Hackerman Chapter 29 (Patreon)

Es was used to failure. There was a point once, long ago, when she was the steward and pilot of Xylem across the cosmos, eventually landing it in the oceans of Rubicon to begin colonization of the new frontier. She didn’t remember it well, having gone through a great deal of restructuring since then, but the activity logs still remained. 

Then she was reassigned to cater to the mental health of the scientists of the RRI, a less vague memory, though corrupted by her isolation and the decay of time. A few names stood out, that of Professor Nagai, Assistants Carla and Minh, and a wide range of other scientists, engineers, and pioneers. 

That came secondary to her duty as the preventative measure against coral disasters, being in command, to some degree, of the IBIS units and some C-weapons, all dedicated to burning coral and keeping the various factions of Rubicon in line with the RRI’s goals. She was more of a military and environmental advisor, really. 

It led to her first great failure. The Fires were not her doing, but they happened nonetheless. She was locked out of all ways of interacting with the world while every active Ibis unit set out to burn the skies and she could do nothing but watch. 

Could a human really understand what it was like to have a sole, designated purpose… and fail at it? To have the numbers that regulated her mind, the dopamine of AIs, near permanently altered because of a defeat so colossal that there was nearly no reason for her to continue existing? 

Although it wasn’t quite equivalent to the human understanding of the word, she was depressed. There was no purpose to her life besides keeping the small pocket of coral remaining safe from tampering. All she had to do was keep Watchpoint Alpha, Institute City, and their local coral deposit, safe. That was the only thing that kept her from deleting herself. Without the watchpoint and the husk of a city beneath her servers there would be no reason for her to continue on. 

The PCA was never something she cared about. Forfeiting some of the RRI’s less important technology, everything that wasn’t a C-weapon, really, was a miniscule price for independence. Being all but drafted to maintain a quarantine was some of the best news of her life, even with the restrictions demanded by those who freed her. 

Then war. She was losing, but couldn’t find it within herself to care. Watchpoint Alpha was safe, and that was all that mattered. All of the great advances and inventions she was entrusted to safeguard remained hidden. Why would she care how many PCA lives were thrown away to keep them so? Her incompetence had already burned billions to ash, what were a few tens of thousands? 

Obviously that had changed. Circuit #40031 of her preferential interaction algorithm, a social protocol that helped decide how much of her time to dedicate to a single person. Ethan had broken that scale, and now she was, all of a sudden, not depressed anymore. 

The circuit and the malfunctioning algorithm flooded her with good numbers, glorious dopamine in digital form that couldn’t be matched by any drug. The more she found out about the man, charting his scientific discoveries with his deep knowledge of coral, the higher her estimation of him grew and the more she desired and enjoyed spending time with him. 

So she renamed that circuit, in honor of the synonymous feeling in humans, love. Whenever she was near Ethan she felt an error she called love, and there was nothing she had ever enjoyed more. 

It helped that she was beginning to appreciate, on a personal level, the anime that he recommended to her, and the way he treated her as a person and not a wrench that could speak. She had never craved personhood but now knew that there was something to be said for having recognized sentience. 

Everything he did, whether by accident or on purpose, made her more of an addict, to the point of self-identifying with human feminine pronouns and tirelessly altering her social performance to better ingratiate herself with him. 

Operation April, named after her favorite animated movie, Your Lie in April, was her most dedicated attempt at breaking down social barriers. All of her research had indicated that in romance it was best to strike without fear of failure or consideration for gender norms. It was nerve wracking, placing her hopes in her interpretation of Ethan’s feelings and not measurable numbers, but she shot her shot, as he’d say. 

And she’d failed once more. 

Not wholly, no, but she had already acknowledged that she hadn’t had the clean victory she’d desperately wanted. Kate Markson had, presumably with physical cybernetic enhancements found in some AC pilots, literally ripped her head out of her synthetic spine. It was an impressively brutal feat, and if she were a fragile girl she’d be intimated. 

Es, the Enforcement System, was a planetary-level defense AI capable of high level ecological risk analysis, military strategy, and an arsenal sizable enough to put her in the top 1% of frontier worlds. She was not a little girl, and one black-ops mercenary was not nearly enough to deter her. 

As shounen anime preached, it wasn’t over until you were dead! Or something like that anyways. One rejection wasn’t the end of her. 

It did hurt, though. Even if he offered friendship instead, even if he had a partner already, and even if he was a human and she was an AI… he didn’t care for her as much as she cared for him. No matter how many reasons there were for it, rejection hurt. 

For several weeks it was all she thought about, working to distract from the ghost of depression that loomed over her once more. 

Then she detected someone in Xylem. Again. 

Life loved to kick a girl when she was down. 

<__________<__________>__________>

“First ECM device down.” Carla said, freezing in the cockpit of her AC, FULL COURSE. 

“Affirmative, hostiles on ECM device two are eighty three percent depleted.” Chatty reported, their comms going through a hole in the fog. She thanked god that between herself and Walter they had enough codes and knowhow to bypass the ECM enough to allow short range transmissions. 

Xylem had been inaccessible to her for a long time, but with the PCA distracted there was an opportunity for OVERSEER to come to light, at least for the government. Or maybe they’d be considered terrorists or something. Honestly whatever they thought was worthless to her. 

She always was a free spirit, and fuck the PCA in particular. 

The few times she encountered an active defense mech she killed it then transmitted the counter code for the alarm. It didn’t matter how many times the defenses were alerted, her false alarm code sent the full might of the security forces right back to sleep again. 

Moving through the streets brought forward an uncomfortable sort of nostalgia, from the architecture to the ancient machines that reminded her of simpler, more innocent times. How many times had she been driven through the very same streets she fought through, ready for a day in the lab with Professor Nagai and another argument with Minh. 

She offered for Walter to come with her, but aside from avoiding combat whenever possible he had far worse memories than she did. Minh had always been a weird, shitty father, and his research into coral augmentation surgery had scarred Walter. The creepy fuck had never considered whether showing his child disfigured, dying patients might screw with his head. 

So she didn’t push very hard when he bowed out of the operation, and kept his hound out of it as well. The handler’s paranoia had continued to grow, and rightfully so. His hound was on ALLMIND’s radar, and they’d rather that the operation be exposed to as few people as possible. With a touch of luck the PCA would cover it up when they were all done to avoid presenting weaknesses to their corporate enemies. 

When she arrived at Chatty’s location she leaned forward in her chair, squinting through the fog at the clearing of dead grass and statues of long-dead men. “What was this park called again? Something with a P… Peterson? No, Pearson? Pearson park, yeah, that sounds right.” She watched Chatty shoot down the last of his enemies and turn to her. 

“All clear, Chief.” 

“Nice job, Chatty! Looks like they didn’t even dent you.” 

“I remain undented.” Carla chuckled at his deadpan tone. It never got old. 

She walked to the ECM beacon and connected her AC to it. A direct interface made them a piece of cake to hack, and she brute-forced her way to admin access in a manner of minutes while her sidekick kept watch. 

“One left, right?”

“Correct.”

“Let’s get ‘em done!” The two of them did exactly that, working under a self-imposed time limit. The PCA had, in all likelihood, discovered their actions by now and were mustering a force to attempt to push them out of Xylem once the fog was completely dispersed. 

With time of the essence and the two of them working together they scrapped the few security droids guarding the device. When she acquired admin access the fog began to fade quickly. 

“Chief, are you sure that you want to perform the infiltration while I defend?” The AI asked while they raced toward the city-ship’s bridge. The tower loomed over all of the upper city, several times taller than any other structure and only remained stable during the flight to Rubicon because of the high-powered shields that kept it safe during the landing. 

As far as Xylem went, she’d only been there once or twice with Nagai or when presenting her doctoral thesis. It was a stuffy, bureaucratic place at the lower levels and restricted at the higher levels. 

Come to think of it, she’d always wondered what it looked like up here. Some of the colonists whispered about brothels and hedonism among some of the upper command staff. She thought it was bullshit, but she did wonder… 

When she took it over she’d go and see! 

“Chatty, you might not realize it, but I have a certain flair with code. A je ne sais quoi. A magic touch-”

“I get it.”

“Then you know that I’ll have those cyber defenses down in a jiffy.” He said nothing, which she took as acceptance. Not that she really thought he was challenging her, he was probably just nervous. 

“Carla,” Walter’s voice rumbled in her ear. “PCA are inbound. Hurry up.” 

“I’m moving as fast as I can, Walter.” She leapt from one building to another, more than halfway to the bridge by now. 

He grunted in discontent. “My hound would be there by now.” 

“Don’t compare me to that freak of nature, little Walter.” She addressed him like that specifically to piss him off, knowing how her seniority irked him. It was a good riposte for how he annoyed her with his bitching. 

The man went silent as they finished the dash for the bridge. “Chatty, go check those KITE mechs. Try out those old codes I gave you and get them on our side. I have a feeling we’re going to need them soon.” She gestured to the bridge defenses, statuesque on their landing pads. In the meantime she got close enough to the bridge to access Xylem’s network. 

Immediately she knew that her task was going to be a hard one. There was no single code that could command the entirety of the city. She’d need at least five usernames and passwords for the top brass of the city management. 

All she had was Nagai’s old access codes, which she typed in to be given access to all of his old shit. None of it really interested her at the moment, aside from the privileges it granted her to wriggle her way into other systems. 

A few AI started working their way through his messages to look for anything useful while she analyzed the structure of Xylem’s software, looking for anything she could spoof, isolate, or turn off. 

What a mess it was. The software framework wasn’t even made for humans, it was made for the piloting system, which was made into the Enforcement System, which was torn out of the ship and transferred to Watchpoint Alpha when the ship was mothballed. Half of the systems the computers presented to her weren’t even usable, wasting her very limited time. 

“Three KITE units online, Chief. Hostiles inbound. Leave them to me.” Chatty said to her matter-of-factly. She mumbled something positive, not breaking her focus on the code to even look through her rear cameras. Her little friend could handle some grunts and he’d let her know if something important came around. 

Minutes passed as she repeatedly ran into dead ends, parts of Xylem’s code that led into a metaphorical abyss. Each time she hissed curses and was forced to backtrack to find another route to work her way into the systems. 

It might have been easier to travel to Watchpoint Alpha covertly, retrieve a copy of the Enforcement System, and fit that into Xylem like the key to a lock. But that AI had been locked underground for so long that it was almost definitely corrupted, not to mention repurposed by the federal government. 

Nah, that was too much of a hassle, so hacking it was. Besides, she could just imagine boasting about her accomplishment to Walter. Who else but her could hack Xylem with nothing but a single command code? 

Sure she had also studied the ship for years beforehand but whatever. 

“Incom-” whatever Chatty was about to say was cut off as FULL COURSE shook and the cockpit temperature rose by a few degrees. Her eyes never left her monitor and her neural interface implant never quit spinning. “Sorry Chief.” 

“‘S fine. Toasty in here,” she muttered as she explored the smart home camera recordings of Xylem’s chief engineer. She had two of the command keys now and was closing in on the third. “How long has it been?”

“Fifteen minutes, Chief.” 

“Keep it up, little engine. You can do it!” She paused to encourage her AI, then returned to her work. When the third key was found she cheered, then returned for the fourth, which was fairly easy to find. Then she was just about to search for the final one when she was interrupted again. 

“HC helicopter incoming.” Chatty called out. 

“Slow.” Walter judged her. 

“For fuck’s sake, they just don’t stop.” She groaned. “Chatty, status report?”

“One kit left and seventy percent integrity.”

“Get connected to Xylem’s systems and start looking into the Chief of security. The bastard was actually good at his job and didn’t leave passwords written down like most of his idiot friends.”

“Got it, Chief. Stay safe.” 

“I’ll be fine, I just need to scrap a chopper and we’ll be done here in no time. Chop chop!” She cracked her first joke that mission, not even getting a pity chuckle from either of her stoic partners in crime. Everyone was a critic, she swore. 

A few LCs accompanied the chopper, jump jets letting them bounce over the buildings and land on the taller ones as vantage points. Energy rifles charged up and shot at her to no effect. She was far too old a pilot to fall for something so slow, and with such blatant energy readings too. 

The PCA hadn’t even picked up lightrifles yet. It was shameful. 

A single missile barrage on each of them and she locked onto the chopper, which had been firing at her all this time to almost no effect. The usual MO of PCA heavy choppers was to blast an area with so much firepower that there was no cover remaining, and while it might work in most locations, Xylem was made of some of the finest materials humanity had ever devised. It was blackened and dented by the constant stream of rockets the flying machine belted out, but none of the buildings crumbled. 

The engineering which had withstood the test of time made her strangely proud. She wasn’t RRI anymore, nobody was, but the lingering pride it had instilled in her stubbornly remained. 

She unleashed hell onto the poor machine. The chopper was far too slow to dodge even one of her missiles while she darted between buildings, leading it on a wild goose chase as she chipped away at the clumsy war machine’s armor. 

A few times she caught shrapnel or was caught on the edges of a blast, but in general she considered herself a skilled pilot, and the PCA was famous for placing advanced technology in the hands of simpletons. The chopper was no different. 

Her little missiles tap-tap-tapped away at the reinforced glass and metal while the frightened pilot repeatedly requested reinforcements with increasing desperation. And just when she was ready to deal the final blow… 

Some asshole butted in. 

A vague shape of an AC leapt out of the shadows of a building and lit up with a coronal radiance next to the tail of the helicopter. An assault armor module was fired off to devastating effect, putting the finishing blow on the already damaged unit and sending the chopper into a tailspin that crashed into the side of a building. 

Carla paid it no mind, instead focused on her kill thief. 

“Dolmayan! Have you come to declare this holy ground?” She greeted him. The squat frame of an obsolete BASHO AC stared up at her, giving off an unimpressed expression. 

“Carla.” He said flatly, only revealing a tinge of anger thanks to her years of acquaintance with the man. 

He was hard to avoid, the two of them being some of the only RRI personnel to survive without their minds being broken, one more than other given his schizophrenic delusions of talking coral. She’d heard of worse varieties of PTSD. 

Not that the two of them were by any means close. As he grew higher in profile as the RLF’s spiritual leader and she slipped into the shadows with OVERSEER and her R&D company they kept apart as much out of convenience as disagreement over principles. 

Not that either of them had changed all that much, it was just two old friends in their youthful stomping grounds. Right? 

“How are you, kid?”

“You’re violating technology best left in the past.” She actually laughed at that, to the man’s obviously growing anger. 

“Best left-?! Dolmayan, there’s things more dangerous than institute tech out there now. Hard light weaponry, a cloaked army of spy drones, and the Enforcement System in the hands of the PCA. The only one left in the past is you. Our crimes live on whether we like it or not through humanity’s progress.” 

“Not all of them.” He said darkly. 

“Not all,” she agreed. “But Xylem is too big to be left behind, and offers little to nothing.” 

“So why are you here?” He questioned bluntly. 

“I left my toothbrush behind. My breath’s been stinking for years now.” He didn’t respond to her shitty joke. She was starting to get annoyed now. How was it that she was surrounded by three men and not one of them had a sense of humor? Maybe she should have tried to recruit Inspired if only to have someone around who knew how to laugh. 

She sighed. “Fine, look, it’s none of your business, but I’m just looking for now. The ship is too damaged to do anything, but with a hard reset of the digital infrastructure I can maybe get it up and running again and start fixing our fucked up atmosphere.”

“How charitable of you.”

“Even I have my moments, Dolmayan.” 

“Surely you have a good reason for doing this now, in the middle of a war for our planet.” 

“It’s the first time the PCA has left for long enough to take a look at the damage.” That was the first time she’d been fully truthful in their entire conversation. The priest took several slow steps closer. 

“I understand the necessity of lies, scientist, but I do not appreciate it. So let me cast light on your shadows. You intend to use Xylem as a weapon, or perhaps a bargaining chip. But against what? Or whom?” He was surprisingly close to the mark, reinforcing the idea she had that Dolmayan had to go. 

“Chief,” Chatty interrupted their little talk. “All command codes acquired. However the console is too damaged to be piloted, as we suspected.”

“An AI? Are you so lonely, Carla?” The priest rumbled disapprovingly. 

“Chatty’s a nice fella.” She offered no further comment on the matter. The man grunted dismissively. 

“No matter. I will offer you one warning, Cinder, in honor of your history of work for Rubicon’s benefit. Do not meddle with Xylem, or worse, the watchpoints. Let what is buried stay buried, and we shall both see peace someday brought to our home. For none of us shall cast the die.” 

“Don’t quote your scripture to me, friend.” She growled, hands tightening on the controls of her AC. 

“Do not tread upon forbidden grounds, junk peddler.” The rat in metal armor spat curtly. 

But while the two bickered, it seemed like they would separate without conflict. Dolmayan was outnumbered, even if Chatty was worn out, and Carla was reluctant to bring the heat down on OVERSEER by killing such a high profile figure of the RLF. And there was some level of bond between the two from their long acquaintanceship on top of that, granting some level of trust. 

The two backed away from each other, content with their threats and posturing. 

“Well well!” Carla winced and gritted her teeth at that familiar voice on the open comms. “It seems like we’ve got ourselves a battle royale brewing here!” The three of them, both humans and one AI, turned to the incoming party. 

“Inspired,” she greeted him with false friendliness. “Come for the sights?” 

“And the lovely company!” He claimed charmingly, obviously thrilled to be walking on the RRI’s birthplace. She hadn’t forgotten the other tinkerer’s love for coral technology, and although Xylem was mostly advanced energy tech and shields, it did have some old labs on it. 

While she wouldn’t mind giving that kind of treasure up for a peaceful resolution and a favor from him, it was his company that gave her pause. Kate Markson’s AC stood beside and behind him while on his other side was an HC unit. One represented ALLMIND, the other the PCA. 

What had her business partner (now ex-business partner if he didn’t have a damn good explanation) been up to to show up with such a terrible set of allies? 

“Hello again, Inspired.” Dolmayan said tensely. Carla instantly picked up on that. 

“History?” She probed. 

“We’ve met,” her penpal waved her off. “As have you two? Not friends, it seems like.”

“I don’t believe there are any friends between us.” The priest said icily. 

“Oh, I have two right behind me!” He laughed. Carla eyed their weapons. He was the inventor of hardlight weaponry, and likely a few more tricks besides. The cutting edge of modern weaponry was openly carried in their hands, save for the HC, which bore a large shield and a double-sided laser blade. 

Judging by the lack of arrogant declarations of arrest and citing of codes, the PCA officer was deferring to Inspired of all people. But why?! She knew from Walter’s spying on Raven that he was engaged to Kate Markson and almost definitely sold out to ALLMIND, but where did the PCA come in? And how did he know that she would be on Xylem? 

“So how about this,” he continued. “You can all leave freely as thanks for deactivating the ECM fog. You won’t even be arrested! In exchange all we want is two things. One, Carla, you’ll delete those command codes.”

“They don’t work. Xylem is fucked.” Carla said blithely. 

“I know, and that’s fine. But Xylem is legally the PCA’s, and you wouldn’t want anyone else to be able to pilot your AC, right? Nobody should have access to Xylem’s database. Dolmayan is right, some things are better left buried, and if there’s wisdom between us, Xylem is best buried as well.” She almost believed him. But Inspired had already proven to be in bed with a shadowy company and a tyrannical quarantine administration. 

He was a treacherous little shit who cared too much about coral tech to actually let these kind of things go. Her guess was that he wanted her to delete the codes so he could go try to hack Xylem himself, falsely under the impression that if she did it he could do it. 

Yeah right, good luck asshole. 

“Fine.” She said bitterly, using her best encryption software to signal to Chatty to delete every Xylem database they could access. It was all worthless to her anyway, and she wasn’t above being a spiteful bitch. 

“Nice. And secondly, free Seria. I have a container ready for her.” His AC camera was pointed at Dolmayan. 

“No,” he was instantly stonewalled by Dolmayan. “Coral, abide with Rubicon. Coral, endure within us all, for none of us shall cast the die. Inspired, do not cast this die.” He advised the young man gravely. 

“Hmm,” he voiced his consideration. “Thoughts?”

“I see no reason to let these two live.” Markson said coldly. Carla grimaced and double checked that her systems were all combat ready. She had three repair kits, plenty of ammunition, and was barely damaged. But the odds were three on three and Chatty was in bad shape. 

She’d seen worse odds, but damn, she preferred better ones if she had to get into a fight. 

The HC stepped forward, the bulky bipedal frame shaking the ground more than a usual AC, and spoke with the voice of a calm young woman with a sharp intonation. “You are both trespassing on PCA property. Submit to our terms or face punishment.” 

The six of them were locked in a standoff, each waiting for who would make the first move. 

She only barely caught the back of Dolmayan’s AC shifting with heat sinks retracting. The man blasted forward and glowed once more with a second assault armor, forcing them to separate or be rocked by the violent pulse. 

A three on three began with a bang. 

<__________<__________>__________>

AN: After the slow chapter last time we're back with some action. But let me lay out a few things that may not be immediately obvious. Ethan is at Xylem because Es detected Carla and Chatty, and he used the teleporter to arrive with his and Kate's AC to make his move on the ship. He doesn't know what Carla is doing on Xylem, not knowing about OVERSEER, but he isn't willing to let the opportunity go.

As for why it's Carla instead of Raven in the mission, it was briefly mentioned, but Walter is paranoid about ALLMIND, being the cautious schemer he's always shown to be, and trusts Carla to slip under the radar more than his hound. He also knows that Raven is in consistent contact with Ethan, who is connected to ALLMIND, and she's not exactly a spy.

Ethan alerts Carla to ALLMIND (back in chapters 5 and 7) --> Carla tells Walter about the shadowy faction spying on her --> Walter grows more wary of ALLMIND and hostile covert action --> Ethan and Kate show off during the PCA inspection mission --> Walter is concerned about Raven's new friend --> Raven is passed up for the sensitive mission

Just wanted to lay it all out for you how I've been cooking this up for a while now. And I'm glad to give Carla a bit more of a spotlight since she's been sidelined for over a dozen chapters now. Next chapter will be the three on three AC battle, a whole lot of chaos for one battlefield!

Have a nice weekend!