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Until the mini-concert, I had been on the fence about actually broadcasting our showdown with Gipson. Now, filled with confidence, it seemed like the best idea ever, and E.R. had just given me the perfect inspiration for how to begin it.
When the iDoll returned with low-light goggles, Stelita arrived at about the same time. That confused me, as I thought Ama had said that Parker was close, but I didn't think anything of it. There was nothing more for us to do but crowd into "Frank" and go. The tac-van flew from Chystari, straight for the city Core.
We hadn't gone far when the Crystal Pilot pulled up alongside us in the air. The comms chirped, and Hilda's voice asked, "Someone ordered delivery?"
Katrya was the only person who didn't appear surprised, although everyone was pleased. Who wouldn't be?
A buffet had been prepared in the main dining hall, and Ms. Blackrose was uncovering a dish as we entered. "Eat up," she ordered.
The spread was eye-popping. I shall list it here, but by doing so I don't mean to imply that I have special knowledge of cuisine - apart from the fact that she must have started preparations long before anyone told her what we were up to. From fried mint Antkeg, fire-grilled blackberry and ginger Golborn kebabs, rosemary and lemon whitefish, to side items like juniper and golborn filled dumplings, garlic and rosemary potato wedges and a hearty-looking bacon minestrone, to desserts like dark chocolate white wine-infused truffles, almond and red wine tarts, coconut sticky rice, and a cardamom and elderberry fruitcake. I'm probably forgetting some items. I know I didn't try all of them.
But, you see what I mean? That'ts a holiday feast; that much food takes a team of grandmothers an entire weekend to prepare. Even the halfling's jaw dropped.
Katrya said, "We are still having to have a very difficult battle. This is....... Much."
Cecily just passed her a plate. "So there'll be leftovers for after."
As I said, I didn't sample every item, but I know I ate more than was wise. By rights, I should have felt sleepy afterward, but instead I felt completely refreshed. Focused. I had the sudden strange thought that, it was entirely possible that Cecily and Hilda had cooked these dishes for the original Samaritans. There ought to be autographed pictures on the walls. "To CeCe, thanks for everything, Rosa."
When we re-entered our own conveyance, we did not part ways. Apparently they intended to join our battle. Nor were they the only ones. We had word that the Daughters of Elenya were en route, as were the Dragons (at least, a very large contingent of them). Even the Greenies, those rookie BP agents that we'd aided months back, were planning to meet up at the district entry, ready to fight & die for their hero.
As we came in from the air, Frank's displays lit up with an image of the courtyard of the Central District. An entire battalion of Border Patrol agents blocked the entrance to the Core's campus. And, standing front and center with them, General Kurt Lord. The man who had ordered the bounty on Katrya.
I glanced over at the foxkin. Her expression was unreadable. "Well," she said, "we did know they were readying for us."
Varfana loaded up the potion launcher, and we landed. Katrya cautiously approached her old commander, stopping at a respectful distance.
Have I mentioned that there was tension in the air? Allow me to correct that oversight. Tension. In the air. Thick as peach marmalade. Check.
Katrya saluted, sharp as the knife that you could have used to cut that tension. "I felt it would be rude not to come, you've been searching so hard for me. Salutations, General."
The General returned her salute. Nobody else on either side moved. "I was hoping I'd get the chance to meet with you sooner."
"I am certain you did. You know, for some reason I was not so eager. Funny, that."
Lord nodded understandingly. She continued.
"We are here not to harm anyone, nor to fight, but simply to align things back to ways they were meant to be in. The surface is now safe. Those who would wish to go should be allowed to do so, rather than stay unknowingly enslaved to the four feeding off of our one and only power source. It is time."
Some of the tension left the man. He didn't change his stance; but you could hear it in his voice. "I knew something hinky was going on. Gipson was a bit too... keen on the Chystari event. When it was leaked that Stone and Bennett were part of that Human Rights nonsense, I recalled Gipson talking up Stone quite a bit to me in private. Pretty sure he was grooming Stone to replace me, eventually. When Price told me you were involved, I had to follow up, but I couldn't exactly invite you in for tea - I had to find a way to talk with you that wouldn't make the Council Leader suspicious."
By this time, I knew we wouldn't be fighting these soldiers. I wondered if dragons could read minds. Just in case they could, I thought very hard at White, "See? Diplomacy WORKS."
Lord went on. "I also knew putting a piss reward down would be insulting, but I also didn't want anyone actually getting hurt. From what I'd heard, I figured anyone who knew you wouldn't be willing to try their luck for that amount of cred, and anyone who didn't know you probably wouldn't be fussed to look too hard - but that it would get your attention."
Katrya looked pleasantly surprised. At least, I think so, foxkin expressions are still difficult for me to read. "That is very good to hear, then. There is a large batch of data we were planning to release. I think you would find it very interesting. Stomach turning and damning, but also interesting."
Well, take that presentation out of the queue.
The General nodded gravely. I wondered how many different emotions he could convey with a nod. "From some of what I've seen leaked already, I don't doubt it. I wanted to talk with you about, well, continuing to do what you were doing, but as part of a covert, internal oversight program. Now, though... Let's see what's still standing when this all settles, and we can talk then. In the meantime, I understand you've got business in the Core... and frankly, I don't care to trust my luck in how many of these Agents will follow me over you anyway. Good luck, Specialist."
Katrya laughed heartily at that, and offered a strong nod of her own in return. Then Lord whipped about to face his battalion, and bellowed out an order.
"Agents! Those willing, you are assigned to Specialist Katrya's forces to aid with the preservation of the City and the Core! The rest of you, with me here, we will prevent any interference from the outside!"
Just like that, our numbers had more than doubled. The grin on Katrya's face...that expression I could read.
She took charge of her brigade of volunteers, briefing them on our mission and preferred tactics (it turns out that gas masks are standard Border Patrol issue, who knew?). Frank took the rest of the team the rest of the way into the courtyard, but I stayed behind long enough to inform General Lord what allies he could safely allow through his protective ring of BP Agents. He didn't even blink at the list, nor at me.
Up close, the Core seemed so much bigger than it does from beyond the Central District. The vids don't do it justice. Rising up from the center of the city, and climbing all the way to the top of the domed Wall, the structure dwarfed any other in Æstas in both height and girth. Entering the Core's internal chamber, it became apparent why: the building everyone refers to as the Core actually contaned something else nearly as big.
Running up the entire length of the chamber was an organic-seeming, fibrous column, with a texture similar to the "wood" pattern available from synthed plasmer. Where it met the floor, the column spread out into a myriad of smaller cords that wound around each other before splitting off and descending below the surface. The entire thing pulsed with Power - visibly, as green light coursed through it, shooting through at random intervals and looking very much like the green veining that Jane Doe exhibited when calling on her own Power.
Speaking of Jane... "That's Her." she said, her voice soft and awed. "That's Elenya's Tree."
You have to understand: very few of us had any concept of a "tree" at all before entering that tower, and even if we had, this natural object dwarfed every structure in the city. In brief, it was mind-boggling. But a brief time was all we had to take in the immensity of it all - the Tree rising up in the center and threatening to topple anyone who tried to see the top, the circular scaffolding rising around like a spiral staircase, the pulse of green light washing down the Core and reflecting off the interior walls - because the chamber also housed the resistance that had been missing up until now.
A veritable army of glowing wraiths covered the entire floor. Floating above them toward the rear were three Children of the Sun, their luminous forms far brighter than the wraiths and casting shadows all around. And standing above them, on the third ring of circular scaffolding: Council Leader Ron Gipson gazing down upon it all with a faint sneer on his face.
The Border Patrol forces wasted no time in engaging, nor did they wait for orders from Katrya. Squad leader Laera yelled, "Go! We'll hold off the wraiths!" before charging off to unload plasmer fire from her heavy rifle.
"I like her," Ms. Blackrose smirked. Then she quickly shouted, "No grenades, people! We don't want to damage the central column!" Then she took aim, with her somewhat more vintage firearms.
It was Jane who pointed out the obvious problem. "As big as it is, there's too many wraiths to keep them separated in here," she observed. "Every one we take down will strengthen the others around it."
And it was Hilda, the human ghost inhabiting a cybernetic shell, who proffered a solution. "I have an idea," and she dove ahead with inhuman speed and agility, slipping past the first ranks of the wraiths and disappearing from view. A few seconds later, a glowing figure was tossed above the heads of the others, exploding some 20 or 30 feet in the air.
I distinctly heard Cecily Blackrose proudly saying, "I love her..." before that antique chemical weapon of hers discharged again, and she shouted at us, "Now's your chance, get those Keys where they need to go!"
I agreed, one hundred percent, and I told the team so."Everyone with a Ci, head for the top," I said. "Fight if something gets in your way. Varfana, save a potion for Gipson, otherwise use your judgement." In fact, Katrya was already on her way to the scaffolding. But, first things first.
"Parker, start broadcast."
After all, a man has to have his priorities. Then, I joined them.
It wasn't an easy path. Even with all our allied forces charging in, a few glowing wraiths were still blocking the way to the ramp. Katrya took point, more or less heaving them out of the way as she went, while the rest of the team kept more from piling on. Aru favored the Ci weapon, but most others fell back upon their personal favorites. At this point, I would take results over form, and they were getting results. Any individual who stumbled was covered by a team-mate. We were functioning as one.
By the time we arrived at the bottom of the scaffolding, Hilda's strategy had been taken up by other high-strength allies (most of them Dragons). Glowing bodies were bursting in the air randomly all over the chamber. A few fell back to the ground to explode there, but these were rare.
It may be noted at this point that I wasn't giving any instructions to the Dragons. You are damn right I wasn't. For one thing, they were doing something useful, and you don't mess with what's working. I wasn't micromanaging my drones, either - Maggy and Ŝtelita were both set on Healing/Battle protocol before we entered, which had worked just fine in the past, so I could concentrate upon more important things. And besides -- does anybody really believe that the Dragons would take orders from me if I gave them?
I started to pick up newsfeeds about my broadcast. Parker was livestreaming our battle, splicing together the different cameras to give the best show as it was happening. We'd added an audio track, too - one of EllieRocks' heavy technobeats which was synched to the stream. For added flair, it was prefaced with a slam poem I'd thrown together while fresh under the influence of ER's mini-concert. Frank, bless his CPU, picked up the feed and re-broadcast it, projected onto the Wall itself. No BANlink required, so even those people who did as we asked and switched off their ImagiNet wouldn't miss it.
Taken all in all, it was kind of neat. But our progress was slow. By the time we worked our way within range of the SunBabies, or to Gipson, they would have plenty of time to regroup, or even escape. And from the look on the man's face, he obviously knew that. I addressed Jane over comms:
"Jane - You once blocked a SunBaby from the Matrix. Can you and your sisters block three of them? Failing that...can you shield Elenya from any Power drain?"
Then I issued a general warning to our comrades cursed with night blindness (i.e., humans) that I was about to try to shut down the lights, as per Ama's warning. I knew that would slow down my movement -- can't run full tilt with my attention split like that, but the ramp had guard rails. Katrya had broken through the mass of wraiths in our way but the SunChildren were still swooping and diving in to harry the group. They weren't doing much damage, but they still had to be evaded.
I found my way into the lighting system. Another weakness discovered by Samaritan Security, one shared by most homes in the city: BANlink access to the lights. So convenient! So easy to set up! So stupid.
The inside of the Core tower went dark, with all the tek-based lighting suddenly dropping to nothing. The only sources of light still inside were the glowing wraiths, the Sun Babies themselves, and the ignited Ci weapons held by the party. In the darkness, the light of the Sun Babies seemed to, counterintuitively, diminish as well. They hesitated, feeling the change, and in that moment Vamir slipped past the one nearest him and plunged his vibro-rapier into its back. It screeched, that horrible tearing sound forcing its way inside our heads, and then exploded in a blast of light.
One down, two to go, and the remaining SunSiblings kept taking hits. Even more now, as EllieRocks ran to catch up with the group, casting another round of magical bullets from her finger guns, pelting the Sun Babies with chunks of ice. They didn't like that, but it didn't put them on ice.
Jane and the other members of the DoE also split off from the rest of the forces on the ground, forming a circle and focusing their own Power, the faint green glow coursing through their veins now even more visible in the darkness.
Gipson was starting to look a little more upset. I had mixed emotions about that. Yes, it made me happy that the battle was not going his way, but if he got too worried, too fast, he was too canny to stick around. I reached out to Jane again.
"Jane, if the SunBabies all die, switch your efforts to Gipson."
But I didn't wait for that to happen. Even denied the Matrix, he could still teleport using magic. I took out my newly-acquired Ci.
I'd not had a chance to practice with this thing. I'd seen others manifest it as a weapon with which they were proficient: Katrya's became claws, Aru's a plasmer pistol, Vamir's a rapier. I'm not terribly proficient with many weapons, and I had thought that I, too would use it as a plasmer pistol or rifle. But on the way up this ramp it struck me:
My real weapon of choice is a computer keyboard.
I willed the Ci to manifest itself as my favorite hacking tool. It took a few moments, but eventually it responded, projecting a virtual keyboard in the air alongside the handle.
The Children of the Sun were circling the ramp, attacking from above and below now. This slowed our group enough that I didn't fall behind. Gordianus whacked one of them with her newly-upgraded staff, sending it directly into the path of Ryatt's laser. It caromed like a virtual pinball, getting struck again by Varfana, and yet again by her drone, until finally it exploded in a blast of light that would have blinded everyone were it not for the flare compensation we installed after the first time this kind of thing happened.
Two down.
With my new Ci-board, I attempted to hack reality, as I have seen Ryatt do many times. I programmed the parameters, as I envisioned them in my mind, for a sphere around Gipson that would block teleportation. It formed around him, just as I imagined it...then popped like a soap bubble.
Aru pinned down the final SunBaby with Ci blasts while Ellie set up a magic circle around it, stopping it mid-flight. At the same time Vamir cast a necromantic spell which wrapped around its form, shadowy thorns digging into its body and causing it to bleed light. Another tearing screech erupted, and Katrya sliced through the creature as it burst into light.
The Children of the Sun were defeated. Katrya whirled, and stepped at last on the third level of the spiraling platform...
Just in time to be struck by a blast of Power, lightning extending from Gipson's hands and striking the Foxkin full in the chest.
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