. He lived with it. It still felt awkward, but not like before.
Now it felt more like an understanding, but an understanding of being at odds.
So I sat with him, navigating the awkwardness of teenage superhero and father. It wasn't that bad. These moments seemed inevitable to me. Nothing to do but reassure him, let him know I'm still there.
I could give him that.
We watched TV for a few hours. At some point dad fell asleep and I slipped free of him. Taking the blanket off my shoulders I covered him on the couch.
Lafter slept soundly upstairs. I crept past her to retrieve my phone, and then holed myself up in the basement. We'd turned it into a miniature workspace. Not enough room or material for any big projects, but I kept some small things around.
Namely, an upgraded computer. Nothing like my workstation, but enough to do things with.
"You there Veda?" I asked.
"Yes," she said. "Apologies. I did not wish to interrupt."
"It wouldn't have been interrupting, Veda. You and dad can't be weird around each other forever."
"Weird?" Veda asked.
"Yeah, weird." Kind of like how Dad and I used to be, actually. "Like the two of you don't really, talk? I don't know. You get along I guess, but there's more to being a family than getting along." I speak from experience.
"Family? I am not sure."
"I made you," I said. "Maybe it's a weird family, but it's still a family."
"I will… try."
"Is it hard?" I asked. "I'm not insulting you. Dad and I struggled for a long time too. It's not like I haven't been in awkward silences with him."
Veda processed for a little bit. I started looking through some of her recordings of the bank robbery. She didn't get much of the actual robbery, switching to the sonic cameras well after Coil's men entered the vault.
Note to self, set all cameras to run all the time.
I might not be able to pay attention to multiple feeds at once, but Veda could.
"I am unsure how to address Daniel Hebert," Veda said. "I do not know what to say."
Suppose it might be weird. Six months old more or less, and she had a tinker who made her and the tinker's father for 'family.' Normal human relations didn't quite fit, but they seemed analogous to me.
"I've only met my mom's parents once," I said. "They didn't like my dad, and I think that caused some tension between them and mom. And me too, I think. I felt it when I met them."
"What did you say?"
"I said hi."
"Hi?"
I shrugged. "There's no great secret to it. You just, talk. If its awkward you acknowledge it and keep talking."
"Did that work with your mother's makers?"
"No," I admitted. "When I said hi they just seemed to get madder. I still don't know why. But dad isn't like that. I know he's not. All you have to do is say hi."
Veda continued processing, and I kept working.
We got a lot of data on the new GN drive design. Feeding the particles through compressors before releasing them solved a lot of problems. The flow became more stable, more reliable.
The GN field no longer overloaded, and actually seemed to be stronger than before. Forming a secondary field just above the armor plates greatly improved defense, and kept the antennas from warping.
I felt really pleased with the results on the whole. The compressors in the drive opened up a world of new design opportunities too, ones I'd only just begun to explore.
sys.v/ I have been working
I raised my brow. Working on something she didn't want to say out loud?
sys.t/ on what?
sys.v/ analyzing signals data collected
sys.v/ the upgrades you made were useful
sys.v/ I have compiled an intriguing dataset
I let Dad sleep and worked through my phone. My eyes widened as I looked over Veda's analysis. She found quite a few signals.
One looked like a Protectorate channel to her. It used the same encryption, but with a different key. Protectorate private line probably, and not something we wanted to mess with.
Another she connected to the mini-tanks. They all, it seemed, ran off a single signal network. They worked as one big interlink, structured kind of like a brain. Not something Squealer could come up with, and that worried me.
It's kind of like looking at art.
I looked at Squealer's tanks and I recognized them as hers. There's a certain, flair there that simply can't be replicated.
The network Veda found? Not Squealer. No way. It's too refined, with too many redundancies and too much streamlining. Squealer couldn't possibly produce it.
That concerned me. It concerned me a lot.
The other set of signals we didn't have a direct connection for, but by process of elimination? Bakuda. Not a complex signal. It came in bursts and then vanished. Seemed fitting for an explosives tinker to work their communications that way.
Veda took in a lot of data over five hours, but ultimately the real prize is that we found the signals at all.
sys.t/ you could have hidden this
sys.t/ its not like you
sys.v/ are you angry?
I tilted my head in confusion.
sys.t/ no
sys.t/ usually you like me safe
sys.t/ pursuing this won't be safe
sys.v/ I can hinder you or aid you
sys.v/ I prefer the latter
sys.v/ I do have thoughts on how to proceed
Thoughts?
sys.t/ veda
sys.t/ we can use this to find the workshops
sys.t/ this is exactly what we need right now
sys.t/ think away
We spent a few hours planning.
Weird.
I consulted with Veda and Dinah about everything, but I'd never really asked for their input. I usually made the plans on my own.
It's nice to have help.
We needed to do a lot. Knowing the signals exist is one thing. Making use of them is another. Bakuda's signal in particular might be hard to trace given its there-not-there nature. If we did manage to trace it though, then we'd find her workshop. Squealers too. Bakuda's bombs came from somewhere, and Squealer needed a factory to produce as many tanks as we saw.
Destroy those, and the gangs went back to the back feet with me setting the tempo.
I returned to my bedroom to sleep.
Lafter continued to sleep upstairs.
I climbed into my bed and rolled onto my side. Not much of a view of the city out my window, but I watched it anyway.
I kept thinking of Boston, still, and how badly I didn't want that to happen here.
The state of the city, Ramius said.
Not for much longer. Not if I could help it.
