Mithridates couldn’t stop laughing when twelve-year-old lookin’ Leona
reached out to him from the Suadona to prove that she had gone through with
her promise. She just sat there with her emotionless face, waiting patiently
for him to get ahold of himself. Finally, he was able to stop and apologize,
explaining that it was just so funny, this little girl being so serious and
jaded. He then reiterated his own promise to become an agent of peace in
this reality. He was the fifth Preston she had met. One stayed an
antagonist, though became a little more understated than he was in the
beginning. The next ended up one of their greatest friends. The third’s true
motivations were never clear, and if Leona was a therapist, she might have
diagnosed her with bipolar disorder. The fourth was a much more obvious
villain, who literally no one mourned after he was murdered twice.
Mithri appeared to be a villain from the beginning, but other than this body
changing bargain, they didn’t really have any proof of anything he had ever
done. His lonely planet was where some kind of automated transporter sent
them once they entered the galaxy, but that didn’t necessarily mean that he
was in charge, or really anything else about him. There was more than one
original member of The Fifth Division, and in all this confusion, she had
forgotten to ask after them. He smiled, and pretended like he was going to
give her an answer, but then just didn’t. He wouldn’t even say anything more
about how he grew up while he was in The Gallery dimension, or what his job
there was, if anything. He simply thanked her for her cooperation, and ended
the call.
Leona placed the Suadona in orbit, and just left it there for the next year.
It was unlikely that Mithri would do anything to it, and he would surely
protect it in his own way. Trust the devil you know, and all that. Come the
next year, she logged herself into the simulation to check on her friends.
“Leona, why do you look like that?” Mateo asked.
“What are you talking about? It’s just...” She looked down at herself. “Oh.”
“Did you do what the Preston guy asked?” Ramses questioned.
This was a mistake. She thought the system would just use her normal avatar,
but for some reason, it scanned her current substrate, and drew from that
instead. “I had to. Unless he lied, he’s going to help end the conflict and
hostility. I think it was worth it.”
“That’s not what we discussed,” Mateo insisted.
“My body, my choice.”
He sighed. “That’s an unfair spin.”
“I get it, you don’t wanna be married to a twelve-year-old.”
“You’re not twelve, you just look like you are. But yeah, it’s weird.”
“Well, it would have been weird if I were married to someone who looked
fifteen!” she volleyed.
“Well,” Mateo began, stammering as he tried to continue, “yeah, that...makes
sense! Ramses, did you figure out how to do it from your end?”
“Do what?” Leona asked.
“Yes, I have control over my own systems,” Ramses said.
“You’re gonna transfer your minds anyway? The whole point of me doing it is
so you don’t have to,” Leona complained.
“We’re not going to let you look like this on your own,” Olimpia reasoned.
“As I’ve already explained, this was my choice.”
“And we respect that,” Marie said, “so respect ours. We’re tired of being in
this simulation. It’s boring. Ramses was only allotted so much memory to
construct with.”
“I can get you more memory,” Leona said.
“We want to be out in base reality,” Angela clarified. “That’s not something
you can argue against.”
She was right. If they wanted to take on new bodies, it was their right to
go through with the download. This wasn’t forever for any of them. They
could always build even newer substrates, or find a proverter back in the
main sequence to fix these ones. She had to concede to their wishes, and
help them complete this task. “Fine. Just let me make sure that everything
looks good on my end.” Before she could log out, she felt something jerk her
whole body. There were different ways to connect to a virtual construct, but
the best way to do it was to suppress the user’s physical movements, so that
neural commands were sent to the avatar instead. That way one’s real legs
didn’t start flailing about when they were really just supposed to be
running inside of the program. Still, there was a failsafe to this
technology, which allowed that user to feel someone trying to shake them
awake, or stabbing them with a knife, or something. Something was what was
happening to the ship in base reality, and Leona had to investigate.
“Computer, report!”
“Lightyear engine is offline. Fractional reactors are offline. Low impulse
drives are offline. Maneuvering thrusters are offline.”
“I get it, everything’s offline!”
“Interior artificial gravity online. Life support online. Lights are
online.” So sassy.
“Are we being attacked!”
“Not anymore.”
“Who was it, and what are they doing now?”
“The Warmaker Training Detachment is presently matching our orbit, and has
done nothing since targeting and destroying our propulsion systems.”
“The lightyear engine is offline, but what about the standard teleporter?”
“The teleporter is located in a deep interior section of the ship, and is
currently still operational.”
“Make a jump to the surface.”
“Hull integrity is at—”
“It doesn’t matter, we’ll be in the atmosphere by the time it’s ripped
apart.”
And ripped apart it was. Though the detachment was obviously only trying to
prevent them from escaping, damaging all means of propulsion necessarily
meant causing destruction all over the vessel. The Suadona would have
survived enough to be towed into the Warmaker, but will never go anywhere on
its own without extensive repairs. The fact of the matter is that it was
over, and it was time to abandon ship. Fortunately, they had no strong
feelings for the cruiseliner.
Leona spun around, hoping to quickly explain the situation to the team, but
they were already coming out of their pods. Ramses had transferred their
consciousnesses to their replacement substrates. It was pretty creepy, this
group of naked minors standing around together. They all sensed the
awkwardness. “You’ll get dressed later. Let’s get to the AOC first.”
“Wait!” Ramses ordered.
“We don’t have any time,” Leona argued.
“Exactly,” he agreed. “You can teleport with your mind now. Let’s go.” He
disappeared. Apparently, there was no learning curve to their new temporal
abilities. They deliberately built Ramses’ lab far from the hull so as to
protect it from an attack like this, and they did the same with the
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, though they kept them far from each other for
similar reasons.
It was a rush, transporting themselves from where they were, right to where
they wanted to go. Obviously they had teleported before, but never by sheer
force of will. Until now, they had always relied on technology, or other
people, but now they were in control. Now they had the power. Ramses had
done did good, even if they had to start using these bodies a little too
early.
“Hey, we ended up taking some extra power resources, right?” Marie asked.
“Yeah, they’re in storage down in engineering,” Leona answered. “We have
more than we ever have before. We won’t need to refuel for a long time now.”
She looked up. “Computer!”
“Yes, Captain?”
“Execute escape program Leona-nine-one-one.”
“Initializing decoys,” the computer responded. The central hologram popped
up to show them their progress. While Leona was alone in base reality, she
didn’t spend that entire time doing nothing. She was busy preparing for this
very eventuality. The Suadona was a beautiful thing. It was capable of
getting them anywhere in the supercluster in only a few years—or from their
perspective, three days. But alongside that, it was big and threatening, and
while nowhere near as powerful as the detachments, it could competently hold
its own against an enemy. This was why the Warmaker essentially destroyed it
without any warning, and why they were far safer just leaving it behind, and
returning to their true home. The AOC was small, inconsequential to these
people, and easily underestimated. It was not undetectable, however, and the
best way to avoid such detection was to confuse all sensors from being able
to distinguish it from other things.
Leona designed and built decoys. They were watermelon-sized drones that only
served one purpose: emit a hologram that made each one look like a copy of
the AOC, and transmit a false signature that also made each appear to be the
real AOC. The reframe engine was slow compared to the types of propulsion
people in the Fifth Division were used to using, but these decoys should
still distract the Warmaker long enough for the team to make their escape,
and not be followed.
They watched on their own hologram as the drones teleported themselves to
various points in the space surrounding the planet. At random intervals,
they then darkbursted in all directions, shutting off their holograms and
transmitters at the same time to make it harder for them to be found. While
they were doing that, the real AOC was escaping at reframe speed, its crew
hoping their opponents never figured out which one they ought to follow.
“Captain Matic?” the computer asked.
“Yes? Are they following us?”
“No, sir, but we picked up a data transmission. It’s a message from the
Warmaker.”
“Can they detect us this way?”
“No. Anyone in the area with an antenna would have received it. It’s
unencrypted.”
“Play it.”
The battleground hologram disappeared to be replaced with an image of Xerian
Oyana. “Crew of the Suadona. I’m sorry it has come to this. In your absence,
power has reverted back to us. Against my advice, the others have decided to
launch a full scale attack against the Denseterium, and the Fifth Division
proper. We detected your presence in orbit over Earth, and I was unable to
prevent them from including you in the first shots of this new war. I hope
you find a way to survive, and I regret that our relationship deteriorated
to a state of hostility. I’ve always admired you, and I appreciate all you
did, and tried to do, for the supercluster. If we ever cross paths again, I
promise not to be a driving force of opposition, but I can make no such
promise when it comes to the other leaders, and their decisions. Please. Be
careful, and just go away. Stay safe, and stay out of it. We are not your
problem anymore.”
“Did he just say this is Earth?” Angela asked.
“Are we going to do that?” Marie asked at around the same time, barely
registering that her alternate was also speaking. “Are we going to heed his
advice?”
“Well,” Mateo began, “we’re going to be careful and safe, and we’re going to
do our level best to stay out of it, but we can’t go away without getting
back in it first. The only way out is through. As far as we know, Dilara
Cassano, a.k.a. The Arborist is still on the SWD. If we want to go home, we
have to retrieve her.”
“Can we even get to the other detachments?” Olimpia asked. “We’re so far
away now, and we’ve lost our lightyear engine.”
Mateo looked over to his wife, who closed her eyes and sighed. “Computer, go
back to the site of the attack. Once you’re there...initiate Pilot Fish
protocol.”
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