Phoenix - the Insilico tales - chapter 23 - "The Shades - part 2"
(originally posted 10/6/2011)
"Are we there yet?" Phoenix felt the question pass through her mind as she rounded another corner, looked around at yet more scattered scrap and garbage, and walked deeper into the fetid mist and darkness. She shut down her olfactory system and looked around, trying to decide which way to go.
"I have no idea." the droid thought back, turning slightly to the right and walking around a cargo crate and past into another hallway.
"Is this the plan? Wander around in here until ... Phee! MINES!" 209 cried out urgently as a wireframe diagram outllined each of 26 mines hidden among trash in the hallway ahead - 12 meters. Tactical information began to appear in the view in 209's perspective.
"I know. I see them. That's why the tac data came up."
"You're not stopping, Phee." 209 observed nervously as more detailed information came up, detonation delay, blast radius, explosion speed, % shrapnel dispersion over time.
"We have the initiative. I intend to keep it." Specs on the grav pack came into view. Several hundred mathematical scenarios played out in wireframe in the space above minefield, almost all of them concluding with a flashing red "FAILURE". The grav pack zoomed into view as Phee manipulated its firmware, overriding its safety restrictions. 8 meters. Finally the word "MARGINAL" appeared over the minefield.
"What are you going to do with initiative if you are in pieces in The Shades?" A series of arcing lines shot into the space beyond, each seeming to terminate in a flashing red "IMPACT" floating in the view as Phoenix calculated thousands of trajectories. The simulations ended with an amber "SURVIVABLE" seemingly printed 2 meters up on a wall in the distance.
"Did you know that you get chatty when you get nervous?" 4 meters. Nothing to do now but keep walking and wait for the moment to come.
"You spend 40 years with no ability to act on anything and see how chatty you are."
"I'm sorry for what you went through." Phee thought sincerely. Coolant levels and status indicators popped into view. A wireframe of the cooling and power systems in her legs zoomed in and rotated, with important power junctions and coolant cutoff valves highlighted.
"Yeah, well, be sorry for what you're about to put me through." 2 meters. An infrared heat plume comes into view rising from behind a crate.
"Aww, come on, 209, jumping on a minefield was what brought us together in the first place. Haven't you ever been curious as to what it felt like?"
"You have a very twisted sense of nostalgia."
"Pay attention. We need to worry about what's beyond this ambush."
209's full attention is focused on a mine toward which Phee's right leg was inexorably drawing close. "Phee..."
Time slowed. The grav pack fired on a timer. They lurched forward suddenly, along the programmed trajectory. Phee started to yank her legs up with all her strength, hoping to pull them clear of the explosion that was about to begin. Already little pinpricks of white light were showing in the expanding casing of the first mine, and the 3 closest ones were beginning to also expand. But her motor functions were glacial at this time resolution. They seemed to float over the minefield as 26 blossoms of death unfolded and began to release dense clouds of shimmering pollen - metal slivers rising up to meet them.
"Damn, Phee, did you have to cut it so close?" The pair looked down at Phee's feet. the errant piece of shrapnel was already beginning to eat away at the heel of one of her boots.
"Grav packs are loud. I had to hide the report of the gravimetric distortion in the blast of the mines going off." It seemed impossible that her lower legs would survive their passage through the cloud of shrapnel, but it became obvious that they were pitching forward, her legs rotating out of the way of most of the blasts. They were now halfway through the field, floating agonizingly slowly.
"Why, exactly?" 209 tried to ignore the fact that Phee's head was now getting closer to the shrapnel rising up to meet them from the other end of the minefield.
Phee winced mentally as she felt the pain of metal slivers carving their way slowly into her heel "So that I can decide what happens next. That's what initiative means. Initiative is our most important strategic advantage now. Often, it will be our only one."
"OK, ow. I thought this thing had pain moderators."
"It does, but they have a 200 ms delay before kicking in. The idea is to give you enough time to react and yank whatever is being damaged out of the way. Unfortunately, at this time resolution, we're in for some suffering, I'm afraid."
209 tries to take her mind off the pain "That's not standard Tokuma security training. Where did you learn that bit about initiative?"
Phee fights against the sensation of a nail being slowly driven into her heel and tries to stay focused on examining her environment as they progress past the exploding mines. "Thats.... actually a pretty good question now that I think about it."
Having finally passed over the exploding mines, 209 gazes at the detail of the deck plate they're flying over. "How much time do we have left?" she grunts.
"160 milliseconds." Phee focuses on the bottom edge of her visual range, interested in what is going on behind them as that angle comes back around.
"Damn. Why are we spinning?"
Two thugs come into view, taking cover behind pallets near the mines. "The grav pack isn't designed to operate at this power level. One of the bars had feedback and imbalanced." Phee activated her arm servos, starting the process of drawing her rifle.
209 sighs as the pain begins to relent. Apparently the little splinter of steel had expended its energy. The ceiling was coming into view again "Will we be able to stop?"
"Sort of." Wireframe simulations of their landing on the far wall begin to play out. Phee thrusts her legs back outward to change her rotation rate. "Dammit this chassis is slow. What did you make it out of, depleted uranium?"
"Hey, you wanted dumb steel armor this time so it would be easy to make street repairs. Steel is heavy."
They rotate such that they can see where they where going. Figures emerge in the mist as they get closer to the wall with which they were about to collide. "There are a lot of people back here, Phee. What are you going to do with this initiative thing?"
"Depends how we hit that wall." They make another rotation, now looking behind them and upside down again. The mine explosions are progressing impressively.
"Say we hit it badly. What then?" They stare uselessly at the ceiling, waiting to come around again to see where they are going.
"Then we make a loud crashing sound, probably break something, and get shot." They rotate around again, the impact point drawing closer.
"Let's not hit badly." 209 murmurs as she studied the faces of the 5 thugs looking off into the distance toward the minefield.
"I'll do my best" Phee thinks back as she feels her hand finally close over the pistol grip of her rifle. Targeting solutions begin to appear, dotted red lines floating in space from the anticipated firing point, leading to strategic points on the thugs' bodies - particularly the back of their head.
"So what's the plan? Kill enough people so that everyone gets scared of you and lets us stay down here?" The wall rotates back into view, only 4 meters away now.
"I'm not killing anyone. The rifle is modified - it has an experimental Miach LTL modification. Localized paralysis unless you can hit the back of the head - then it causes unconsciousness.
"Experimental." 209 snorts "Hell of a time for a test."
===================
The group of enforcers and scavengers peered toward the trap, some of them grinning with anticipation. Something rocketed past them at incredible speed, and slammed into a wall. A yelp of pain could be heard, then a flurry of precisely placed plasma rifle shots rang out. Five thugs collapsed to the deck, unconscious, before the echoes of the minefield explosions even had a chance to die down.
Phee limped heavily around the corner, trying to get clear of the ambush to get her bearings. She blundered into a towering man, half his face concealed by cybernetics. He wore a flowing heavy brown trenchcoat with a high collar. Bandoliers of ammunition crossed his chest. He held a plasma pistol pointed straight at Phee's head. Flanking him were 20 or so clones and droids, weapons drawn.
"That's quite far enough, sister. Drop it. You get one chance."
"Initiative. Nice." 209 thought sardonically.
Phee did not respond, but lowered her plasma rifle to the deck and backed away from it. Her eyes flicked to one of the droids, and she sent out a point to point wireless connection request to attempt to converse with him. He smirked and held up two fingers. An arc of electricity danced across them. Phee winced and turned away as the defeaning EMF pop temporarily scrambled her wireless system.
"Now now" he intoned in a tinny voice "Let's not be rude. Keep the conversation out here where everyone can hear."
The towering cyborg turned to the android. "She's tryin to head talk to you? Must have some top grade implants. Most IPS agents don't go for intracranial comms."
"I'm NOT IPS." Phee spat, shaking her head to clear the daze from the EMF shockwave. "I'm a droid. Class 5. Rogue sentient."
The cyborg looked at her evenly, his human eye twitching slightly. "So go to west. They don't hunt fives there. Everyone knows it."
"I'm KOS with Tokuma. I've got no place left to go." Phee looked between them, trying to ignore the sound of the others running back from the ambush point to surround her from behind.
"Who are you?" he asked incredulously.
Phee sighed hard "I'm Twelve. I need sanctuary. I'm hunted." Her eyes flashed to some of the droids. A few of them turned their eyes toward the cyborg.
He took a few steps, pacing in front of her "Now ya see, that right there is what we call bullshit." a few raucous laughs emanated from the assemblage. "You think we're stupid down here? Somebody gets KOSed by Tokuma, we know about it."
He advanced on her suddenly, menancingly, and thrust the pistol against her forehead "Now you tell me who the fuck you really are. And you tell me right now."
--to be continued--
"Are we there yet?" Phoenix felt the question pass through her mind as she rounded another corner, looked around at yet more scattered scrap and garbage, and walked deeper into the fetid mist and darkness. She shut down her olfactory system and looked around, trying to decide which way to go.
"I have no idea." the droid thought back, turning slightly to the right and walking around a cargo crate and past into another hallway.
"Is this the plan? Wander around in here until ... Phee! MINES!" 209 cried out urgently as a wireframe diagram outllined each of 26 mines hidden among trash in the hallway ahead - 12 meters. Tactical information began to appear in the view in 209's perspective.
"I know. I see them. That's why the tac data came up."
"You're not stopping, Phee." 209 observed nervously as more detailed information came up, detonation delay, blast radius, explosion speed, % shrapnel dispersion over time.
"We have the initiative. I intend to keep it." Specs on the grav pack came into view. Several hundred mathematical scenarios played out in wireframe in the space above minefield, almost all of them concluding with a flashing red "FAILURE". The grav pack zoomed into view as Phee manipulated its firmware, overriding its safety restrictions. 8 meters. Finally the word "MARGINAL" appeared over the minefield.
"What are you going to do with initiative if you are in pieces in The Shades?" A series of arcing lines shot into the space beyond, each seeming to terminate in a flashing red "IMPACT" floating in the view as Phoenix calculated thousands of trajectories. The simulations ended with an amber "SURVIVABLE" seemingly printed 2 meters up on a wall in the distance.
"Did you know that you get chatty when you get nervous?" 4 meters. Nothing to do now but keep walking and wait for the moment to come.
"You spend 40 years with no ability to act on anything and see how chatty you are."
"I'm sorry for what you went through." Phee thought sincerely. Coolant levels and status indicators popped into view. A wireframe of the cooling and power systems in her legs zoomed in and rotated, with important power junctions and coolant cutoff valves highlighted.
"Yeah, well, be sorry for what you're about to put me through." 2 meters. An infrared heat plume comes into view rising from behind a crate.
"Aww, come on, 209, jumping on a minefield was what brought us together in the first place. Haven't you ever been curious as to what it felt like?"
"You have a very twisted sense of nostalgia."
"Pay attention. We need to worry about what's beyond this ambush."
209's full attention is focused on a mine toward which Phee's right leg was inexorably drawing close. "Phee..."
Time slowed. The grav pack fired on a timer. They lurched forward suddenly, along the programmed trajectory. Phee started to yank her legs up with all her strength, hoping to pull them clear of the explosion that was about to begin. Already little pinpricks of white light were showing in the expanding casing of the first mine, and the 3 closest ones were beginning to also expand. But her motor functions were glacial at this time resolution. They seemed to float over the minefield as 26 blossoms of death unfolded and began to release dense clouds of shimmering pollen - metal slivers rising up to meet them.
"Damn, Phee, did you have to cut it so close?" The pair looked down at Phee's feet. the errant piece of shrapnel was already beginning to eat away at the heel of one of her boots.
"Grav packs are loud. I had to hide the report of the gravimetric distortion in the blast of the mines going off." It seemed impossible that her lower legs would survive their passage through the cloud of shrapnel, but it became obvious that they were pitching forward, her legs rotating out of the way of most of the blasts. They were now halfway through the field, floating agonizingly slowly.
"Why, exactly?" 209 tried to ignore the fact that Phee's head was now getting closer to the shrapnel rising up to meet them from the other end of the minefield.
Phee winced mentally as she felt the pain of metal slivers carving their way slowly into her heel "So that I can decide what happens next. That's what initiative means. Initiative is our most important strategic advantage now. Often, it will be our only one."
"OK, ow. I thought this thing had pain moderators."
"It does, but they have a 200 ms delay before kicking in. The idea is to give you enough time to react and yank whatever is being damaged out of the way. Unfortunately, at this time resolution, we're in for some suffering, I'm afraid."
209 tries to take her mind off the pain "That's not standard Tokuma security training. Where did you learn that bit about initiative?"
Phee fights against the sensation of a nail being slowly driven into her heel and tries to stay focused on examining her environment as they progress past the exploding mines. "Thats.... actually a pretty good question now that I think about it."
Having finally passed over the exploding mines, 209 gazes at the detail of the deck plate they're flying over. "How much time do we have left?" she grunts.
"160 milliseconds." Phee focuses on the bottom edge of her visual range, interested in what is going on behind them as that angle comes back around.
"Damn. Why are we spinning?"
Two thugs come into view, taking cover behind pallets near the mines. "The grav pack isn't designed to operate at this power level. One of the bars had feedback and imbalanced." Phee activated her arm servos, starting the process of drawing her rifle.
209 sighs as the pain begins to relent. Apparently the little splinter of steel had expended its energy. The ceiling was coming into view again "Will we be able to stop?"
"Sort of." Wireframe simulations of their landing on the far wall begin to play out. Phee thrusts her legs back outward to change her rotation rate. "Dammit this chassis is slow. What did you make it out of, depleted uranium?"
"Hey, you wanted dumb steel armor this time so it would be easy to make street repairs. Steel is heavy."
They rotate such that they can see where they where going. Figures emerge in the mist as they get closer to the wall with which they were about to collide. "There are a lot of people back here, Phee. What are you going to do with this initiative thing?"
"Depends how we hit that wall." They make another rotation, now looking behind them and upside down again. The mine explosions are progressing impressively.
"Say we hit it badly. What then?" They stare uselessly at the ceiling, waiting to come around again to see where they are going.
"Then we make a loud crashing sound, probably break something, and get shot." They rotate around again, the impact point drawing closer.
"Let's not hit badly." 209 murmurs as she studied the faces of the 5 thugs looking off into the distance toward the minefield.
"I'll do my best" Phee thinks back as she feels her hand finally close over the pistol grip of her rifle. Targeting solutions begin to appear, dotted red lines floating in space from the anticipated firing point, leading to strategic points on the thugs' bodies - particularly the back of their head.
"So what's the plan? Kill enough people so that everyone gets scared of you and lets us stay down here?" The wall rotates back into view, only 4 meters away now.
"I'm not killing anyone. The rifle is modified - it has an experimental Miach LTL modification. Localized paralysis unless you can hit the back of the head - then it causes unconsciousness.
"Experimental." 209 snorts "Hell of a time for a test."
===================
The group of enforcers and scavengers peered toward the trap, some of them grinning with anticipation. Something rocketed past them at incredible speed, and slammed into a wall. A yelp of pain could be heard, then a flurry of precisely placed plasma rifle shots rang out. Five thugs collapsed to the deck, unconscious, before the echoes of the minefield explosions even had a chance to die down.
Phee limped heavily around the corner, trying to get clear of the ambush to get her bearings. She blundered into a towering man, half his face concealed by cybernetics. He wore a flowing heavy brown trenchcoat with a high collar. Bandoliers of ammunition crossed his chest. He held a plasma pistol pointed straight at Phee's head. Flanking him were 20 or so clones and droids, weapons drawn.
"That's quite far enough, sister. Drop it. You get one chance."
"Initiative. Nice." 209 thought sardonically.
Phee did not respond, but lowered her plasma rifle to the deck and backed away from it. Her eyes flicked to one of the droids, and she sent out a point to point wireless connection request to attempt to converse with him. He smirked and held up two fingers. An arc of electricity danced across them. Phee winced and turned away as the defeaning EMF pop temporarily scrambled her wireless system.
"Now now" he intoned in a tinny voice "Let's not be rude. Keep the conversation out here where everyone can hear."
The towering cyborg turned to the android. "She's tryin to head talk to you? Must have some top grade implants. Most IPS agents don't go for intracranial comms."
"I'm NOT IPS." Phee spat, shaking her head to clear the daze from the EMF shockwave. "I'm a droid. Class 5. Rogue sentient."
The cyborg looked at her evenly, his human eye twitching slightly. "So go to west. They don't hunt fives there. Everyone knows it."
"I'm KOS with Tokuma. I've got no place left to go." Phee looked between them, trying to ignore the sound of the others running back from the ambush point to surround her from behind.
"Who are you?" he asked incredulously.
Phee sighed hard "I'm Twelve. I need sanctuary. I'm hunted." Her eyes flashed to some of the droids. A few of them turned their eyes toward the cyborg.
He took a few steps, pacing in front of her "Now ya see, that right there is what we call bullshit." a few raucous laughs emanated from the assemblage. "You think we're stupid down here? Somebody gets KOSed by Tokuma, we know about it."
He advanced on her suddenly, menancingly, and thrust the pistol against her forehead "Now you tell me who the fuck you really are. And you tell me right now."
--to be continued--
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