Chapter 6-2 Preparation
Squires live and die by their legwork, and Guilds bleed or are bled by their rivals through the successes and failures of their shaping operations.
Preparation. You'll never have enough of it. And before you even get to the fun shit like going over what kind of ordinance you'll need or which squires you wanna hire to form the core cadres of your lance, you got to get the fundamentals down.
And by fundamentals, I mean intelligence. Awareness. Knowing what the other half-strand is doing and not letting them know what you're doing. You know. People watching. Mem-mail reading. Real riveting stuff; and the most essential things you can do.
Culture; habits; flaws; leaders; personnel; other shit. All this is essential. Power ain't enough to light the wick in this city. Not when a golem can flip a switch and change the rules of reality.
The fight is won and lost before it even begins. So, you best get phylaceried or get good at playing the long game.
Improvise? Sure. That's important too. But only the ready get to improvise. The rest of the bunch usually just gets dead.
-Quail Tavers, School of the Warrens
6-2
Preparation
Work slickened the passage of time, and ever was Avo pleased.
More than pleasing, however, was the splendorous radiance that formed the bars to his newest phantasmic. It was still a thing in progress--the skeleton of a cage fusing into shape around the megablock that served as the nexus of his palace--but already the sequences of memory he had to draw on were promising. Flashes of a parent hugging their child; a moment shared between loved ones; a girl calling after the fading form of her father's aero, stabbing through a curtain of falling rain.
All these lost instances offered heat; an intensity of emotion that rivaled the output of his beast. With these memories synthesized properly, in practice, their fire would choke the maw of cruelty and hunger that dwelled beneath the fabric of his being.
The composite for the neuro-metals of the Morality Injector was woven from strands of regret, fear, joy, shame, revulsion, and an even vaster multitude of emotions, all synthesized to serve as a grand cocktail to drown the beast. At the bottom of the cage were fanned blades, sharpened to dig into his Metamind's tissue and pierce into his instincts. If his mental architecture was sound and the phantasmic was stable, it would draw out the worst of his nature like a syringe and counteract its properties with an equal loop of counter-emotions.
Functionally, it would allow him to tranquilize the beast without overdosing himself on undistilled and secondhand rememberings. He examined the unfinished construct again. He would need to shower it with more time and effort before it could greet its conclusion. And shower it he did.
Work on it he did.
Hours washed past him as if currents, his tasks a joyous multitude, pressing down on him with the weight of comforting responsibility. Streams of mem-data played like a constant symphony in his mind, ever-present be he awake or asleep.
He had spent the better part of the last four days in a deep dive of his own mind, nested snuggly in a lung bed. Waking only to feed and talk with Kae regarding the nature of his Frame, a semblance of his past life returned to him. Again, he was giving himself over to his craft; Necrotheurgy his practice, his worship.
A worship that was interrupted every so often when Draus began synchronizing with his mind through their encrypted Seance session.
These days, Draus' mind remained close and easy to access. Though he had promised to leave her cognitive structure untouched, they had found an accord in limited mutual transparency. A Syndicate was a complex organism to poison and butcher, after all, and it would take the leveraging of many skills to see it undone; what he lacked in combat experience and tactics, he provided in terms of phantasmics and signal-based infiltration.
+Deployin' Larks,+ Draus said, without further elaboration or fanfare. Avo grunted. They both knew what was about to follow. If his phantasmics were sequenced right, the drones would remain hidden and serve as their instruments of aerial spycraft.
Through stuttered instances of Nether-lag, he started from Draus' perspective and watched her cog-feed trigger the ejection process. A trio of icons flashed into existence at the back of both their minds, each a micro-drone released from the bottom of the aerovec. In his mind's eye, Avo spun his DeepNav to a top-down perspective and watched the drones come alight with rectangular vertices.
Masked by the howl of the traffic and the haze of the rain, they moved, pace twinned to the midnight traffic, already beginning to filter mem-data up into the Nether.
It had taken Avo a few days more to sequence the ghosts needed to direct each drone along their routed path. Presently, they ran on minds most paranoid and anxious. He had tested their pathfinding and ensured they never took the same route twice. The pattern deviation would help them avoid the notice of Syndicate patrols long enough to get the intelligence they needed.
Across the DeepNav--a three-dimensional simulation of the city as mapped by constantly updated mem-data--the drones separated, each taking one of the three major skylanes outside Conflux headquarters. Running down arteries of holo-projected light, the loci of the Lark-pattern drones sang in a symphony of synched memories.
With a thought, Avo slotted another session of memories into his Auto-Seance, his thought-frequency tuned in tandem with the drones. Draus cut out momentarily as he twinned his mind to one of the Larks. Immediately, a second window of awareness opened in the back of his mind.
His thoughts masked by the ghost anchored to the Lark's locus, Avo swept his gaze over the district of Mazza's Junction. Drone-spec data dotted the corner of his perception as mem-code ran through the back of his mind as a constant spray of information.
SHI-WA CLASS [LARK]-PATTERN RECONNAISSANCE DRONE
SIZE: LENGTH 3 FEET; WINGSPAN 1.5 FEET
WEIGHT: 20 POUNDS
SPEED: 130 MPH
OPERATIONAL PERIOD: 1D/22H/24M
PAYLOAD/ENGINE: MICRO-FUSION REACTOR
INTEGRITY: OPTIMAL
He swept his mind through his optical sensors and zoomed on the streets expanding from the core of the block. Accretions came alight in his vision as pedestrian foot traffic littered the streets, vagrants, peddlers, refugees, wagers, and gangers running thicker than the pouring rain.
Flashes of gunfire were detected and logged in the drone's sensory suite. Warnings played constantly through its Phys-Sim. The Lark wasn't his best job. Not even close, but it would serve his needs for now.
Peeking out from its optics again he found himself gazing upon the bifurcated form of Conflux headquarters. Mirrorhead had other establishments he could flee to--maybe even up the Tiers if he got desperate enough--but the critical density of the Syndicate boss' forces were centered here.
To abandon them would relinquish the last real foothold he had over this little pseudo-kingdom he played at ruling. Something that his ego wouldn't allow him to forsake without a fight.
At least now, Avo had some eyes on him as well. Conflux wouldn't be able to scramble anything larger than a squad without him or Draus knowing now.
Another leviathan festooned with holo-ads swam by through the air, cutting the target from sight. Distracted, Avo considered his tasks and found himself going down his checklist again.
Right now, the initial deployment of spy drones was concluded. From here, there was a factor of patience involved. Such a thing served him well anyway. He still needed to finish attuning his Morality Injector to his Meta; the former mod slave was still an unfinished job; Chambers remained in custody and untouched; and most tedious of all, he needed to comb through all the memories he recently acquired to get a better understanding of their contents.
These memories included his own. He had yet to uncover how an entire week of experiences had been severed from his mind so neatly. Though he had glanced at his own cognitive architecture only briefly, it looked mostly stable, the sequences of his mind melding together in a long-remembered rhythm. Perhaps it was Aseleri's recollections that held the first pieces toward his gnosis. If nothing else, she would have logged where he was found.
And with that, another tertiary task came into concern: The infiltration and expropriation of her Maw-diving barge. She was dead and her crew was rendered directionless. If he could jack into its systems, he might even be able to trace the slaves, letting him free who he could and track those that were already sold.
Back in the real, a grin spilled across Avo's face. Now there was an enticing prospect: Hunting slavers for gains of taste and Soul. The Warrens were ripe with offerings. He merely needed to seek them out.
Perhaps after he filled himself with even more lives, he would be able to finally sequence complex enough ghosts to part himself from the awareness of Guild Exorcists. Then, he might finally be able to operate at the topside--at Light's End--and seek out the Easy Armistice where another piece of Walton supposedly awaited him.
His grin collapsed into a frown. Avo didn't much like thinking about the things Walton said to him. The disquiet he felt regarding that situation was a cancerous inflammation that seeded the corners of his mind with doubt and worries. The implications of his Liminal Frame and Ninth Column put him on a collision course with the Guilds.
And Avo had sampled more than one vicarity of what happened to those that ran against the Guilds.
Pushing his concerns to the back of his head, Avo disconnected from the drone and switched back to Draus' frequency. +Working.+
+How's the lag?+ she asked, casting an order for the aerovec to return to the Second Fortune.
+No issue. Twinned. Direct connection. Will be able to access them whenever needed.+
+Alright, then. Looks like we got ourselves some fuel to cook with.+ A wail of sirens shot past her as another aero blurred past, flying outside the lighted path designed by the skylanes. Behind it, missiles trailed, their engines screaming bright. Draus winced momentarily and tore her sight away from the shine of their pluming thrusters.
She began to heal immediately after. Avo watched the nanosurgeons scrubbing patches of blindness from her vision. +Squires been actin' up in the district.+ Draus said, blinking. +Been like this for the past few days. Reckon it's probably the Scalpers probing Conflux security. Been a few street-side clashes between them too. Borders and G-Stations mostly. Looks like Ol' Vincintine is blaming the death of his hitters on Mirrorhead.+
+Good,+ Avo said.
+Yeah, for us. Not so much for FATELESS.+ A bitter note ebbed from Draus' mind as she looked at the specks walking the multi-rung streets below, their enshadowed contours swallowed in neon. +They start a firefight and we're lookin' at a cool-hundred dead in seconds.+
Lives were fragile. Flechettes and missiles were cheap.
+Find us your 'alternative means of residence yet'?+ Avo asked.
+Soon,+ Draus replied. +Still workin' on its insides. Getting somethin' like that custom made down in these parts ain't easy. Takes time to get set up. Burned more than a few favors to get a command aero-unit disguised as a cargo barge. How about the mod slave? She scrubbed yet?+
That pulled a silent sigh from him. He was more than three days behind on dealing with her now. Not helped by her growing demands to be allowed to keep more and more of her mind.
+No,+ Avo said. +Was busy with the drones.+
Draus hummed. +We gonna have to deal with her at some point. Can't keep her with us. And her mind's gotta be scrubbed clean of our traces. She's already had enough pain. Last thing she deserves is getting her mind hollowed by a Guild Necro after they catch a trace of us there during a thoughtscan.+
+Yeah.+ Avo went silent for a beat. +She wants to keep the memories of her father. Sister. Wants to remember Aseleri dying.+
+So? Is that a problem 'bout that?+
+Will add more time. Not taking the sequence directly. Just copying. Also makes edits more complex. Redact our presence without removing central pillars of memory. Challenge enticing. Will need to approach it carefully.+
A beat of silence extended from Draus. +Can't you just... take it anyway and scrub her mind after. She won't remember nothin' anyway, right?+
+She won't. I will. She's choiceless. Don't want to be like Aseleri. Don't want to be like Low Masters.+
A beat of silence birthed a sequel as a swell of minor regret dissolved inside Draus. +Been a Reg for too long.+
Avo grunted. +Been a ghoul all my life. Seems we're both flawed.+
This time, she offered him a laugh. +Yeah. Reckon so. How about your Morality-thing?+
+Morality Injector. Not done yet either. Necrotheurgy takes time. Signals-gathering takes time. Same as your HUMINT "inquiries" these past few days.+
Draus' laughter took on a vicious, caustic quality. While Avo was working to make more effective phantasmics, the Regular had sought out a few members of Conflux she regarded as more pliable to her persuasion.
To that end, certain narrow pinholes of understanding painted a partial picture of Conflux's overall condition. Hemorrhaging personnel and ceding territory, both the Scalpers and Dead Lotus were pushing in from their respective districts against Mirrorhead's control.
Something that the Godclad couldn't abide.
Whispers in the Nether rose again, speaking of the start of a new gutter war between the three factions; Conflux straining itself to survive, the Scalpers thinking they were conducting retaliatory strikes for the loss of an entire Knot at Burner's Way, and Dead Lotus, thinking the Scalpers were trying to take Conflux--something they would not abide as it placed the larger Syndicate right along the border's of their district.
+River talk with you yet?+ Draus asked. +Last when I checked in with her a few days ago, she said she oughta be able to buy some other ghouls from some of the local grafters. The real feral ones.+
+Not yet,+ Avo said. And he wasn't looking forward to talking with the Sang den elder either. Her very nature plucked at his strings the wrong way. He was a Necro, a job that often had him more ghost-like than the instruments he commanded. She, on the other hand, was a knowledge broker of sorts on top of being a casino. Where her light spread, his darkness had to retreat. +Still waiting.+
There was no room for both of them to share. He tasted the inevitability of a clash between them somehow. Or at least the tension, as if they were two hounds circling each other, one curious, the other wary, both trying to cling to an advantage.
+Alright,+ Draus said. +Think I'm going to make another lap near Burner's way and see how Vincintine's butchers are gearing this fine Thulsday before finishin' today's rounds. See how chilled things are. Far as I've gleaned from the past few days, them Scalpers scraped their dead out of the block where the Rupture is and bugged out.+
+If luck keeps favorin' us, they'll keep on hittin' Conflux, seeing how they considered you a special operative. Bad news is that they're definitely sure you're still alive and know you got a Frame burning inside you. One of my old contacts embedded with them said you got an internal bounty on your head. Two hundred thousand imps. Not for outside distribution. Figure they want what you got for themselves. My guess was that the Scalpers you snuffed were running visual cyberware. Send snapshots of visual feed back up the chain. Nether might've been all jammed up durin' your little brawl in Burner's Way but... sometimes coldtech got poise that thaumaturgy lacks.+
A grunt of annoyance sounded in Avo's throat. He had been so certain the lives he shed in combat against the golems were enough to cast prying eyes off his trail. Draus was quick to dissuade his hopes from achieving the bloom of delusion. He knew much of how the Nether worked, but the nature of pure technology evaded him still. With a twin-aspected system, it seemed that they sidestepped a great many matters that crippled his communicative capabilities. Little wonder they were so willing to use thoughtwave bombs.
Here was another thing he needed to supplement down the line. As much as he loathed the impenetrability of coldtech, for the sake of his enduring survival, he needed to get accustomed to more of its functions before he found himself blindsided again.
+Going to keep working on Morality Injector,+ Avo said. +Assemble that first. Think about how to approach mod slave after.+
+That what we're going to keep callin' her?+
+That's all she was,+ Avo said. +Won't be anything more to us after. Can't afford a tail trailing behind us. She's a traumatized flat without Meta. Without wards. Fresh meat for all the predators in the city. Best we can do is plant her somewhere safe here. Move on.+
+Yeah,+ Draus said. +Get 'er done. Want us to be plugging Chambers and the other two with your mem-cons and scry-ware before the week is over. They'll offer another angle on Mirrorhead if we don't find something to press on from the exterior.+
Avo grunted. +Keep you updat--+ A flashing call sounded in his mind, interrupting his thoughts before they could be packaged and sent. Frowning, he glared at the small interface manifesting in the upper right corner of his cog-feed. Strange as it was for most to have an active perception filter in his own mind-scape, Necros tended to keep theirs on at all times.
LINK REQUEST INCOMING
CALLER: [SU, BRIGHT-WEALTH]
It took him a few moments to realize that he was being contacted by the junior. The one that Draus had assigned to personally escort Kae. The one that was now again gifted the new and glorious task of ensuring the mod slave didn't self-terminate.
Avo made a mental note to update to an Omniglot language phantasmic after he was finished with more pressing matters. He was still getting the most literal one-to-one character-meaning translations.
With a thought, he let the call come through, and Su's face came into shape as a ghost-made simulation of her current state.
+Hey, yao-guai, the crying one says she want to talk to you. Says she is finally ready to let go.+ The Sang wrinkled her nose. He could still taste the unease she held for him, her faulty wards leaking spills of alarm each time she looked upon him. Her fear wasn't primal, but that of a human looking into an uncanny valley.
The Sang made far superior predators than ghouls. Made them a century ago, even. Yet, he stood different from most creatures in their collection. A monster that somehow drifted from his fated course.
+Be there soon,+ Avo said. A beat followed. +Did she try it again?+
+No,+ Su said, frowning. +Not last night. But she still screams. She always screams. Loud as motherfucking shit, she is.+
Good thing the Second Fortune's walls were good insulators of sound. Or perhaps they were built to ensure the ease of listening for Green River, and Green River alone. Either way, her presence drew little attention in the real or the Nether as Avo observed.
Soon, if Avo performed his task right, she would be just another bland backdrop for thoughtscans to slide off.
With a thought, Avo ended the call and emerged from his palace.
RETURNING TO CONSCIOUSNESS
Sitting up, he found Kae watching the preliminaries of the New Vultun Grand Prix on the holovision. A great Rupture splayed the flesh of reality open in a metaphysical gash, the wound made all the clear for the former Agnos to examine as she used the haptic functions to zoom in closer across the concave holo-screens.
In the lead was Gaed anGeld, representing Stormtree. Her projected velocity had her about to lap the planets diameter for the third time in an hour, the satellite zooming in on her Heaven flaring at full burn as she tore across the horizon as an arcing javelin of lightning.
Behind her, the first casualty of the race was listed. Ressler Kandred, of Highflame; real death via thaumic overload. It looked like he was using a Heaven that could alter geometries. Had used. Space seemed to fold and bend in a span of 10 kilometers, up and forward bleeding together, crumpling physical matter into flattened shapes.
Multiple golems were being scrambled to clear up the damage then. They didn't look like any models he had seen before.
"New golems?" Avo asked.
Kae sudden shook, looking startled. "I... I... oh, oh! No. Those are Hellsinkers. Just... just there to soak up the Rend. Stabilize the Rupture." She gave a humming laugh. "Are... are you going to see... see Lucille again."
"Yes." Avo took a step toward the door and froze. Slowly, he turned to Kae again. "Kae. You know her name?"
The Agnos, bless her mem-burned mind, nodded, not comprehending what she did wrong. "You... you don't?"
"No," Avo said. "Makes things more difficult that way. Cements us more in memory. Will take me even more time to dislodge you from her mind."
It took a moment for the sadness to creep across Kae's face. "Oh. S-sorry. She was just... there's so much pain in her. Thought she could use... use someone to talk with."
Avo grunted. "New Vultun. As it goes. Going to see if I can finish with her today. Someone breaks in you know what to do."
Kae nodded. "Shoot myself."
Avo grunted. "Won't be able to fight them off alone. Don't want to be taken alive."
"Alright," Kae said, cheerfully. "I'll try to remember."
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