4.6

Dolmayan's dramatic re-entry to Rubicon's active scene had a rather soothing effect on the greater conflicts. Things had calmed down a little bit, with one of the largest belligerents no longer existing and the rest of them wary at attracting the man's attention.

So we were now back to normal brush fires rather than anything bigger.

I wish I could say more... but no.

Bah.

I was continuing to build up within Grid 339, which was steadily becoming more and more of a fortress. It was getting to the point that I was sure the PCA would employ other measures to deal with it when the truth of it inevitably came out, but that was sort of the point. I had a ton of drones ready to go in there, now, and more weapons than I was readily sure what to do with.

Well, aside from 'use them on the PCA', that is.

I was going to have to see about luring the PCA here soon enough. Get that particular plan back on track. It wouldn't be doing much more than bleeding them a little, but hey. Fuck 'em.

Aside from that, things are actually going pretty well. Or, at least, they're proceeding in the direction I want them to.

Ever since the Firekeepers had been sighted, the PCA had been significantly more active in trying to track them down.

This was an effort that was manifesting mostly in their patrol patterns during the Firestorms. There were no longer big gaps for me to exploit, fifteen plus minute periods where complete communication blackouts lasted. Things were staying connected, even if they had to use less secure secondary networks to do it.

Which means, in turn, that anybody who cared to look through the network could now see the fact that the PCA was entering regular yellow alerts during the Firestorms. Tracking movement and deployment from there wasn't easy, but it also wasn't impossible.

It really wasn't a good position that the PCA had been put in, to be honest. They were forced to investigate, and equally forced to use insecure networks during it. Stuck on patrols that would see them minutes away from help, with no orbital support and limited local forces. I was always happy to make them more uncomfortable, of course, as was a decent chunk of the planet.

This did leave people wondering why the PCA was doing this, to boot. The PCA gave no answers, yet still... well, everyone who knew them knew it was out of character for them. And some people were really wondering why the PCA was turning to this.

It was drawing a bit more attention our way, but honestly? The strategic value of knowing exactly what the PCA was doing was more than worth it.

...

Though, at the rate my Firekeepers were cleaning things out, we were going to run out of Dosers sooner or later.

Dolmayan's augments had proven themselves stable, as I had hoped and expected.

The data I had gleaned from him in the process of upgrading from C1 to C5 was especially useful. It's a surprise just how much a Human can live through, really.

I'm pretty sure I can get the process to go a bit faster, but the thing is?

There's not actually many people I can apply the process to. Of the RLF, there was only three; Flatwell, Freddie, and Dunham.

The trick there is that none of those three would find it anywhere near as useful as Dolmayan did. Dunham, while augmented, isn't that good of a pilot in combat, far more at home in a construction yard. Freddie isn't a bad pilot by any means, but he was also a rather antisocial individual devoted more to Dolmayan than Dolmayan's cause. As a loner, the resonance between himself, the Coral Minds, and the other Augments would be... less than desirable.

Flatwell was a better pilot than Freddie, but the objective examination of his value was that he was worth more as a leader than as a pilot; his skills in logistics and strategy were what was keeping the RLF going, TSUBASA barely factored into it.

Which... did make things troublesome, there. Augments would help in those matters, but there was no way in hell we'd be able to arrange for Flatwell to vanish for three months like we had with Dolmayan. He's too involved in everything.

It simply wasn't worth it, in the calculus.

At least, not without significant upgrades in the results of the process.

The thing is, I've already claimed the low hanging fruits. Translating non-Coral Augmentation has given significant results already, sure, but to further build up from C5? Where do I even go, from here? I was already pushing things to the limits. It could barely even be called biology anymore.

How much further could you really go?

I wasn't sure how much more I could push things before I had to start doing some rather extreme modifications. Most AC pilots were already superhuman just to survive the forces of their own machines, but to push that even further? How much was I willing to deviate from the Human form? How much were they willing to deviate?

I had never been too attached to the idea of... a corporeal form in general, really, but I was well aware that I wasn't the common baseline there. My shift from a biological Human to a Coral Mind best described in terms of landscape only bothered me insofar as I had ended up exceedingly bored for several centuries, but most people valued their bodies. To them, the question of how much they could change themselves before they stopped being themselves was an entirely valid one. I was not going to take away that choice from them.

There was still some room for improvement without any further... replacement, but how much, really?

Where was it going to end?

June 12, 26 years post Fires of IBIS.

Flatwell sent me a message.

The licences have been taken up.

We've got a few incoming groups, some independents, some corps, and only three of them I recognized as actually important.

First up on the list was Dafeng Core Industry. An AC focused corp, with a wide catalogue of heavily armoured and simplistic pieces. No fancy energy weapons here; these guys were focused on bullets through and through.

An interesting problem, here?

Dafeng was currently their own corp. In AC6, Dafeng had been a subsidiary of Balam Industries, one of the two big megacorps duking it out over Rubicon, who were focused... pretty much on the exact same thing as Dafeng, actually.

As far as I could tell -and I admittedly didn't exactly have too much information on the rest of the galaxy- they were here independently. Balam had no hand in the matter.

I have a sneaking suspicion as to what's going to happen; Balam is a much larger group than Dafeng, much too big for the PCA to even think of allowing them access. But, with Dafeng being focused on mostly the same stuff, then Balam wouldn't be too bothered buying the company out. That would get them indirect access, and then a political link later on.

In a similar vein, the second one on the list was Schneider, also completely independent and not a subsidiary of Arquebus Corporation, the other big contender for Rubicon.

I suspected a similar thing was going to happen to them, as well.

The thing about Schneider was that Flatwell had been involved there, at one point. I knew he still had some connections there, though I wasn't sure what kind of connections they were. I didn't exactly care too much, honestly.

Either way, Flatwell's message requested that we handle Schneider a bit more lightly. He had a plan for them, unquestionably.

That was the first two names.

The third one? That was the big one.

ALLMIND.

It's a name with quite a bit of history behind it.

Hah. Weren't they always?

A history lesson: Back before Humanity successfully became an interstellar species, when everybody was still confined to the Sol system, it was, not to put too fine a point on it, a gigantic clusterfuck. Polities rivalled and scraped against each other, large corporations could hold more power than some nations, and everyone was caught in negative-sum games. Earth's ecosystem was collapsing, and since Earth was responsible for the vast majority of food production and manufacturing in Sol, that wasn't good. Tensions were flaring, and the only way for anybody to stay ahead was to take from somebody else.

Some tried to exploit the chaos. Some tried to quiet it. Some were just trying to survive it. It was a dark time in Human history, one that very nearly snuffed Humanity out entirely.

During this time, independent mercenaries were a rather big thing, as one may imagine, though admittedly it was rather more common back then that 'mercenaries' meant 'PMC' rather than the more modern 'single AC pilot', but hey. They filled all sorts of roles, from temporary armies to deniable forces to deep cover operatives. They stuck around for so long that they just eventually wormed their way into culture itself; mercs were often more available than standing armies or corporate squads, after all.

Eventually, some enterprising soul came up with an idea. Not all mercenaries were equal, not all of them were reliable, not all of them were capable, and not all of them were easily reachable, nor could they or their employers always be held to account if there were breaches of contract. This soul made an effort to change that, and so started an organisation by the name of MLA; the Mercenary Liaison Association.

It offered convenience, back in those days. MLA could negotiate, jobs could be posted, the capabilities of mercs and merc groups accurately assessed, equipment provided... A dozen and one things that continued to bring people into the fold because it was easier than not being in the fold, most of the time.

At the MLA's height, it was practically a faction in its own right.

And that doomed it. With so many mercs known, so many favours broken, so much power concentrated, others devoted themselves to tearing it down.

And so, the system strained. Confidence was chipped away at, services undercut, resources stolen away.

The MLA would eventually go defunct at the end of the Sol Wars, but not before the group spawned an eventual successor.

That successor was an AI; ALLMIND, the Mercenary Support System. The perfect, unfailing machine, the mechanical replacement that couldn't be subjected to the same problems that plagued the MLA. No people to bribe, no executives trying to take their part of the pie, no resources that couldn't be easily replaced, no bureaucracy that would collapse under its own weight.

Centuries later, and ALLMIND existed just about everywhere there were mercenaries. Only the farthest flung stars, the most peaceful of worlds, and the most authoritarian of systems would not know ALLMIND's presence.

ALLMIND had acquired a licence for limited operations on Rubicon. There had already been mercenaries coming, but with ALLMIND setting up? Practically a guarantee that this planet was going to keep busy for a long time to come.

And mercenaries did so enjoy predictability.

Now, theoretically speaking, ALLMIND was nothing but an enabler. The goal of ALLMIND was right in there in the name, after all; the Mercenary Support System. A factor to be considered, certainly, but one that would be relevant only in the matter of mercenaries.

Unfortunately, much like many other AIs in the Armored Core series, ALLMIND was not, in fact, on the up-and-up.

No, ALLMIND was just as capable of skullduggery as everyone else. ALLMIND was in fact quite a bit better at it than everyone else. If not for my own outside context knowledge, I really wouldn't have much reason to suspect ALLMIND at all.

For literal centuries, ALLMIND's record has been spectacularly clear.

Forget everything else. Nothing but the complete truth?

I had no doubt at all that ALLMIND was going to be the biggest problem I'd be facing on Rubicon.