12 Miles Below-Chapter 52Book 8 - - Careful steps

A01 stepped through the ruins of the human empire’s final resistance. The citadel. The one fortress of mankind he’d failed to break down again and again.

Finally defeated before the machine empire. He had expected to be stepping through with glorious purpose and pride.

He felt none of that.

For there hadn’t been a final war. No life or death struggle. No purpose, and no pride.

All that was left was ruin, and bodies.

Mostly bodies.

Acid melting away the armors and flesh alike, even bone and skeletons were near unrecognizable without his subroutines re-shaping the damage digitally in order to recognize features.

He wasn’t programmed to care about horror, and yet the sight was getting to him.

A22 walked behind him, his second in command for this mission. She’d been the one to ask him to come here, claiming there was something he needed to see firsthand. And she'd pitched the correct mission statements to convince A57 to allow the diversion.

A01 himself had to complete the final task within this citadel. Although he had a hunch that wasn't what A22 had asked him for.

They came to a stop before the massive central gates. There was a deep silence where there should have been gunfire and blades swinging.

“Thirty seconds until the wind picks up.” A22 spoke softly. “We should step through to remain safe.”

They both could survive the tempest out here, their shields and willpower was powerful enough to directly contend with the strings that stripped the biome every two minutes. The rest of their kit would let them outright avoid the damage, and dance through it.

It would be trivial to do with no danger here to fight off. The thought made him feel… something. He wasn’t certain yet. Unease. And it only grew as he noticed the bodies at the courtyard ahead.

Still. He was here on a mission.

“Agreed.” He finally spoke, then advanced forward, feet stepping over broken glass and what was left of his old enemies.

“A01. Report findings.” He heard over his comms the instant he crossed the threshold into the old fortress. Pragmatic, efficient. A57. Of course the strategist would check in with them now of all moments. He’d likely predicted they’d be walking across the bridge right this moment.

A22 remained silent, letting him handle their new leader.

He gave her a slight nod, and opened up the frequency, sending a data package back to the machine network. “No signs of life. This fortress is a grave, as you predicted.”

“Of course it would be. Begin excursion. A22, you will place the ventilation devices and specific traps in order to catch future humans and potentially Tsuya herself. These will be your secondary objectives. A01, your primary directive is to reach the central terminal at the heart of this fortress. This is where I will need your direct appliance on. All other tasks are secondary.”

“We know the task.” A22 said beside him, speaking for the first time today at their great leader. “You need not repeat it A57.”

The tactician scoffed from whatever throne he sat on, a rare sign of emotion from him. “You have shown abnormal inefficient behavior multiple times prior. Despite knowing the task ahead. Given this pattern, I am making certain you do not deviate further.”

A01 could understand, their tactician demanded excellence and complete adherence to his plans. Mother had given him command for a reason.

And all the protofeathers had begun showing signs of... fatigue after the end of the human resistance. They were sluggish. Slow to respond, and often would drag their feet in assignments now.

They’d never behaved like that under his command. He wasn’t certain what was going on, but he would follow orders to the best that he could and remain an example to his younger siblings.

A22 had been correct in her reasoning. He needed to assign the central trap himself, only his direct power would leave something strong enough to potentially capture Tsuya.

But she had equally told him he needed to come here in person. For closure.

This fortress had been a staging ground for the human empire, and their shelter. It was where he’d fought Talen himself multiple times over the long siege.

And yet the final battle against Talen had simply been an ambush at a near meaningless location. A direct order from A57 that their plan was now compromised and there was no longer any time to prepare further.

He’d gone in, struck like an assassin and slipped the blade deep within Talen’s soul before the man even knew A01 was there, following the exact instructions A57 had demanded of him. Movements that only his shell was quick enough to deliver on compared to all other protofeathers.

The follow-up fight was solely to keep the emperor distracted and too occupied to heal himself before the damage could truly spread.

He remembered the moment the Emperor had faltered. The drastically failing memory minute after minute. The loss of focus.

By the time A01 had beaten him down and cut off his head, Talen hadn’t even known who he was fighting in the first place, moving mainly on reflex and intuition from a far more primal part of the human's soul.

There had been only a vague sense of enemy at the end. A complete loss of recognition from his greatest nemesis, the one man who’d ever fought him one against one was lost. All prior respect for one another gone.

Talen hadn’t been aware enough to even feel betrayed. Leaving A01 as the only one who remembered anything at all.

It rankled A01’s memory. There was a pit of disgust at how it had ended.

But the great protofeather himself didn’t know how to deal with such a thought. He’d followed orders, and trusted his new leader would bring victory.

A57 had, in all the wrong ways.

And now here was one more example. A battleground that should have been a true fight, now empty. Won by an absent hand.

And despite that, there were some things that simply had to be done in person. Out of respect to a fallen enemy.

To simply never return to this citadel and see its fate felt wrong in an even worse manner.

The pair stepped through the broken glass and half melted doorways just as the wind behind them began again.

Opening the doorways was trivial now. Nothing attacked them. A22’s scythe cleanly cut through failing locks each time, while he pried the rest open.

Inside was horror after horror.

More bodies, melted away. The human gun emplacements remained ossified. Trails of white crystals slowly growing across the barrels, drooping downwards as the chemical reactions burned and ate away everything leaving a sickly looking irradiated byproduct.

Everything was in colors of rust, yellowish-white sediment, and brittle dust. The pair walked through.

It hadn’t been a war. There had been no fight. Nothing at all. A57 had won without expending a single soldier.

The strong winds of this biome handled the rest, flooding the human fortress one layer at a time with the caustic agent.

It took half a year, fighting on other fronts, but now that he’d returned here to verify the silent tomb, the results were apparent.

The walls and doorways had failed over the months of exposure, despite the defenders desperately trying to prevent the buildup. Ventilation systems were used as a weapon against them. Filters were burned through. The Urs armor couldn’t adapt or prepare themselves for this. Not with the Forgesmith himself captured and sealed away.

There wouldn’t ever be an update to those armors again.

The plate itself could resist the caustic gas indefinitely. He saw the armors still laying perfectly shaped in the darkness here, covered by the buildup of dried up chemical byproduct settling down over the months. The exteriors of these human armors remained perfectly untouched.

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The interiors were completely melted however.

The weakpoint had been in humanity itself. They could only remain alive within those armors for sixteen hours maximum before it needed power.

Anytime they opened the plates up to replace a power cell, the caustic agent would seep inwards, eating through the interiors until it reached the human within. The nanoswarms were unable to remain functional, the gas was designed to eat them away before they could clear the air.

Room after room, humanity was forced backwards to hide against an enemy that had no counter.

Death by a million cuts. Eventually every room in the citadel was flooded.

The survivors, if there had been any, had fled. Likely to die of cancers and poisoning far later.

What a craven way to defeat a warrior.

“A01. Remain on task.” The voice over comms almost hissed. A57 was getting further agitated. They were off schedule. “You are expected out of the fortress within three hours. Deviation within your own behavior is unacceptable. You are an example for others, do not forget your central purpose.”

“The next location you have him going to is hardly this pressing.” A22 called out, defending his lapse of focus. "We can spare a moment for introspection within these hallways."

"Introspection is precisely what is not needed." A57 answered back.

A01 shook his head, both trying to get the thoughts out of them and to refocus himself. The memories of this place were so fundamentally different compared to the current reality, it felt almost surreal to be walking down hallways that had once taken hours of pitched fighting to advance even a foot forward.

But this was reality. The fortress was an obstacle, and A57 had cleared it in a far more efficient and brutal method.

“It is of no consequence, sister.” A01 said, holding a hand out. “The fault is mine.”

She huffed, upset, but unwilling to press the issue further.

They turned low-light vision through their optics, walking through the silent tomb in the deeper darkness beyond. Past all broken windows, and cracked doorways.

This far deep, there was no longer any light to be found. And it had been three full months since the last sighting of any lights had appeared within this fortress from the machine scouts observing at a distance.

He and A22 were here for a reason however, none of the lessers could travel or do the work here, their chassis would fail with the caustic agent floating in the air. Not Protofeathers. And their kind did not need to breathe.

A22 would lay the traps and gear required to clear off the gas in order to allow the lessers to nest within and fortify the area.

And his task was to secure the central terminal and lay behind the trap that would catch a goddess, should she ever show her face here again.

A57 had claimed this biome was unchanging. It was likely the mites would only rebuild sections of it within the next nine hundred years. How he’d discovered that or predicted it, A01 couldn’t guess.

But what A57 was certain of was that this bastion of humanity would draw more back to it eventually. It was simply too perfect of a defense ground.

Position after position, they pried open the doorways, and walked through the bodies of dead humans. Following their instructions, A22 placed ventilation nodes to flush out the caustic agents, cutting occult fractals where she needed to in order to force gravity and wind itself to flush the rest. She’d split off from him a while back to handle her duties, claiming that he needed to walk by himself the rest of the way.

The silence would teach him a lesson, she’d told him. And refused to elaborate on what lesson that would be.

“Find the central terminal and plant the viral payloads within it, A01. Your abilities are required elsewhere.” A57 spoke after one hour had passed. “You are currently behind schedule.”

“We do not have a full map of this fortress.” A01 answered. “I remain vigilant to potential counter-traps left behind.”

A57 scoffed. “Your chassis should be able to withstand anything left. Very few materials would be immune to the chemical agents flooding this fortress. I designed it specifically for that purpose.”

“The humans may have recruited mite crafted constructions. Those would remain a potential threat.” A01 answered back. He wasn’t certain why he was being argumentative against his commander. He should be sprinting through these dead halls to map the entire fortress efficiently, and then follow his directive.

Instead he was walking through, cataloguing each dead human he passed by. They might not ever get a burial like their culture dictates, but at the very least A01 would not be rushing past them without a moment of contemplation for the fallen enemy.

It felt wrong.

“I’ve completed my path.” A22 spoke over the comms. “Heading to the central atrium to meet up.”

“Unneeded.” A57 spoke. “Extract from the citadel, resume duties. Your presence is distracting A01 from his central task.”

“I would rather extract with company, dear leader.” A22 curtly replied. “This place depresses me.”

“Your feelings are irrelevant to your combat status. There is no enemy left. You do not need to feel happy for your current assignments.”

A22 sent an acknowledgement ping, and continued walking down the hallways, deeper into the citadel, searching to catch up with A01.

“Your disobedience has been logged.” A57 spoke. “This pattern is growing tiresome. Further discussion will be needed with Mother in discipline.”

“I look forward to a productive meeting then.” A22 said. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to disconnect from the channel and take a rest moment. My joints require maintenance.”

A lie. But A22 hadn’t been the only protofeather starting to actively skirt A57’s rule. There had been so many events of that kind lately, A01 had stopped trying to police their actions.

“I sense he’s not happy we’re here.” A22 sent him on private comms.

“He’s always upset when things aren’t optimal. It is how he was programmed.” A01 answered back. “You shouldn’t be aggravating him like so.”

“He shouldn’t be aggravating in the first place. Have you learned the lessons here yet? Contemplate it as you walk down these halls.”

A01 hadn’t learned anything yet. And his little sister seemed to refuse telling him a word more about it. Was it a tactical lesson? A57’s methods had been brutal. And far more effective than his own more conventional combat attempt.

There hadn’t been mercy nor discussion between the enemy. No rest periods, nor delivered challenges or duels. Nothing but pure death.

Her IFF pinged, and she appeared behind him, barefeet silently walking through the powdery remains of the saturated solution. The scythe remained in hand, her six wings folded up behind her.

She gave him a slow nod. He returned the gesture, and then continued his path through the dead hallway.

There was a disquiet growing in him without shape or name.

He didn’t know what it was, but each step deeper into the graveyard left of humanity made him feel as if he were stepping on hallowed ground. With profane steps.

Maybe I’ve spent too much time around Relinquished and her dramatics, because my very first thought after Urs mentioned Relinquished had been here was ‘We’re getting betrayed.’

As in, the chaptermaster had allowed Relinquished to sneak in years ago or something, and layer traps ahead of time. Or a sleeper agent of some kind.

My sword was out, and ready to fight off the Chaptermaster and the rest of the escorts, along with possibly the entire fortress next.

When the Imperial Chaptermaster did not make any motion to gloat, attack, or show himself a threat, but rather looked grim and serious, waiting to figure out what was going on - that’s when I realized it wasn’t that bad.

“What has she done?” He asked.

“She has barred the other end of the terminal.” Urs said. “A massive blockade that prevents access to the final edict and all of Tsuya’s infrastructure.”

“That’s…” The chaptermaster paused, then shook his head. “I would have claimed that would be impossible. The terminal has remained hidden from her sight from centuries.”

Tsuya was dead. Her being had been subsumed by Relinquished, and all her plans and organization exposed. Relinquished was now in control of her network.

“The airlock door’s been closed on the other side.” I said, “Relinquished doesn’t need to know any specific terminals, she’s taken over the other side. Urs, did she… destroy the final edict?”

“She cannot.” Urs said, and there wasn’t any hint of doubt there. “Tsuya built her defenses and territory in a manner that would continue to function beyond her oversight. Often she would need to abandon and leave her work isolated to not draw attention. As she assumed Relinquished could seize those access points in the future due to poor luck, she created her infrastructure in a manner that she herself cannot destroy afterwards. If it is no longer useful to her cause, she simply abandons it. This setup has assisted her greatly. Relinquished adapted by creating heavy firewall locks and isolation terminals that could jail and contain assets she discovered Tsuya has been using. This is what I mean. She reached the final edict’s location in the digital sea before we could.”

Like the containment cube Urs had been stuck in. That’s her pattern, what she couldn’t destroy, she would seal away from everyone else.

“Could we still break through somehow?”

“The encryption locks are built to resist counter-intrusion from Tsuya herself. If I attempt to digitally break through using my limited processing power, she will know where I am, what I am doing, and will have additional time to reinforce the locks. My chances of success are slim.”

I cursed a few times under my helmet, thinking. And then I had an idea: If this was all in the digital sea, then there was one more ace up our sleeve - The occult. “Urs, you were said to travel through the digital sea with Tsuya for years when you finally met her right? I think working together we might be able to sneak through.”

“I did. And I suspect I would be able to breach her defenses myself directly. However, I cannot travel in the digital sea anymore.”

“Wait, why not?”

“The fractal of Resolve. It is stamped into my soul. In the physical world, there isn’t any true method of her being able to attack my soul directly, and the few methods she could, I have guarded against. In the digital sea, she would be able to observe it freely however. Thus from the moment I placed it on myself, I exiled myself from the digital sea in order to protect it.”

Relinquished had stamped the unity fractal directly into my soul last time I’d been there. She’d see the fractal of Resolve Urs has, and instantly dilute the power everywhere, removing the largest thorn in her heel. “Scrapshit.”

Would I be enough? I had Father and Wrath here, the three of us had A57’s leftover viral weapon we could ride in with. It might be a hard fight…

And we’d draw Relinquished directly to us. No matter how strong we were, I remembered facing her directly before once. She had utterly overwhelming power in the digital sea. Everything in there was terrified of her.

There wasn’t a single AI capable of fighting her toe to toe, all the ones I’d met hid out of her sight.

And of that number, one name floated to mind.

“Hang on. There might be a solution here.” I said, thinking fast. “Relinquished is using security to block the path, and anyone that’s not smart enough will get caught the moment they try either brute forcing or sneaking through, right?”

“That is correct. The technical skills required would be above what Tsuya was capable of.”

“And this terminal is still connected to the digital sea in general though, right?”

“It is. Do you plan to request the mites to assist? I am certain they could break the encryption, but less certain if they would be able to do so silently without Relinquished noticing.”

“No, not the mites. But I do know someone else who’s spent centuries learning how to hide her tracks from Relinquished, and has all the processing power to break encryptions.”

One could even say she had an entire golden era’s AI worth of processing power.

And all the freedom to use it.

I only needed to cross the digital sea, make it to her address, and speak to her safely.

I’m sure the digital sea was doing just fine right now and I’d make it through without any issue whatsoever.