My patrons have voted (to little surprise) to feed their TLA addiction, so we return once again to The Hungry Stars. When you have two paranoiacs in opposition, one will out-paranoia the other. In this case, that appears to be Echo after a skittering tide of angry little industrial recyclers have attacked New Providence, but the League and Stepmother aren’t down and out yet. Maybe the Triquetran AI will rally and finish consuming Echo, turning her into part of the whole. Or maybe Echo’s gambit will pay off and she’ll be able to escape.
Scallop versus starfish. One is fighting for its life, the other for its dinner. Let’s see who wins, and what will happen to the very vulnerable people around them when that conflict is resolved. Below is an excerpt from the chapter, as a tide of Scarabs tries defeat the defences around Stepmother’s main core… defences that now include some of the League’s Marines.
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Corrupted auto-defences fired with abandon into the facility’s would-be saviours, felling some but those in powered armour and the Riddari themselves walked through the barrage like it was no more harmful than spring rain. Batch Unit 27-270-93.1 calculated that unless something was done, its assault force would suffer crippling losses before it could achieve its objective. The initial strategy had been a multi-pronged assault to overcome pockets of resistance and attack multiple systems at once, degrading and disrupting the local network and city-wide operations until any meaningful defence of the installation crumbled and the Scarab units could gain access to the primary server hub.
That strategy was no longer viable. The multiple prongs of the swarm’s attack were sufficient to overcome in situ defences and personnel, with larger masses called up when heavier resistance was met, but those numbers were insufficient to counter the threat of power-armoured troops and their assisting units. Multiple assault tendrils had already been lost. Adhering to the original plan would see Batch Unit 27-270-93.1’s assault force destroyed piecemeal. A change in strategy was needed.
The small machine was not a combat specialist intelligence, but it had a basic tactical awareness. Calculations were run and thought Batch Unit 27-270-93.1’s processor was not optimized for in-depth tactical simulations, datalinked with its swarm, it had sufficient computational power and it quickly adjusted its methods. All forces were withdrawn to secured levels, giving the League reinforcements free reign in disputed territories. Security doors were sealed behind the retreating swarm, but this would only buy the Scarabs a few minutes as the League overrode or cut through the lockdown.
When they did, they found empty hallways… until the Scarabs flooded out from sealed rooms, air vents and around corners in a massive tide. Three-quarters of the remaining swarm was launched at the League soldiers in a wave that, while it might give the illusion of being limitless, was anything but. All of these units would be destroyed in short order, but their goal was not to overwhelm the defenders. Every moment the League reinforcements spent mired in this diversion was one they did not have to respond to the true attack.
Surrounded by a few hundred remaining children, Batch Unit 27-270-93.1 led them straight at the heart of the enemy facility. They hadn’t had time to disable the defences here and those weapons reaped a heavy toll. Still the machines marched on. Several levels above them, huge swathes of their shared datanet went dark as the League’s soldiers burned and blasted their way through the leaping, rushing tide. Men and women fell to their knees as the joints of their armour and the augmented flesh under it were severed and slashed. Suicide Scarabs latched on to guns and detonated, destroying armaments and severing limbs. Others gnawed through faceplates and visors, aiming cutting lasers or dribbling molecular acid into the faces beneath.
Few screamed. Those that did went silent even before their vocal cords melted as their burnt, dissolving brain tissues were overridden. In their last moments, the eitr took away their pain.
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