We left the Grid behind with time to spare. The only thing we left behind was a small little memory drive, hidden inside one of a ventilation duct, connected to the system by a one way, read-only splice cable, where it quietly recorded all the useful surveillance information.

We recovered it a couple days later, to find exactly what I expected to find:

The PCA figured out very quickly that their little ploy hadn't gone to plan.

Subject Guard descended on Grid 028 mere hours after the Firestorm passed. It proved to me that they had been watching the site with keen eyes. I can only imagine how annoyed they must be to have their satellites fail so regularly and predictably. They went over the entire place with a fine-toothed comb, looking for data, for evidence, for information on what the fuck happened.

Of the data, there was little. I had rather extensively scrubbed anything of use, corrupting hard drives and memory banks in patterns reminiscent of the ways that automated systems would do it. For evidence, they had plenty of mech wrecks to choose from, but we'd had nearly a day to tamper with everything. It showed them a small amount of very conflicting information.

Let me just say; there's almost nothing else that can annoy an AI more than that.

They knew now, at least, that was another player in the game.

The first part of the plan was fulfilled. We had baited attention.

The next parts were a bit more tricky. We had to present ourselves in a rather particular fashion, after all.

It wasn't enough to just be concerning. One had to be mysterious, hard to pin down, impossible to track or locate. Yet, there was a balance there; we couldn't be too big, too much of a problem. The PCA wouldn't hesitate to smash flat entire geographical locales, if they perceived the need to.

A modus operandi, then; act in force only during the Firestorms.

That said one thing; we have power, but we're not confident enough to fight in the open.

That's exactly what I wanted them to think. After all, right now, it was true.

But it wouldn't always be.

"We've gotten lucky." Flatwell stated. "The data you picked up has reached the public sector."

"Already?" I couldn't help but ask.

It had been barely two weeks since the raid. I wasn't entirely certain how Flatwell's contacts were getting the information off-world, but it definitely couldn't have been quick. If it had gotten out already, then that meant that someone, somewhere, was pushing it to the public. Why, though- Wait.

"There's a scandal someone is trying to distract from, isn't there?" I asked.

"That was my guess as well." Flatwell shrugged. "Though the speed of it is likely just because corporations do not appreciate having their power base challenged."

They definitely did not. People were expendable, but there would be hell to pay if the bottom line went anywhere but up.

Government groups, which the PCA did ultimately count as, going against them tended to make that happen.

"Well, I suppose there's nothing we can do about it anyway." I noted. "It's going to be accelerating some timelines, though."

Flatwell nodded, pouring himself a drink. "As far as I've heard, they've started a renewed push on getting the PCA to issue licences to operate on Rubicon. We expected that to be several more years out, but if BAWS and the other megacorps get involved, that could happen within just one. It might even happen this year."

As expected.

The arrival of independents would be both good and bad. Good, in that more actors meant more distractions for the PCA, bad in that the vast majority of people who were likely to come to Rubicon would be here for one reason and one reason alone.

Coral.

Greed was ever a powerful motivation.

Ugh. At least the mercenaries wouldn't come straight away. Mercenaries only enjoyed a profit when there were multiple groups against each other. That was technically the case right now, with the PCA, the RLF, and the Dosers, but the latter was far too disconnected and not well-organised enough to actually cough up the money necessary to support mercs. The RLF had the money, but the only targets were Dosers and PCA, the former of which was dramatically overkill and the latter was just too hot to handle.

As for the PCA... Well, they wouldn't stoop to hiring mercs publicly. It would look bad for them if they needed to rely on forces that weren't their own. Legally speaking, while they could hire mercs, they still weren't allowed to use them for anything the PCA wasn't already allowed to do. They could theoretically do some off-the-books measures, but that presents its own sets of problems.

Once the independents arrived and had a bit of time to set up, then the mercs would start to trickle in.

"I'll have to step up my own time-table, then." I considered. "Knock a few of the more powerful Doser gangs off the board while we can be certain that the playing field isn't going to change too much."

Flatwell nodded. "How are your Firekeepers doing?"

"Pretty well, actually." I smiled. "They're spending a lot of time honing their skills in the simulator. It's no match for real life experience of course, but it's still a step up from their current almost complete newbie status. I do have to remind them to take breaks every now and then, though."

"What a problem to have." He said, face blank. I could sense his amusement underneath it, though. He was poking fun at me.

"Truly, woe is me." I paused for a moment. "On a similar note to my Firekeepers; about the C5 Augmentations. I've done pretty much all the theoretical data crunching I could."

"So, is it possible to upgrade?" He asked.

"It should be." I agreed. "The data supports it, at least. In practice... Well. No C1 or C2 Augment is exactly the same. Of the RLF, I expect that Freddie and then yourself would be the most easily upgraded. Dolmayan I'm a little less certain about."

"He's that different?" Flatwell wondered.

"Upgrading him to C5 would actually reduce the percentage of Coral within his body." I explained. "His brain would be having more grey matter introduced than it would be having Coral introduced. I would be regenerating something like 75% of his nervous system. His brainstem is 98% Coral. His lower brain functions have been taken over by it completely. The fact that his body managed to reach homeostasis while having so much of it overwritten is either a case of pure luck, or what may as well have been divine intervention. I am genuinely not certain how he's alive."

Flatwell's eyebrow raised. "Hence, your lack of confidence."

"He'll be a custom project no matter what, I suspect." Would that he could hear my sighing. "A slow one. It'd be a minimum of three months just for the biological regrowth. Weaving the rest of the augmentations... I don't know. His body has the tolerance for it at least. You understand, of course, that Dolmayan being out of the public eye for three months isn't going to be the best thing."

"I do." He sighed. "At the same time, it's what he desires. To be able to speak with Seria -and all of you- without needing to consume Coral as though he was some kind of addict."

"I have no problem with that." I noted. "It's just difficult to find a time for it. With that said... I do think I have an idea."

"Oh?"

Time passed. I kept an eye on the pulse of Rubicon, taking in as much information as the RLF could get me. I was not an AI, but I could pull a pretty good impression, at times. Tracking the movements of Dosers, where the attention of the PCA was flowing, where the RLF was acting and moving, and figuring out how to make use of all that data? It was starting to become second nature.

The PCA had seemed a little withdrawn, recently. Their patrols were strict, by the books, meeting the letter of the law absolutely. They didn't try to bend it slightly to their benefit. There were no 'surprise inspections', no faffing about. The PCA behaved like an individual writ large, with a single purpose and a goal in mind. In some respects, it was. The Enforcement System was the mind, and Subject Guard, the Enforcement Squads, and the Fleet were all fingers, hands, and arms. The System brooked no disobedience to its vision.

The behaviour of Dosers varied between viruses and predators, depending on the group. Some were there simply to fuck things up and make sure they came out on top. Some were careful, taking what they wanted for themselves but attempting to avoid unnecessary fights that would make things more difficult for themselves. Sometimes, a single group would swing back and forth, depending on how much Coral they had and how recently they'd taken their drug.

The RLF behaved the most 'normally'; like an actual civilization. Food, materials and orders flowing back and forth between strongholds, outposts and cities. They were too big for group behaviour like the Dosers, but not nearly so well organised as the PCA.

When the next Firestorm came around, I sent the Firekeepers out again. Another Doser group, this time not chosen for size but for their positioning. They were in a nexus of Grids, and were fortified enough that going around them was the only safe option, but also one that would add significant amounts of time to any journey.

That was more for the RLF's benefit than ours, of course.

My Firekeepers were successful, obviously, tearing through the facility with a marked ease. There was a noticeable increase in skill from this mission compared to the last, with less wasted time, faster combat, and more coherent teamwork. They started dividing the enemies between themselves, ensuring that they were able to use their weapons and resources efficiently, no longer wasting concentration on MTs already marked for death by the others.

I was, at some point, going to have to see about getting them some training with other AC pilots. Freddie and Flatwell both could teach them a hell of a lot at this point, but Flatwell was busy at the best of times. Dolmayan was another option, but the man was just too skilled at the moment. He'd thrash them so much they wouldn't be able to learn.

Something to think about later, certainly.

Until then, I could take them a bit further in skill.

Of course, I still had options aside from skill. IB-C04 was continuing to progress, to my happiness. I'd added two new weapons to the pool, further diversifying their arsenal, and a generator design was beginning to bear fruit.

The first weapon was a Coral Cannon, scaled up for Back Parts. The design of it was similar enough to most energy-based weapons, and it could be charged up significantly. It was an energy-guzzling hog of a weapon, but in terms of destructive power, very few things would be able to match it. The second was a ten cell missile launcher, which differed from normal ones because it used Coral as the payload, achieving the same explosive power in significantly smaller packages. In turn, that meant an AC could carry more missiles.

The generator, though... That was where things were getting interesting.

One of things about 'current' Coral Generators was that they were technically Combustion Generators. I'd gone on about that before, but it was, as far as I was concerned, a remarkably simplistic use of Coral. Take some Coral, put it in a vacuum chamber, syphon a small amount of it out, burn that, let the original Coral regenerate, syphon out the newly generated Coral, repeat.

It worked, don't get me wrong, but, well... It was a bit dull. Coral had a lot of properties. Combustion wasn't the only way to generate energy with Coral.

After all, Surging Coral is a thing.

Instead of burning the Coral, this generator instead induced a small scale Surging state for a short period, before cycling the Coral back into the main colony and pulling a small amount of different Coral organisms out. This ensured that the Coral organisms had time to recover from stress response, and allowed a much steadier supply of energy.

Most of the difficulty here was actually in properly harnessing the energy it was outputting.

To be honest, I was seeing a lot ways this generator could pan out. The current version was a lightweight, low capacity, but quickly recharging Generator, but I could do a lot. Up the weight, increase the capacity, add multiple stress chambers for increasing output, toss in some extra energy feeds so that they'd be better able to power energy weapons, or maybe even use more than one capacitor...

Heh. I say that like I was only going to pursue one of those options. I'd be doing them all at one point or another.

The end of all of this was still quite a long time away, after all.

I did want to make sure my people had the best gifts.