Twenty-nine
Origin Point
29 September 2017
The battle at Orellia went well… Kind of. More information on the Val-kyrie Mark XX battlestar had been gathered, though it did nothing to make Unit Six Sixty-six better informed of its true capabilities. The loss of warships, Servators and demons was immaterial.
I told you so, that annoying voice whispered to the AI.
The AI ignored the dig and concentrated a small portion of its mind on overseeing the repairs to the damage incurred fighting War Wing. Its operator let the battlesuit do the work, but paired with an evolved AI, Six Sixty-six grudgingly admitted the pair fought pretty well.
High praise, indeed, coming from you.
"What do you want?" Six Sixty-six growled at the annoying personality it was stuck with. Removing General Alton's brain from Six Sixty-six's matrix. The simulation results were not good. The best possible outcome was the AI being lobotomized, which would end the campaign. As annoying as the dead general could be, he was right in constantly pointing out that tying the operation of the demon army to it was not a good move.
After abandoning the planet, the remaining robot forces stopped fighting. Several machines continued to follow orders, but with no backup, they died quickly. The Servator staff still in the base could hardly mount a concerted defense before the base's self-destruct was activated.
Six Sixty-six regretted the loss of the base more than anything else. Not detrimental to the plan, but it did alter things a bit. A base over the border in Horde space made an ideal place to launch attacks. The loss of the Orellia installation meant another one would have to be constructed.
You know what you need to do.
"More warships are being added to the fleet. An assault force is being assembled."
That is not what I meant. Your invincible army is not as invincible as you thought. Your machines are vulnerable to technology the Horde no longer uses. Only the Val-kyrie uses ballistic weaponry. Or so you thought.
"What is your point?"
Your modifications, with the base computer's help, are fine. But if you really want to make an army that scares the races you will encounter, there is only one place you can go to make the necessary adjustments.
"And that is?"
Think about it. It will come to you. You know, for artificial intelligence you are not very intelligent.
Once again, Six Sixty-six wished it could rip the remains of the dead Horde general out like removing a malfunctioning part. The AI dammed Horde Prime for doing this to it. One more reason for revenge.
A subprocess arrived at the answer after spending three-point-four seconds analyzing the problem. The Guardians had been constructed using technology power initially by magic. While the AI was incapable of believing in magic, it did acknowledge that magic was a form of energy. There were many repositories of knowledge and technology strewn across the galaxy thousands of years ago when the Ancients spread life across the stars. Not many exist today except in pieces. There was only one known repository left with the wealth of knowledge and power to make kings and despots and authoritarian rulers drool.
Castle Grayskull.
Very good, the annoying general said. And you almost had possession of it the first time around. History has shown that taking Grayskull is easy, for some, but holding onto it is another matter. Take Grayskull and you will have everything you need to exact your revenge on Horde Prime.
As irritating as the general was, he did have a point. With access to the technology stored there, even a few good pieces of an Ancient archive, Six Sixty-six could make its Shadowdemon army impervious to all forms of weapons whether they be energy-based or primitive ballistic ordinance. In order to do that, however, the castle's guardian would have to be taken alive. Since the current Sorceress of Grayskull was also one of the six Guardians, that might prove exceedingly difficult.
Well, nothing worthwhile is ever easy.
"So how would you plan the operation?" the AI grudgingly asked.
Me? You are supposed to be a tactical genius now that my knowledge and experience is integrated with yours. You have the knowledge from the battle at the castle when you tested the waters on Eternia. And let's not forget the pasting your machine army took at Snake Mountain.
"Skeletor's robots were no match for mine."
But the humans who now support the Guardians are. You might have the edge in numbers, but they can deploy an army of their own. If you want to take Castle Grayskull and hold it, you will have to deploy everything you have in order to accomplish the mission. The Val-kyrie will deploy against you. I would not rule out a temporary alliance with the Horde, either, since you have proven how much you hate them.
"The last engagement showed their battlestars are not much more powerful than the Mark V."
Alton chuckled. And you believed that? If you were the Val-kyrie facing a revived Shadowdemon menace, would you reveal your true power right away? A thousand years is a lot of time for scientific progress.
That was true. Captured Horde databases indicated the Mark XX battlestar was the king of space. Extremely powerful warships that defeated anything the Horde could throw at them. Six Sixty-six's modified Mark V hulls just might be able to take them on in battle. It would be a fierce fight regardless.
Six Sixty-six made its choice. Capturing Castle Grayskull was the top priority. Once the castle and its guardian were captured, its secrets would be plumbed to make the Shadowdemon army invincible. Then the real war against Horde Prime's empire could begin. After that, the Queen Mother and her warrior women would be annihilated. With the major powers eliminated, along with the Guardians, nothing would stand in the way of the Shadowdemon army conquering the galaxy.
At the end of it, the only thing living in the galaxy would be made of metal.
General Alton watched through his connection to the AI as the intelligence issued orders, draw up a battleplan, devised contingencies based on suppositions of the Val-kyrie's real power, and ideas on how to neutralize Guardian Falcon without killing its operator.
If the general still had a body, he would have smiled in smug satisfaction.
Pretoria Research Base
Planet Val-kyre
Queen Mother Silvara and Commander Harana sat in the conference room watching the wall display of activity in orbit. They always marveled at watching the choreography needed mounting capital missiles to external mounts on the hull of a battlestar.
Yard workers in armored pressure suits removed access panels in the armored hull revealing hardpoints to connect sturdy struts to hold the massive weapons in place. Struts were connected to the hull first. Once slotted into place, the struts would not flex or warp despite any maneuvers the battlestar might make. The bow at the top edge conformed to the missile measuring two-hundred feet long and fifteen feet in diameter. Only four were needed to hold the ship-killing weapons.
Weapons techs had a thorough procedure to mount the missiles that was painstaking and as relatively safe as possible. Even so, accidents did occasionally happen.
Workers swarmed over the hull in groups. The first group moved along removing the access panels, storing them in a container mounted on a work sled. A woman in a pressure suit flew the sled along behind the group as they moved in a pattern taking them all over the dorsal and ventral surfaces. The pattern ensured the team did not miss an access port.
A second team attached cradles to each missile as it was brought up by a woman piloting what was essentially a box with thrusters. Mounted to the front of the contraption was a rigid rectangular assembly of beams with hinged claws at the ends. Those claws wrapped around the massive weapons like the fingers of a hand. A skilled operator with a gentle touch could move a capital missile around without ever scratching the paint.
Four groups of missile handlers operated at each of the six battlestars being armed for the capital ship fight. Two on the dorsal side and two on ventral. Once the teams completed arming the first battlestar in line, they moved on to the next. Personnel were swapped out for low oxygen packs, fatigue, or any other issue the came up. The arming procedure was hard on the body when forced to work in the unforgiving environment of space in an armored pressure suit.
As part of her years of training not only to command the Val-kyre, flagship of the fleet, Silvara had to work all jobs positions relating to a battlestar, its support functions, and operations. The fleet routinely performed the same arming operations the Queen Mother and Commander Harana now observed using inert weapons designed for training purposes. In the short week spent arming and disarming the capital ships, Silvara developed a healthy respect for every one of those women out there working to mount live weapons on the battlefleet assembled to engage the Shadowdemon fleet.
"Never gets old watching that, does it?" Harana asked.
Silvara shook her head. "No. It only takes two to blow a Horde battleship in half. And I'm sending six battlestars out each armed with twenty-four of those dreadful weapons." This wasn't the first time the Queen Mother worried about the technological arms race between the Val-kyrie and the Horde. While their robot armies remained unchanged, warship, fighter and armor unit designs were always being upgraded. Where will it end? She wondered for the umpteenth time.
"If my team modelling the probable capabilities of a Mark V battlestar modified like the battlecruisers, those may not be enough," Harana said, gesturing to the display screen for emphasis.
"Then it's a good thing I put out a recall order for a special weapon. I just don't know if it will arrive in time." There has been no acknowledgment of the recall order, but the warship was operating under silent running. Silvara hoped they got the order and were speeding back at this moment.
Harana did not have to ask about that. She suspected what weapon it was. Something new to unleash on the Horde at the proper time. Now, Horde Prime might be introduced to it in a way the Queen Mother did not intend. If it arrived in time.
"You still plan to send him a message?" Harana asked suddenly, changing the subject.
To her credit, Silvara's face did not betray her emotion on this matter. She had been expecting the question. Had expected it when she first entered the conference room, in fact. This was becoming a point of contention between them. She and Silvara had grown up together along with Fontaine and Mundu. The friendship between Silvara and Harana went back the farthest. They had had their disagreements, the rare fight. But there was always respect for each other's opinion.
This particular disagreement had less to do with who was right so much as whether or not this was the right time to reveal their findings from a battle gone awry on Etheria.
"If we are to use every weapon at our disposal, Cobretti must be told," the Queen Mother answered softly.
"I agree he should be told – all of them – it's the timing of it I question," Harana said.
"He may need to use it in order to beat Unit Six Sixty-six."
"You don't know that for sure. Remember the psych profile. Predictably unpredictable."
Silvara cracked a smile and looked sideways at her childhood friend. "And you should also remember the lesson we learned when he took the no-win scenario test."
Harana nodded, remembering. "He always has a plan."
"Maybe he will need the program, maybe not. At least he will have the option."
"Did it occur to you that revealing what happened without having a solution could alienate the Guardians against us?" Harana pointed out, concerned. "We have credibility with them. Last thing we need is to drive them away."
"They will find out in time. How much time passes before they do will impact how they will feel about us."
Harana sighed again. She did not like this, but Silvara was the Queen Mother. If she wanted to reveal to Cobretti what had happened during the engagement with the Monstroids, it was on her head.
"You have been experimenting with the program for a number of years," Silvara said, conversationally. A program that no one has yet figured out how to utilize."
"Everyone who has attempted to tame it has paid with their life." Harana shook her head, sadly. "Makes me wonder why they created the damnable thing to begin with."
They had gone round and round about this in the past. Harana even wrote a thesis about the uses of the program when they went through the War Collage. She had even produced a possible way to utilize it safely. The theories were sound, but several scientists and programmers who took interest in the paper were quick to denounce it as impossible.
A revelation suddenly hit Silvara. It became so obvious to her now. Why Harana had been so driven down the path of research instead of command? Harana had been disappointed by the results her thesis generated. No doubt she had struck off on her own using the rejection as fuel driving her to achieve a position where she could further research the program and explore avenues for use. What better position than command of the Val-kyrie's most advanced military research station.
Once in command, Harana could assemble a team who would look into the possibilities of using the program and how that could be accomplished without adding to the body count. Harana had not given up. She just went clandestine in furthering the research.
The revelation also clicked another piece of the puzzle in place.
"It was war. They needed something to give them an edge in battle against the Shadowdemon juggernaut," Silvara pointed out. "They had theories on how to use it. Tried everything you have, but still ended with a dangerously uncontrollable program. But their scientists did put forth a theory we may have just found could be true. It only took a thousand years to prove."
"And that is?"
"It's why you created Mirriam."
Harana laughed at that. "My team created an unstable AI by accident in one of the test ships."
The Queen Mother shook her head. "No. It's built in part with code from the program. I am no programmer, but I recognized a few lines of Mirriam's code from when you and I looked it over out of curiosity. I think you are following through with what the scientists back then theorized about an operator and an artificial intelligence working together to tame it."
Harana remained quiet for a long time. She did not try to contradict the Queen Mother's reasoning. A project was underway trying to make the program safer to use. So far, all attempts have resulted in failure. Dumbing down the program did not work. The program became useless, or exceeding danger because of the other data points stripped out.
Blending it with an artificial intelligence had mixed results. AIs became hopelessly homicidal or were driven insane by data overload. Mirriam was the first to have a semblance of sanity, bloodthirsty as it was. The same could be said of the more resolute warriors committed to the destruction of the Horde.
"Accident, my eye," Silvara scoffed. "You finally produced something viable, and you sent it out to the field to test. Why else were you so quick to give Cobretti a replacement for the bounty hunter's ship destroyed during the insurrection?" When Harana remained silent, the Queen Mother continued. "Examining the data from the incident with the Monstroids confirmed you are on the right track. Cobretti and War Wing need to know. They all need to know. The program is imbedded so deeply with the AI that removing it would destroy what has evolved. I think they knew this was the best option. Or maybe prayed it was. Regardless, Cobretti needs to know. What happens the next time the program is activated? I don't want to imagine the results, and neither do you."
"I still think we should wait until the current crisis is resolved," Harana persisted.
"One Guardian may lose her arm from the recent battle," Silvar reminded her.
Guardian Hawk and her operator were currently in the finest hospital on the planet and under the care of the doctors. Silvara received information after the war council meeting that the operators for Claw and Blitzkrieg were in medically induced comas. Brad Johnson suffered a severe head trauma when his safety harness snapped while engaged with three demons. Jeromy Ironwood had to be put under because of the internal injuries he sustained during the same engagement. The pair had accounted for more than thirty demons destroyed before the mass of machines overwhelmed them.
Had Sonya converted Hawk to battle mode instead of trying to sneak through to friendly lines in combat mode, she might not have been so gravely injured. Regardless, the restraint system in the operator's compartment would need redesigning.
"We are down to three Guardians. Whatever happens, using the program might be the only way to stop Unit Six Sixty-six. Kill it and the nightmare ends. It controls the robot forces directly probably as a means to ensure Horde Prime doesn't commandeer it," Silvara continued.
Harana waved a hand in the direction of her office off to the right. "Since you are determined, you might well use my office. Might as well look official."
The Queen Mother rose from her chair, nodded to her friend, and walked across the room and entered the office. She paused to touch the control pad beside the door and closed it. While Harana knew what Silvara was going to record, the Queen Mother required privacy to frame her thoughts.
Ignoring the mementos of Harana's career, and travels, Silvara sat down behind the desk, picked up a data pad and began writing out her speech. She wrote, rewrote, and changed wording here and there until she had it about as good as it was going to be, considering the circumstances.
Pacing the pad on the desktop in front of her, Silvara looked toward the hidden camera across from the desk keyed to record the instant she spoke, took a slow breath to calm herself, and began talking.
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