5.1

April 19, 30 years post Fires of IBIS.

ALLMIND, as much as I really didn't want to say it, was turning out to be pretty damned good at her job.

The conflicts of Rubicon were growing... routine. What had been a series of sparks, periods of incredible but brief violence, was transforming slowly into something more drawn out.

I couldn't help but appreciate her ability, to be honest. Her manipulations were quiet and patient, yet compounding in their effect and efficiency.

Mercenaries flowed from one field to another. They split and united with ease, as their employers were led into following ALLMIND's goals. ALLMIND was the system through which mercenaries were met and chosen, and she had gotten very good at making sure that the meetings she wanted to happen were the ones happening.

She directed the more capable mercenaries into the limelight with ease. Corps would naturally begin to bid against each other for them. Careful manipulations ensured that ALLMIND's ultimate desires were fulfilled while the Mercs got what they wanted. COAM. Cold, hard, cash.

The conflicts continued, even as they lowered in their destructive intensity. In turn, that meant that the players lasted longer, got more experience, revealed more information...

The worst part is, it wasn't even completely bad for us. Lower level simmering did let us make sure the civilians of Rubicon were, at the very least, a bit safer. There was usually some incident every now and then that would put some hard times on them, but I could hardly blame ALLMIND for that one.

Neither the Corps or the PCA were above using the civilians against the Liberation Front- they just also knew by now that causing too much trouble was going to result in Dolmayan expressing his opinion on the matter, to the predictably poor results for whoever had elected to fuck around this time.

In practice, that meant that their lives usually weren't at immediate risk, but food, energy, medicine, and materials were all entirely 'fair game'. Not killing people even had the 'bonus' of creating a humanitarian crisis, tying up yet more RLF resources in alleviating it. For people whose only concern was searching for Coral, that was a perfectly fine thing to do if they thought they were about to find it and needed a distraction.

They wouldn't find it, of course. I'd had the time by now to scour Belius for Coral, and there wasn't any left outside of the Watchpoints and Wells by now. The Watchpoints were just this side of impregnable for anybody that wasn't my particular group, and the Wells were hidden by Flatwell's best efforts and guarded jealously on top of that.

All of this combined meant that the public side of things were stable, if not particularly quiet.

On the flip side of things, though?

Well, the best way to describe what was happening there was that we were all stumbling around in the darkness, knives in hand, ready to shank the first person we came across.

I knew ALLMIND was here. I was, by this point, reasonably certain that ALLMIND knew that there was more to the group going around and blowing up Dosers, malicious corps, and the PCA than was immediately obvious. I knew she had observed my Firekeepers in action for long enough to pick up on the Coral technology I was using, but I wasn't certain about what she thought about that.

There were a lot of options, if you didn't know. An RRI remnant? An AI C-Weapon controller? Dosers who got spectacularly lucky?

The truth, that I was a Coral lifeform predating Humanity's presence on this world, was too strange to simply guess.

I know ALLMIND wants to know. She spies with such curious eyes.

I had a recorded Ghost sighting at least once a month- and there was no telling how many Ghosts went unseen, on account of their nature. Three times as many? Four? Who knew how many Ghosts were out there aside from ALLMIND?

I had identified at least six so far.

It wasn't just Ghosts, either. Seria had caught multiple attempts of a third party to hack into the systems of the RLF. Tracing those attempts created trails that led to a dozen different locations and parties, if they led anywhere at all. Most of the time, she complained, the attempt just stopped and there was nothing to trace at all.

Concerning? Yes, quite. The RLF's most sensitive information wasn't in the networks, however, and that was a category that included anything on us.

The worst that could come from that particular matter was revealing the location of the more permanent RLF bases, and as bad as that would be if it came to the attention of the PCA, it still wouldn't quite reach apocalyptic.

My own attempts to spy on her were about as successful as her attempts to spy on us. Her so-called 'main facility' that she claimed to be operating out of to the PCA was little more than bait. It was a small thing, all considered, some fabrication facilities to supply Units and Parts to the mercs who could afford her services, computational banks to run her AI, enough communications infrastructure to link with anybody who wanted to talk to her, and, of course, a ring of defences that covered the entire damn area in with zero gaps in security just in case anybody was tempted to try and acquire something she wasn't willing to give...

The PCA inspected the place every three months, but they'd found nothing so far, and they apparently weren't willing to risk the AI having to escalate in order to fulfil her purpose. Probably a wise move, to be honest. Her long history had given her a lot of connections in a lot of places. If ALLMIND was here, she'd dotted her i's and crossed her t's. She could definitely create some political trouble if she wanted. Far better, then, to simply let her do what she always did, because the mercenaries were easier to deal with regardless.

On any other planet, it would probably be true, too.

But things were always different on Rubicon.

May 20, 30 years post Fires of IBIS.

Another new mission. A corp fucked around. A corp was about to find out. Simple enough. We'd gone on enough of them by now that even the PCA wasn't surprised by them anymore.

The victims always were.

"Your target is Hard Metal Industries." I reported, allowing none of the routine to affect my tone. "They recently hired mercenaries to attack the energy infrastructure of a South-Eastern Belius Civilian Zone." Right as winter came in, too.

Ugh. Bastards. Cold, at least, wouldn't be a problem, but without energy, handling the wetlands the area would develop into would become a much more difficult problem.

"As they have apparently failed to get the message of what is and is not acceptable on Rubicon, I would like you to remove them from Rubicon." And life in general. "The mission starts now. You are cleared to proceed."

Jamming went up and I went hands off on that particular situation.

I trusted them to be able to handle everything that might come for them.

No, the majority of my attention went to my Antigens, littered around the area as they were. They had finished moving into place barely ten minutes before the operation began, and had promptly stuck themselves a great distance in order to keep eyes out.

Hard Metal Industries had chosen to set up on the flatlands. That meant long expanses of dry, rocky ground; not a lot of cover, and little places to hide in. In turn, that meant Antigens had to move slowly in order to not be spotted from a distance. In turn, it also left me with open sightlines, because there was literally nowhere to hide.

Gamma Squad had the entire place dismantled within two minutes. The most damage any of them took was a stray shot that had gotten very lucky through a smoke cloud left by a missile impact, but that had been a shot to the armour of the chest rather than anything truly important, so it would be easily fixed.

"Mission complete." I spoke. "Pack up and return to base."

Nice and simple. Love these kinds of missions.

I have the Antigens prepare to depart, launching a final high intensity scan before they do-

There's a Ghost less than fifty meters away from one of my Antigens.

For a single moment, nothing happens. I had legitimately not expected it to be there, and, from the way that it is facing, hunched on the ground at an angle that would need it turn it's body to fire its weapon at my Antigen, I was fairly certain that it had no idea my Antigen would be there either.

The moment passed. The Ghost's thrusters ignited as it burned out of its position, its laser rifle beginning to charge as it did.

My Antigen also wasted no time, deploying its energy whip and launching forwards.

At that distance, the Antigen's whip was faster than the Ghost's laser. The whip lashed out, and only barely missed bisecting the Ghost when the latter hard-burned in the opposite direction, the thrust so violent it sent the Ghost nearly spinning.

But an AI-controlled machine had no issues with a loss of control like that. It twisted in ways that Human Pilots would rarely push their mechs, hips turning even as its arm bent into a downright weird position.

The Antigen's thrusters ignited. The laser blast still shattered an arm, the sudden thermal dump so intense that the metal exploded rather merely heated or liquefied.

The whip came back for a second strike, and the Ghost only had just enough time to flick a jamming grenade into its path rather than take the hit directly.

The grenade hit the whip and detonated immediately. The Antigen's sensors and camera immediately went into chaos, static filling my eyes and ears.

I didn't allow that to stop the whip, though. Blind and deafened, I continued the swing, even I started to reset the system and clear the jamming.

It was barely five seconds later that I was able to launch another high-intensity scan.

Too late, even so. The Ghost was already gone.

The only proof it ever existed was a forearm laying on the ground.

Well.

Damn.

She's really good at this.

I took the arm back to base for analysis. There was, unfortunately, not that much left to analyse. Energy whips were pretty damn brutal things, like a pool noodle made out of ultra-high temperature plasma.

The Antigen's swing had cut through a joint, which is why the arm had come off in the first place, but that meant there was thermal damage all the way down to just above the wrist. Hydraulics were fucked; the liquid had vaporized on contact, and the explosion caused by the sudden expansion had wrecked most of the internals because it was akin a grenade going off inside the armour. About the only thing still intact was the hand, which...

Well, it was actually surprisingly useful to analyse.

The structure and layout were exactly the same as the RRI blueprints set them to be. Materials were slightly different, alloying percentages at slightly different amounts, but testing indicated that this had not notably compromised the design. The internal wiring was of higher quality than the blueprint demanded, but not by too much.

It told me that she hadn't started modifying the designs. It also told me that she was probably making some parts enmasse before using them as components. Wiring was easily cut to length, after all. The quality of these components indicated that her manufacturing was pretty good, but it hadn't reached a point where her materials science was good enough to warrant alterations in order to achieve even greater efficiency.

Radiometric analysis indicated that the armor was of older stock, though. Probably something ALLMIND brought with her to Rubicon, based on radiological contamination.

That wasn't the case for the wiring, though. It was new, made within the last few months, tops.

She had some local manufacturing going. Something a bit better than just what was present at her 'main facility'.

Nothing could ever be easy, could it?