Thus Spoke Catastrophe.
"I have a plan sir!" A nasty voice whined from the doorway as private bollrik slid into the enclosed room and past the few remaining marines still upright to kneel beside the lieutenant who was fiddling with the large puck-shaped IED charge that was secured to the wall.
"Really bollrik," He cursed with a wince as someone screamed outside and the staccato of gunfire ebbed. "A cunning and subtle one?"
"Yes sir." The wirey private nodded enthusiastically. As boots, light as the neko were, still stomped quickly and audibly closer as the few live marines winced and pulled themselves together with what little ammo they still had between them.
"As cunning as a neshaten who's just been appointed professor of cunning at kennewes university?" The lieutenant did not so much as take his eyes off the improvised bomb as he sparked two wires together, a yellow light flashing in the small display once to green and then back to yellow.
"Yes sir." Bollrik nodded again, the perfect image of a bobbing duck as he looked from his leader to the piles of dead or dying marines stacked almost like firewood in the hall and entrance to the room. The hole in the hull they had blown to get into the ship was just the next room over...
"Well, I'm afraid it will have to wait." The officer sighed as the light turned green again and he secured the tiny latch closed and turned away from the device which had begun to hum almost imperceptibly. "Whatever it was I'm sure it was better than my plan to get out of this by screaming bloody murder like a madman and trying to outrun-"
With a shriek of absolute rage, the nightmare exploded into the room without even slowing, three armored neko right on her heels as Bollrik hollered and the lieutenant drew his 45. Before he even had it raised a tentacle from the terrifying beauty was mere centimeters from his chest when time froze and as slow as a glacier for a fraction of a nanosecond a white light seeped out from behind them to embrace them. And then faster than the exhalation of a breath matter expanded for a hundred meters in every direction and then just as fast imploded in on itself as everything inside and out of the ship for a hundred meters simply ceased to exist at a near molecular level.
Those safe from the epicenter did not even register the blast before it expanded again a hundred times to size and out is every direction as the implosion exploded vacuum and pressure from the withdrawn space outwards in a blast. There was not even time to recognize what happened as the shockwave traveled out like a wave and collapsed the already fragile shells of buildings and underground structures alike. For if there was one thing that was not considered was that the fragility of the city could not stand a blast of that magnitude and that the surrounding buildings would brake the shockwave like a reef.
At the same time, the ground rumbled a moment later the shockwave reached the factory both teams were in. Locust was mid-leap from standing and laser focussed on Carina's location somehow before anyone could act when the entire structure collapsed ontop of them all in less than a second and all went black.
26 Hours Later
"Over here, got another signal!" A marine shouted as forms converged on the section of rubble and a suit of Cyclopse powered armor carefully heaved up a piece of girder and rubble under the supervision of an engineer and a couple medics.
"Shit, got a bunch of them!" One of the medics shouted and forms carefully started extracting corpses from the rubble.
Not... Corpses... A medic pushed someone out of the way as a groan escaped the battered form of what looked like an elysian if the remains of its wings were to be considered. With signs of a survivor the effort redoubled and one after another nine bodies were pulled out of several pockets in the rubble and laid out on triage while several more were pulled out very much dead.
With survivors present a member of the IPG was instantly on the spot and examining them with a datapad with a frown as he cataloged their identities and crimes. and made immediate notes while to the annoyance of the medics and first responders cuffed wrists together even with broken arms or jellied limbs.
When he reached the last two he froze and drew his HHG on instinct at what his datapad showed him on reflex. It was for not as the medics pulled apart the two intertwined bodies. One was a massive android full of too many holes and a knife embedded in her very eyesocket down to the brain that has set off the alert to the long list of crimes that even a member of the IPG flinched at.
The other was just a girl; Battered, beaten, half dead like the rest.
Regardless he secured them both, even the corpse of Locust, and marked the dead for brain-spider recovery or examination. It was him, his training taking over that alerted him first when he realized one of the bodies had simply vanished. HHG still already drawn he prepared to sound the alarm when a weight settled against his back, a hand on his shoulder, and someone leaned close enough that he could feel the pistol still pressed in his back as a single word was spoken.
Two Days Later.
On board the SickSlayer, the jackdaw class flagship of the 4tf Fleet, a Grand Admiral sat in his private office across a single man.
"This is quite the story to be believed." The booming cybernetically augmented voice of Lysander Calloway mused while looking at a dataslate in his hands as he carefully looked from it to the alleged IPG operator across from him. Still secured to the seat and with his protection detail just outside it would take just a thought for them to barge in and end his life if he so much as struggle.
"All this just to get an audience with me, mr.Kilgee." He growled with humor that clearly did not reach his eyes. "All according to her plan, I suppose?"
The senior intelligence officer of the 4th fleet bristled and shared a glance with his admiral from behind the prisoner who nodded back in affirmation.
"Half Past Twelve." He summoned the ships ACE AI and in an instant the form of a young, early pre-teen girl in a black dress was sitting on the edge of his desk, feet dangling and swining casually as she locked eyes with the grand admiral without emotion.
"Twelve," The senior IPG intel officer got the AI's attention who looked over her shoulder at him despite the fact that the AI was essentially the ship itself and not the avatar. "Report all data packets leaving this vessel to my mindware over the next instance."
With a flash of light in the officer's eyes he shook his head at the admiral and addressed her once more. "Again, if you please, Twelve."
This time the man looked grave and then nodded to his superior.
"Half Past Twelve. Perform complete activation of your secondary replacement and upon completion terminate." Calloway spoke slowly and coldly. There was a pause from the AI's avatar, and even a slight widening of her eyes as she looked back to her superior of half a decade before slowly nodding. Before she winked out the man held up a single hand to pause its ordered suicide.
"Thank you for your service, Half Past Twelve." Calloway nodded, and the AI blinked out of existence. His mood visibly darkened as he turned his steel gaze from where the AI had been to his chief Intel officer.
"The report was the same. All diagnostics the exact same in key locations about outside packet transfers; It was in our systems and in the AI leeching data and sending false positive reports to mask itself."
"I was briefed on the Kiss Of Spring when I was promoted. I am well aware of its purpose though not the lengths it had gone to achieve them." He addressed the restrained operator again. "If what I am led to believe is true, then Abigail Kilgee truly arranged this meeting by sheer precognitive predictions to prove it has completed its instructions just as it did when it predicted my promotion and Delta Kilgee sat before me and I told her that to sanction the project further and endorse it through my fleet when none of the other admiralty or the sky marshal would that I would need proof; That when she told me this very meeting would take place I was more than skeptical."
"And what will you do now, Admiral?" The Intel operator asked, clearly excited about the possibilities now that not only Nepleslia, but the 4tf Fleet would have access to a Macro AI of such proportions and what it would mean for the future.
"I am convinced of the effectiveness of nothing else." He answered, steepling his fingers and leaning against his chair which creaked with the bulk of the man.
"But I am not convinced in the manner in which the results were achieved." He frowned, and even his Intel officer looked shocked. "Were Abigail Kilgee truly possessed of the ability to predict events to this point it would know my next actions and never had approached me in the first place; Take the type-twos' virus out of quarantine and upload it into Lima Kilgees brainspider and transfer her, under guard, back to the vault in the swamp. Kilgee may have gotten the results she wanted but it was through manipulation as much as calculation and must learn the lesson she imparted on her own agents that a tool acting of its own volition against the wishes of its superiors will be punished. That I will not take it from its vault and put it on my station until it has learned from its mistakes"
"And what of the Motoyoshi? By Kiss of Springs's own actions in the death of the boy they were involved and still awaiting the investigation even now. The Motoyoshi girls death has put unneeded pressure on us from a mere county of yamatai as large as the Democratic Imperium itself"
"Another time. For now, we must mind what to do with Kilgees tools." He turned his attention back to the lone operator sitting across from him.
"Most of them, pawns as they are, I will relinquish back to the swamp. Do not use my name officially but send through pardons and alter their records to minor charges and lock the records with standard group encryption at a senior officers level to avoid suspicion; I can not have the daughter of one of the founders of the very Democratic Imperium and an illegitimate prince though he may not know it to shed light on this incident through a paper trail should they follow in the footsteps of their predecessors."
"At least a few of them have connections to her as well, sir." The officer nodded, and with a light in his eyes nodded that it was done. "What of the rest of them?"
"Hargraves was what he was. But a bad leader was not one of them. Any of the injured from the subterranean triage with a criminal record below category-3 reduce their time to time-served and mark them for re-indoctrination by the next warden to begin re-integrating back into society or other marine and navy units, take your pick of the category 3-4's for the group and freeze the rest with five years served as promised by their contract. Any of the survivors from Kilgees group mark as having completed their sentence once healed and re-integrate them back into their units."
"And what of him, sir?" The officer asked, nodding towards the still-silent man in the chair.
Calloway studied the man for a moment before waving him away. "If I turn you away, Mr.Kilgee, what will you do?"
For the first time since the meeting began, Rungo Bungo leaned forwards and spoke.
"I spent almost ten years, and ruined my very reputation to be locked away just to sit in a room with you, admiral."
Calloway nodded, and with a few presses on his dataslate decided the man's fate.
"You are a loyal man, Alpha Kilgee. Until your master needs you it will know where to find you."
And with that a small avatar appeared beside the desk. It was the image of a young girl of perhaps nine with a stoic deadpan and severe lack of readable emotion.
"Good day, Grand Admiral. I am designated H11FFT5-Omega. What are your orders?"
As the mutant was led from the room and the IPG agents swarmed around the prisoner the grand admiral let the encounter wash from his mind as he moved onto more important things as he looked out the window of the ship and onto the world his men now held as the last dregs of the NMX were purged from Ukk.
"Change designation. Your new designation is Half Past Twelve."
-End Conspiracy Arc.
