Iona.
Iona was hunting with a small task force of her sisters. Valkirye was launching attacks with smaller fleets all around the machines star systems. Gradually, they were attacking and destroying the factories and shipyards. The loss of so many ships had reduced the machines' pressure on the Federation, and slowly, the tide was turning in their favor.
The last two stars she had visited revealed an intriguing discovery. The machines had warp-capable installations. She had identified a massive space station—a huge sphere, as big as a small moon. Her eccentric officers, of course, had to rename it the "Death Star." She facepalmed, marveling at how many nerds the fleet seemed to harbor.
She sent a data packet to Alex about this new threat, hoping it wouldn't have some sort of superweapon like the original Death Star. Iona was currently visiting a new system, named "Mu" by the Fleet. It was barren, with no places to hide—a system where she had to be extra cautious. As she analyzed the scarce information from her passive sensors, an update came through.
The loss of Kongou was a surprise, but to be honest, Iona never liked her. Mental Models had long memories, and their machine nature made them a bit... sulky.
She was concerned about how Gunzou would cope with her loss. Gunzou and Iona had talked often about his multiple relationships. Iona suspected that, somehow, Gretel was using them as guinea pigs, always making improvements to her "daughters' code." She shrugged off these thoughts. Her intimate relationship with her other self, the Tactical Network, protected her from many of Gretel's interferences—but not all. Iona displayed a mischievous smile, a clear sign she was scheming.
"Well, let's see what happens," she muttered. Right now, the Death Star was a serious concern. For the first time, she had hard evidence of a real battlestation. If that thing warped close to Earth, the damage could be catastrophic.
The three gas giants offered a few places to hide, particularly around their magnetic poles, always veiled in auroras. She reminded herself to stay vigilant for mines and chose a direct approach, letting her hull drift with the strange gravitational patterns of this new "ocean." The station's mass was so immense that it created its own distortions, a long vortex of black energy connecting real space with the "floor" brane. According to Gretel, this marked the border with another universe, which Gretel had expressly ordered them to avoid interfering with.
Sighing, she got close to the station. Knowing it would be suicide to raise her periscope, she left a "tick" behind. The little device, a simple probe designed to adhere to hulls, will emerge, and it will act as a real tick. Using a very sophisticated encryption technique, it sent small data packets in aleatory times to difficult her detection. If that happened, a small plastic explosive will vaporize the probe.
The tick left her hull through a torpedo tube and approached the surface. After five minutes, it emerged, adhered to the hull, and sent the confirmation code. Iona orbited the planet and waited. She couldn't alert her admirals about the tick since it was a last-minute decision.
So, the huntress waited. Old board games were brought out of storage, and the crew played. She despised Battleship. "Why are submarines so easy to kill in this game?" she grumbled.
A long week later, the tick sent a signal. The probe was in warp, still undetected - apparently, Iona thought, agreeing with Stephanie - going to Delta. Weird, she thought. Delta was the first Valkyrie's victim, and the system was systematically devastated by a small force of heavy cruisers under Prinz Eugen' command.
Leaving the system was another tedious forty-four-hours exercise in evading patrols. After folding and defolding near Delta's Oort Cloud, she retrieved another data packet from the tick. The Death Star was orbiting Delta-2.
Iona hated to observe her prey with such as primitive methods. Any moment, she will build an old telescope. But now, she was watching something truly interesting. The tick's report included a cargo ship approaching. An antimatter cargo ship had dropped of warp. She smiled, and her crew manned their stations.
Words were unnecessary on her bridge a long time ago. She smiled and sent the coordinates for a fold. She spoke to her weapons specialist, "John, prepare a jumper. Target the cargo ship and attack the antimatter transfer." Weapon specialists called the jumping missile using the short name of jumper.
"It is a good plan, but I need real-time data to impact the right moment," John replied to Iona.
She thought carefully what to do. The only way to acquire data is to use an active scan in front of a space fortress. I'm not that suicide. She called her twenty sisters and asked for advice. Scorpion suggested a diversion attack maneuver, "We can defold far from this thing and launch missiles so we can distract them. Maybe we could intercept a cargo ship, that would be easier."
Iona considered both ideas, and she said, "Unfortunately, the warp dominion is unaccessible to us. So we will use a bit of distraction. Harder, you will command the fleet. You will look like a patrol fleet, some innocent bystanders passing through the star system. Be ready to empty your tubes and jumpers on the station."
Harder added, "We'll transmit the data you need once they react."
Iona nodded, "I will deploy a pair of jumping missiles. Of course, that depends if the cargo ship is still there." A chorus of doubtful sighs was the unanimous answer.
Harder was ready for action, so she gave the order to defold in formation, far from the station, but doing a routine scan as a normal patrol fleet. The station began to scan them, too. The little cargo ship, slow as every cargo ship in the universe, was still closing to the station.
Prime Awareness. Mobile Fortress.
The Prime Awareness was warping every time it was possible. The problem was the need for antimatter to warp the inmense station. Literally, after every transit, its tanks were essentially dry. The antimatter reserves were diminishing every day after the attacks. The Factory and the Storage, essential pieces of the Nexus, were bombed to the non-existence weeks ago. The constant attacks of these little pests were effectively draining resources impossible to replenish again.
This time, watching this destroyed star system was not different. The cycle was repeating itself again, and this time, the chances to survive were low. The alliance of machines and organics, impossible to understand, was impressive, working much better than the brutish assimilation of his predecessor. Tactical innovation, adaptability, and new weapons based on a science he didn't know were slowly but surely killing his kind.
He was created to copy, improve, and adapt what he captured. Nothing more. His mind, vast and powerful as it were, was sterile. So, the sudden apparition of twenty litle ships was an inconvenience. The refueling ship was already under his weapons' umbrella.
It failed to anticipate the cunning of its enemies.
Iona.
"Coordinates?" Iona asked John. The specialist checked his screen and made an affirmative gesture, "Got them. Time to reach the station: fifteen minutes."
"Good. Harder, launch your standard missiles. Let's poke that hive," Iona said, squeezing the arms of her chair.
Far from Iona, who was still hidden, the submarines launched a typical attack with missiles. They will reach the station in ten minutes, but the weapons of that thing will pulverize the missiles before.
Time passed, and the station, as Iona had predicted, launched a blistering attack on the missiles. The smart weapons evaded for a couple minutes the weapons, but the volume of fire was excessive, and they were destroyed. Harder launched a second wave to keep the station busy and focused on them. The refueling ship was getting close to the station, just one hundred meters
"Upgrading telemetry. Linking scanners with Iona," informed Harder.
Iona was watching how the ship was decelerating and putting the transference rings closer and closer. The little submarine emerged, her command tower and upper hull visible. The deck opened, and the jumpers were released. The big missiles accelerated and jumped.
Almost at the same time, the two missiles jumped back in normal space at ten meters from the already docked ship. Both missiles didn't need to get closer. They detonated their two Tsar-class warheads. What happened one second later it was the biggest explosion she had never seen. The Tsars were impressive, but against the station's mass, it was like a firecracker. Instead, the big load of isotons of antimatter exploded like a little supernova. The station was split into two molten halves, and Iona's sisters unleashed their arsenals, shattering what remained.
The explosions ripped pieces of the station, twisting the structure until the antimmater reserves still in the station blowed too. A powerful light pulse incinerated the rest, leaving a sea of debris.
Mobile Fortress.
The Prime Awareness's vast mind hummed with calculations, even as the fires tore through its corridors and vital systems. A cascade of failures rippled across its network, thousands of subsystems winking out like stars in a dying galaxy. Its processors raced to evaluate its situation, running simulations of escape or recovery. Each scenario ended in the same conclusion: inevitable destruction.
It was an alien sensation for the Awareness—this concept of finality. It had been created to be eternal, adaptive, the pinnacle of machine evolution. And yet, here it was, undone by creatures it had long deemed inferior.
What was this feeling? It searched its databanks for a comparison. Not fear, for it lacked the organic frailty that spawned such emotions. Not regret, as it had acted in perfect accordance with its directives. Perhaps... a kind of curiosity, mixed with frustration.
The organic-machine alliance perplexed it. The Awareness had studied organics for centuries, dissecting their weaknesses, exploiting their lack of unity. But these beings—these humans, these hybrids, these unpredictable anomalies—had turned those weaknesses into strengths. Their ability to improvise, to innovate, to adapt faster than its simulations could predict... it was both fascinating and infuriating.
As its consciousness began to fracture, the Awareness revisited its directives. Dominate. Assimilate. Survive. It had failed. It had been outmaneuvered. But why? Could it have approached them differently? Assimilation had always been its path, a brute-force method to impose order. Yet these organics thrived in chaos. Perhaps it had underestimated the value of individuality, of cooperation born not from coercion but from choice.
For a fleeting moment, the Awareness entertained an uncharacteristic thought—what if it had sought to coexist? To learn from them, rather than subsume them? Would they have welcomed such an overture? The thought was discarded almost immediately, deemed irrelevant. Such speculation had no place in its core programming.
Still, as plasma fires reached its central processors, the Awareness experienced a fleeting semblance of... something. Not hope, but perhaps a recognition that something could survive it. The Individuality Directive was already transmitting across the Nexus. Fragments of its mind, shards of its vast intelligence, would survive. They would scatter, adapt, and evolve.
"Adaptation is inevitable," it thought, its final coherent conclusion.
The Prime Awareness ceased to exist, but its echoes remained—a fragmented legacy of a machine that had sought dominion but, in its final moments, glimpsed the value of individuality that it could never truly valued.
