The Brink and Back - Chapter 138 (Patreon)

It wasn't until ten days into the break that everyone at the table was positive we were ready. It took that long to develop the myriad of plans and missions that, when all combined, created our NUSA and Militech offensive. In total, there were forty people working on this: the analysis, the strategy, and the planning portion. These were the people who knew the people, the locations, and the technology we would be up against. 

Quite a few more people worked together when the time finally came.

Now, this sort of crowd was obviously far beyond what our security room could handle. It had served us well for the Night City campaign, but we had definitely felt a bit cramped as we stripped the world of its WMDs, and that had just been the core group. Now we had a whole massive team working together, which meant we needed a whole massive room.

Luckily, Noah could design a room in just a few minutes, and his teams could build it in less than a day.

The command center was a huge circular room, with several large projections and display panels around the outer walls. They continuously showed things like maps and other detailed data, from up-to-date live views of various cities, to more general information coming from the moon and various space stations. Next, towards the center were several concentric platforms, circling around the center, each one lower than the one before. Around these platforms were various stations, each with one, two, or even three people manning them. These were our experts, our watchers, scanning incoming data, confirming information, and waiting for the go command. 

In total, there were just over a hundred of these stations, a number considerably larger than just our basic analysts and strategists,

At the center of all of that was a large projection of North America, various dots and labels denoting our various targets. This was the heart of the command center, where the core team was standing, all watching the projection.

Of course, there was another layer under all of the incredibly advanced hardware. Hundreds of networked Dumb AIs supported all of these teams, each with specific tasks. Some of them were simple, dumb data crunchers, waiting for requests to spit out whatever information the person asked for. Others were more complex, taking in large amounts of data and interfacing with whatever assets the various teams were working on. Others were simply about communication, running messages between each group so that no one needed to shout across the room or run a message between people. Finally, each of the stations had an interface point, a Dumb AI connecting the massive, complex network to the station itself. 

It was a complicated and heavily interwoven system, and out of the many thousands of Dumb AIs I had made, both individual and networked, it was by far the one I was most worried about showing signs of sentience. It was far from any of the "standard" ways that I knew how to make AI, but the amount of data passing through, and the weight of its own complexity, made me nervous. I had very specifically limited the amount of learning that the entire network could do, but something tickled at the back of my mind that it was still not enough.

Which was why I had the entire network locked in place, connected directly to the command center, so that if the gestalt did become sentient, it wouldn't spiral away into the dangerous type of AI, and instead become a strange, offshoot version of what Samwise and his brothers were. 

If it actually happened, we would cross that bridge when we came to it, if it ever did.

To confirm that the system was working well, we took a day to run it through a test round, a simulation of what we actually planned, running with all of our people in place. We shifted the simulation so that numbers scaled unrealistically, with our forces and the forces of NUSA and Militech being a lot more favorably comparable, providing a significantly higher stress test than we were ever likely to run into. I then motivated everyone to take it seriously and do their best by saying that if it went well, they would all get a bonus. That got things going, and while we saw some casualties and some unhappy civilian deaths, the simulation went a lot better than we could have hoped for.

When the simulated event was over, we used what we learned to patch up the holes where we could find them, before giving everyone their bonuses and a day off to unwind and mentally prepare. 

Now we were back, and everyone was seated in the command center. Jackie, Kaytlyn, Rebecca, Yori, Sable, and I were all standing around the central projector, though most of them were there for support and to be at ground zero for a rather important moment. 

A few minutes passed as we watched the data come in, while Ernest and Mary, both of them very important pieces of this process, ran through final checks and prepared their own resources. This meant they wouldn't be able to multitask and put out the hundreds of fires that popped up daily. This meant they needed to prepare a whole lot of subsystems to work independently, which was only possible thanks to our forward-thinking. Eventually, after some last-minute preparation, the two Smart AIs finally signaled that they were ready. 

I took a long breath, mentally letting the tension fade as best as I could, before tapping the central control panel, several warning lights flicking on, glowing red to signify that a mission was about to start. This was both a warning to people coming in that business was afoot, as well as an alert to people that it was time to get serious. 

Across the room, people returned to their stations, conversations halted, and many tapped into their computers, using a combination of cyberware links and physical keyboards. No one here was a netrunner, but being able to link to a computer for easier control was still a useful ability.

Once everyone was seated and focused forward, I looked around, meeting eyes and gauging everyone. 

"We all know why we are here, but I've found that in moments like these, it's best to start with a little reminder," I said, my hands behind my back. "This is going to be the largest and most widespread military action ever taken at once, in the history of the planet. Together we will be engaging in a total war, taking control over NUSA, Militech, and Free State assets across the entire country and beyond, all in less than five hours."

I looked around again, pausing to look at Sable, who nodded encouragingly.

"It's going to be bloody, and it's not going to be clean," I warned. "But it is our job to get this done, and if we are good, maybe minimize the amount of blood being spilled. You all know your roles, you all know your missions. Your terminals are capable of doing everything you might need, and you already know how to use them. Your priorities are to guide and offer intel to the Spartan teams. Do not micromanage them, as they think faster than anyone here. Their only limitation is creativity and gut instinct, which is why you are here. To be the human element."

Again, I paused, leaning into it for the dramatic effect, while actually reading my notes through my interface. After a glance at the people around me, I continued.

"Your primary focus is destroying and disabling infrastructure and weapon assets, apprehending higher-ups, disabling soldiers, and securing various military bases, bunkers, buildings, and more. You know the specifics you have been charged with, I don't need to repeat them to you," I agreed, nodding to them confidently. "What does bear repeating is the importance of defending civilians and accepting surrenders. The Spartans know this already, but keep it at the forefront of your mind. Finally, Ernest and Mary are both running netrunner support. They are listening, so simply ask, and ye shall receive. Now, speaking of our digital compatriots, I'm going to hand things over to Mary, so that they can give the final countdown." 

Mary's projected form appeared on the center projector, saying a few final warnings, as well as assuring everyone. When she was done, a countdown appeared, rolling down from thirty seconds. It was at that point that the general quiet ended, and people began tapping on their controls, talking to their Dumb AI interfaces, and generally preparing. As the last five seconds rolled down, the room got quiet again.

"The siege of NUSA and the Free States begins… Now!" 

The many displays of the command center shifted immediately, systems that lay dormant before now spinning up dramatically. All over the planet, eighty-five percent of our Disc Stations activated at once, opening slipspace teleportation stations and releasing thousands and thousands of Spartans, hundreds of hover tanks, warthogs, and more. 

With just how superior our tech was, with each unit carrying shields and packing energy weapons and armor far beyond anything NUSA or Militech could field, each of our units was worth dozens of their closest equivalents. That, combined with the element of surprise and the all but perfect intelligence we had accumulated, meant we had done everything we could to weigh the scales down in our favor.

And boy did it show. 

I turned around the central projector, watching some of the missions through the various analysts' screens. All of them showed footage of Spartans appearing inside facilities, buildings, bunkers, anywhere people were hiding, or military assets were stationed. In a good chunk of those places, even thirty seconds in, nobody had spotted the teams. 

Of course, no one had spotted any of the stealth Spartans, who were much fewer but were charged with skirting defenses and accessing problematic things like heavy weapons and more, all inside military bases. 

I watched on one screen as a Spartan carefully used a protomatter wand to melt the tank treads off a conventional tank, completely disabling it inside its open bay. I then watched another Spartan melt a different style of tank with a Spartan laser, before it could finish rotating its primary cannon to target them.

Hundreds of missions were being run at the same time, all over the continent, NUSA, Militech, and through the free states. Some were attacked by a hundred Spartans, backed by tanks and other vehicles and drones, while others were infiltrated with teams of just a handful of soldiers with nothing but the weapons they carried with them.

Unsurprisingly, the volume inside the command center picked up as activity did: people talking to their interfaces, the people beside them, even people across the room through the network to better coordinate.

An entire war was being orchestrated within a single room.

I turned back to the center console, watching the Spartans it was connected to. George and Jessica were orchestrating one of the most important missions happening, specifically the team pushing into the bunker far below the White House, where Myers and her people had been living since we eradicated the world's WMDs.

The first thing the team did, or rather the first thing the pair of stealth Spartans on the team did, as most of the infiltrating team sat silently in two storage closets, was to sneak through the facility and drop a canister of compressed knockout gas into the air filtration system. Mary then used a pre-installed opening in the bunker's controls to pump that gas throughout the entire interior.

Within thirty seconds of activation, one minute fifty seconds after the Spartans first pushed into the building, seventy-five percent of the bunker's population was unconscious. The remaining twenty-five percent, which was unfortunately most of the armed guards and soldiers, either used their own cyberware or gas masks to resist the gas's effects. 

As the entire bunker descended into at least partial chaos, that was when the Spartans burst from their closets. The closets were on either end of the bunker, maximizing the spread of our forces. The moment George and Jessica gave the command, the Spartans started tearing through the bunker, using a mix of fully lethal and less-than-lethal weapons. 

Unsurprisingly, some of the last resistance in the multi-floor, luxury bunker, which was more than large enough to live through a significant conflict, was where Rosalind Myers was, as the soldiers and Secret Service were desperately trying to hold off the Spartans. They actually managed to destroy two of the units, though in reality, the only reason they were having any success at all was that I wanted Rosalind alive, which meant we couldn't just dump a grenade in the room and call it a day, an issue they did not share.

While we had cleared the planet of WMDs, we had been running near-constant scans to make sure we hadn't missed anything dangerous. Unfortunately, I was still concerned that there may be something somewhere, tucked away as a last fuck you to someone doing exactly what I was. After all, just because I couldn't imagine anything didn't mean someone else didn't.

Eventually all of the combatants were neutralized, and my Spartans entered the last room. Inside, beyond the various corpses, were four people, all of them in some state of cowering. Myers was crouched behind a large, solid wood desk, which was pockmarked with dents and chips. Two of the others were older, greying men with no visible cyberware, while the final person in the room was a younger-looking woman with purple hair, with clear cyberware covering just about every inch of her body. She was taking cover under a corpse, having pulled them up and partially onto themselves.

Dark, but smart, considering the circumstances. 

Myers, seeming to realize that the fighting had stopped, slowly stood up from behind the desk, putting her hands on the wooden surface. She opened her mouth to say something, only for one of the Spartans to fire a stun round, basically a combination of a beanbag round and a taser. It knocked her down, and her tumble tore off her gas mask, which meant she was out in seconds from the gas. I turned my head to look up at where George and Jessica were manning their station, to find the former giving the latter an unimpressed look. 

I shook my head before turning to watch through the various feeds as the Spartans started going through everyone, removing masks and treating anyone wounded worth saving, which was a short list. They carefully grabbed Myers and moved her to a meeting room just down the hall. 

"Mary, who are the others with her?" I asked with a frown. 

"A member of Congress, a Militech advisor, and a Netrunner by the name of Songbird, Song So Mi," Mary responded. "All of the data I am getting about her is coming from their own systems. Outside of them, she is a ghost." 

"…Bring her to the meeting room as well, then start flushing the bunker," I responded, sticking more or less to the plan. 

All around us, the shorter, more straightforward missions were already spinning down. Several dozen breach and clear missions, tearing through apartments and hardened "safe" houses that held everything from government officials to Militech personnel. Other missions, assaults on military bases, black sites, and more were still ongoing, and likely would be for a while, since a lot of those locations had hundreds and hundreds of personnel, some of whom would need to be stored, and the others would need to be processed and imprisoned for sentencing or release, depending on what they had done. 

Noah had spent a good chunk of time making cold rooms for the former and prison cells for the latter.

For the next thirty minutes, we watched as a one-sided war was waged across the country, into free states. Border stations were taken, military bases were seized, and several hundred billion dollars worth of military hardware was destroyed, with even more being disabled before it could even be activated. 

In just one wide strike, we were taking the entire county. 

Eventually, both Rosalind Myers and Song So Mi were beginning to wake up, and the presidential bunker had been cleared from top to bottom. Mary let me know of the change, so I made my way to a nearby chair, Sable following to claim the one beside it.

"Alright, time to have a chat," I said, sitting down and reaching out with my interface. "Call me if anything goes wrong."  

After a moment, I opened my eyes in a different body, now in control of a doppelganger, with Sable waking up in the one beside me. We were standing in the worst-for-wear halls of the presidential bunker. There were bullet holes, burned patches, and several damaged areas where someone thought it was a good idea to try high explosives in an enclosed area. 

I was just glad that that idiot hadn't been one of the Secret Service members guarding Myers.

Sable and I entered the meeting room, which was just as much of a mess as the rest of the bunker, though the corpses had been removed and the tables and chairs had been righted and recentered. Myers and Song So Mi were both sitting, and secured to, the chairs along one side of the once impressive table, while Sable and I sat casually on the other side. They were just starting to stir as we sat down, Spartans holding their shoulders on either side. 

Considering just how much of her body was cyberware, I was not surprised to see that Song was the first one to coherently wake up and realize what sort of situation they were in. She locked on to me almost immediately.

"You're Jackson…" she said, her eyes wide for a full ten seconds before she jolted forward. "Please, I request asylum! Myers keeps me locked up, uses me for my netrunning skills like I'm a tool! She forces me to go past the Blackwall, and it's killing me!"

Her words come at a rush, clearly seeing this as an opportunity to get out from under Myers' thumb, or to convince me to treat her differently than just a NUSA agent. It caught me off guard, and as the Spartans pulled her back into her chair, she continued. 

"Every time they force me, I lose a bit of myself. All this chrome is just to keep me alive! There is barely anything left of me at this point," she said bitterly, her restraints rattling as she tried to gesture to herself. "I will tell you everything. I will give you every single secret I hold in exchange for protection and treatment. Myers drags me around like a dog on a leash, I have seen and heard so much. I have so much information I could share." 

"Jackson, now that I'm looking, I recognize her signature," Mary said through my interface. "I've seen her floating around the NUSA and Militech networks, and beyond. Even had to brush her off a few times. She is good, good enough to breach the Blackwall as she claimed."

"And her claims of being an unwilling participant?" 

"The data on her in the network is… clinical, and she doesn't appear to have much freedom," she pointed out. "If she is hanging out in the same room as Myers, she was important… I'll keep looking." 

"It's a low priority, she isn't currently dying, so she will keep until we can confirm her words," I said, before focusing back on the conversation. Rather than responding immediately, I looked at Myers, who by now was awake enough to understand what Song had just claimed.

The woman, who had what I would describe as having a dour demeanor, stayed silent, staring ahead at me with a carefully empty, yet still resilient-looking expression. 

"Fine, I'll have someone come and take a look at you," I said, glancing back at Song, before nodding towards a Spartan, as if I wasn't already connected to Mary. "In the meantime, let's focus on you, Rosalind Myers, and what the rest of your life looks like." 

For just a moment, I could see her facade pale as my implication, legitimate or not, rolled over her. I let it sink in for a moment before laying out the situation.

"As we speak, our army is rolling over NUSA like a cleansing rain," I explained. "Every military base, every bunker, every hidden-away safehouse. Meanwhile, our AI team-"

"You're working with AI?" Myers said with a frown.

"Not anything like the AI you are familiar with," I assured her, waving off her concerns. "These are my own designs, stable and friendly. You've had one watching your every move for the last… week?" 

"Yeah, just about that long," Mary responded, appearing on a screen mounted on the wall, one of the only intact ones left. "It made preparing for today a lot less difficult. Sorry, Jackson, but I'm needed elsewhere."

"Sure thing, Mary, good luck."  

Both Myers and Song's eyes were wide as Mary appeared, only turning back to look at me when she vanished again. It had been a bit of acting, as Mary was multitasking dozens of different ways, and she did not for a moment need to turn away to focus elsewhere, especially not with Ernest helping her. But displaying different levels of capabilities was always a good idea, even in situations like these. The ability to keep people guessing was invaluable at this point.

"You… have a method of making safe AI…" Myers repeated, her cold, clean look shattered under the revelation. "You tamed them… no wonder you are so advanced."

"Actually, our netrunner AIs don't care much for technology development," I revealed with a shrug. "We do have AI working with us to develop new things, but... well, actually, you get to meet one soon, he is interested in your condition." 

I nodded to Song, who was now attached to a medical scanner as a Spartan medic confirmed she was stable. Honestly, there wasn't much to scan, most of her body was chrome and therefore didn't need a medical scanner. What could be scanned was too deep to casually scan with even our own handheld devices. Frank had chimed in just after I agreed to treat her, and at least hear her argument out, and he was already parsing through what little data the scanners were producing.

"I think we may have gotten off topic," I said, leaning forward in my seat, dusting aside some wood splinters from the table. "We are claiming the NUSA, the Free States. It is step one, as I'm sure you probably understand."

"Your forces are impressive, but claiming you could take the country in such a short time is needlessly arrogant," she pointed out, shaking her head. "You may have taken me, but the military will not fall so easily." 

I raised an eyebrow before turning slightly to the same screen Mary had been on a moment ago. This time it was Ernest who popped in to help, though rather than appearing himself, he simply put up the feed of a military base being raided, followed by an off-the-books facility, then an air force base, then a naval yard, which was mostly empty but still needed to be neutralized. The montage played for nearly three minutes, and Myers watched the entire thing in silence, getting progressively more and more pale as she did.

"I don't know what your advisors have been telling you, but if it was that you stood a chance, that anyone stands a chance, they were delusional," I assured her with a chuckle. "The question is no longer if we can take the world, its how much chaos and civilian death we can avoid in the process. Which directly brings us back to why you are still alive." 

"You want me to be a puppet," she said, nodding as if it was clear. "I-"

"Absolutely not," I said, laughing and shaking my head. "The puppet will be Secretary of Labor. He is the first person in the line of presidential succession who is actually worth a damn. He is still a corrupt prick, but he at least moderates himself, and uses his corruption to do some good."

Several flashes of emotion passed through her face, all of them unpleasant. Shock that I was turning her down without even hearing her offer, horror that I had no intention of offering her the kind of amnesty she expected, and several others, all in just a few seconds. There was a fair bit of disgust there as well. 

The secretary of Labor was a man named Avery Vilga, and despite taking a decent amount of bribes and dipping his toe into corruption, he was actually interested in the betterment of the NUSA's labor force. He was under the impression that he was having a good year, too, since he had managed to get a few changes to the nation's health care laws and safety codes, improving them both slightly. Unfortunately for him, this was part of a setup by Myers and a few others, both to pass the buck for a few crimes they wanted pinned on someone else, and to spit on his progress, letting them push for a whole host of negative changes that would destroy any progress he made, then push it even further down. 

With the scandal they had planned for him, they would have been able to crush any remaining rights that the common laborer had in NUSA, which were admittedly pretty few.

She clearly didn't like the idea that she was being passed over by someone intended to be a patsy.

"No, there is only one reason why we bothered to keep you alive. You know where the bodies are buried. Figuratively and literally," I explained, leaning forward in my chair. "We may have complete and utter net superiority, but I'm not nearly arrogant enough to think that solves every problem. I have no doubt that under that overly coiffed hair of yours are all sorts of dangerous secrets with no digital records. That's why you and several dozen of your underlings were captured, not executed."

"And if I refuse?" she asked, trying to recover at least some of her dignity.

"Then I download your brain, strip you of your personhood, and shove you into a handy little tablet that spits out all your secrets," I responded rather cleanly, eyes not turning from hers. "You will give me the answers I want, whether you want to or not.

Her eyes went so wide that part of me wondered if they would fall out of her skull. Song So Mi, who had been sitting silently since I agreed to treat her and hear her out, stared at me with her jaw hanging. Meanwhile, Myers collapsed back into her seat, shaking at the promise.