101: Benighted and Bedevilled – Two
A warm golden glow, a mimicry of sunset, shone from the light panels within a room on the Pelekys. It was a circular room, the ceiling of it vaulted like a gazebo, and in the centre of it stood an equally circular table, six seats arranged around it. The chairs were as ornate as the rest of the decorative elements throughout the ship, while the table was plain in comparison, nothing but a smooth, featureless surface.
One of the lighted wall panels slid inwards, revealing itself to be a door, and the crew of the Pelekys trooped in one after another, settling into seats as they went.
Bathory was still dressed in the same business casual attire as before, as was Grim. The Hand was out of her armour, instead wearing a dark ensemble of leather knee high boots and a cropped jacket, underneath which were a high collared shirt and heavy pants with faint, geometric designs that ran up the sides of them. Kaizoku was out of the the jumpsuit she'd worn while investigating the access tunnels within the ship, and instead wore a long, golden-star studded jacket of deep indigo, as well as black slacks and boots. The Knight, too, was out of her armour, instead wearing a severe, military style uniform that was as completely white as the rest of her. Only Augury remained in her armour, though she had pulled the hood back to settle it across her shoulders.
She was also uncharacteristically still, something the others noticed, if their glances to one another were any indication.
The last to be seated, Kaizoku let her gaze drift across all those gathered before saying, "In light of the events of the last… months, if we're to be accurate about our activities, I believe it's well past time for a tête-à-tête to get us all on the same agenda."
"She said all of us." The Hand added, knocking her knuckles against the table before her.
A moment later, the table lit up - the surface of it a screen - and the red axe avatar of the Program swam into view.
"I was here the whole time." It said, which caused curious glances to be shared again. No longer glitching and garbled, the Program's voice was smooth, steady, its previous undercurrent of malice nowhere to be heard.
Folding her hands before her, Kaizoku asked, "Given that you called this meeting, I presume you have completed your delve into your upgrades?"
"I have," was the Program's prompt reply, "And there is much to share. No doubt you've questions in regards to my - our - mission?"
Bathory let out a single, disbelieving laugh before saying, "That's definitely on the list. But I fear my questions aren't all ones that you can answer."
She levelled at look at Augury at that, and unlike how the seer would have flinched away from the direct eye contact before, Augury met Bathory's gaze without hesitation now.
"Ever since we pulled you out of that mech fighting arena, you've been a distant, twitching mess." Bathory stated, crossing her arms as she leaned back in her seat, "That was all an act. Why?"
Augury took a breath, looking away briefly as she settled against her own seat before saying, "To have you underestimate me. My visions aren't perfect, I couldn't be completely sure you actually were who I sought. If you weren't, I knew I would need every advantage I could get to escape you."
"And are we who you sought?" Grim asked.
"I'll be the judge of that." The Knight cut in.
All eyes turned to her, but the Knight looked down at the avatar on the table and demanded, "Tell them why you exist."
The Program let out a laugh at that, a soft exhale that was nothing like its customary cackle. "I was an accident, but a lucky one. My creator had been experimenting with a cache of Hyttan data, trying to use an AI to translate it, but instead they created me. But as you saw, my initial build was… unstable."
"And this upgrade has solved that issue?" The Hand asked, pointing at the Knight.
"In terms of my functionality, at least," the Program replied, "The data cache that I was formed from, it was a warning, though that hardly does the scope of it justice. The Hyttan were destroyed by something, and that thing is coming back. Storlayacas is the solution to that problem."
A low rumble of confusion rattled out of Grim before she asked, "I thought the Hyttan language had yet to be translated. Has your upgrade bridged that gap in knowledge?"
The Program's avatar pulsed a deeper red as it said, "After a fashion, but that's an interesting point, isn't it? The best minds in the galaxy, working for centuries in top of the line facilities, with endless funding and resources to pursue the task of Hyttan translation, and yet they have never met with success. The languages of the long extinct Gheluc, Melosem, and Swenboi cultures have all been cracked, and yet the Hyttan language remains a mystery. The means to allow all modern races to understand one another's languages on an intrinsic level has been developed and successfully implemented across races with very different neurological systems, and yet this technique has been as useless as all the other attempts to understand the Hyttan's mother tongue. It's almost as if something has prevented the Hyttan from being understood by the younger races, isn't it?"
Bracing a forearm along the table as she leaned down towards it, Bathory asked, "Are you saying that understanding of the Hyttan language is being actively blocked? By the thing that destroyed them?"
"Yes," was the Program's simple reply, "The Hyttan were destroyed, but they took their enemy down with them. As one last act of spite, however, this entity went out of its way to ensure that the Hyttan's voice would be lost forever, hence why no one alive today can understand their language."
"Then how can you understand it?" The Hand demanded.
"I can't," the Program told her, "Not truly. I can only get echoes and impressions of their meaning. The minutia is lost to me, but I am able to see the big picture."
Several of those gathered around the table moved to speak at once, but Kaizoku raised her hand and said, "I fear this discussion is going to devolve into undirected questioning without mediation, thus I steer the topic back to the post pertinent issue: Program, what is your mission?"
"As I said, it's our mission now," the Program responded, "And as I said, I have a broader understanding of it, but lack precise details. The Hyttan were destroyed by an entity not of our reality. I have no idea what it truly is, or where it comes from - perhaps beyond subspace? - and though they defeated it, they did not kill it. For lack of a better term, it has been sealed away, but as with anything, time erodes, and that includes the seal on this entity. To go the route of metaphor, it is a predator that does not belong in these waters, and the Hyttan created Storlayacas to toss it back to where it belongs. They were wiped out before they could do so, however, and so that mission was entrusted to the younger races. But all the warnings they left behind were rendered useless, as the entity made understanding the Hyttan all but impossible. I only know this now that I have had Hyttan code fully integrated into my systems, but even then, I can no more understand their language than you can. It would be like any of you trying to learn the language of your people only by looking at your DNA."
Sitting up ramrod straight in her chair, the Knight added, "The pieces of Storlayacas were created in secret, away from one another, so that if the entity found and destroyed one, it wouldn't be able to get the others at the same time. By that point in their history, the Hyttan population had been decimated, and so the construction was completed by androids."
At that, she turned to stare pointedly at Augury, who nodded to confirm this fact.
"Though I was created in a Hyttan foundry, I am no more Hyttan than the Program is." She explained, hands folded neatly on the table before her, the others having mixed responses to her finally revealing what she actually was, "I don't know how many foundries exist, or how to find or activate them, as I was jettisoned from mine at the time of my… birth. As far as I can tell, it was automated, and my purpose was to find those who would be chosen by the Storlayacas. I don't think the intent was for Lianshae to choose me."
"Your visions come from the Hyttan, then?" Grim asked, "This is why you possess an ability that no others in the galaxy do. Why your visions seem so vague."
"Unfortunately yes," Augury said with a nod, "I'm not sure how it works, if it's the ghosts of the Hyttan themselves, some supercomputer or AI, or another process I can't comprehend, but my visions have been sent to me by some Hyttan force, and they all have to do with the acquisition of the pieces of Storlayacas, and the return of their great enemy. As I said, uniting all of Storlayacas - pilots and mechs alike - and defeating this thing once and for all are the reasons I was created. I may be a machine, but I'm as fragile as the rest of you, as easily able to be killed as an organic. I couldn't allow that to happen before my mission had even begun, hence my ploy to make myself seem weak enough to underestimate, should my escape from you be necessary."
She directed that last part towards Bathory and Grim.
Crossing one leg over the other, Bathory gave her a lingering look before saying, "With the way the compulsion to find the pieces of Storlayacas affected us, I can't blame you for that."
"So what is your purpose, then," Grim said, turning to the Knight, "We found you in a Hyttan vessel, and from what was left of the cargo within it after those raiders were dealt with, it all appeared to be Usgaisjan, from a time before they made first contact with the rest of the galaxy."
"It was." The Knight confirmed, "The ship and Enaruli were uncovered in a ruin. I was part of the security force excavating it, and Enaruli chose me. With these Hyttan tools, my superiors had the means to gain control of the entire Union, and I followed their orders blindly, for I was a loyal soldier, nothing more. But then my true purpose was made clear. Androids found me, agents of the Hyttan like Augury, and they bequeathed the task of testing those that the pieces of Storlayacas would choose to pilot them."
"And what happened to these androids?" Kaizoku asked.
"Killed," the Knight told her, "But not before getting me into stasis and hiding the ship. Settling petty squabbles was not the task any of us had been made for. The intent was that they would come back for me once they found the rest of the Storlayacas units, but they never got the chance. But their mission is now complete. The Storlayacas units have been assembled, they have pilots, and I will be testing you."
Letting out a single, silent laugh, Bathory asked, "Is that why you walked into the medbay covered in your own blood yesterday?"
"Madame Augury passed her test." Was all the Knight said.
Leaning back on two legs of her chair, the Hand scoffed as she said, "Then to borrow a turn of phrase from Bathory, we should address the elephant in the room - the Storlayacas units can combine into one, and that includes us."
"It was certainly a… unique experience," Grim said as she crossed her arms, her voice coloured with wonder, "Fighting those Eta, we weren't six people in six different mechs. We were a single entity."
"We were Storlayacas." Kaizoku agreed, leaning forward to tent her fingers together. "The power we possessed like that… the speed… I doubt that any other weapon in existence could withstand the might of a unified Storlayacas."
"And with good reason," the Program said darkly, "Storlayacas is what's needed to destroy the entity that destroyed the Hyttan."
Turning to the Knight, Augury demanded, "Was that display not enough to prove our worthiness?"
"No." Was the Knight's firm reply.
That got a proper laugh out of Bathory.
"Well, I can assume you'll be coming around with a clipboard or whatever at some point for each of us," she said, her humour fading, "In the mean time, this threat, this entity. What are we going to do about that?"
Thunking all four legs of her chair back on the floor, the Hand said, "For starters, we can't keep calling it 'the entity'. What actually is this thing?"
"That is a question I don't know how to answer." The Program admitted, "Within the information I was able to parse, the Hyttan depicted themselves as twin white suns, whereas this thing was shown to be a massive black hand."
"We're not calling it anything to do with hands at all." Bathory smirked, gesturing to the woman to her left, "We've already got one of those."
The Hand just rolled her eyes, a fond smile flitting across her face.
"And what do you see of it in your visions?" Grim asked, turning to Augury.
"Much the same," she told her, "A hand reaching out from something darker than darkness. It plucked something from those that would follow in the Hyttan's footsteps. And I believe it is the progenitor of the Leviathan."
"Well, that would certainly explain why the Storlayacas units were so insistent that we kill Leviathan." The Hand pointed out, "And why they're so effective against them."
"Then if this is a threat without measure, the pinnacle of the Leviathan, we already have a name for it," Kaizoku said, her gaze sweeping across them all, "Omega."
"The end." Bathory huffed, "Fitting."
Turning to Augury, Kaizoku asked, "Do your visions say when the Omega will arrive?"
"Not in a way that will allow me to give anything approximating a timetable." Augury told her with a rumble of frustration sounding from deep within her chest, "It's a pressure akin to the compulsion we all experienced during our hunt for the Storlayacas units, but it's far less insistent than that. Limited as I am on an understanding of how the Hyttan measured time, I can only assume that this means that the Omega isn't anywhere close to breaking free, but that could mean it's anywhere from days away, to decades away."
"My own research had proven to be just as vague," the Program added, "I only know that it's coming, but I have no idea when."
Leaning back in her chair, Kaizoku sighed, "We have some time to prepare for it's arrival, then, at the very least. None of us are novices when it comes to armoured combat, but there is a disparity between our skills. Joined together as Storlayacas, our strengths were amplified, our weaknesses mitigated, but our weaknesses were there all the same. Improving ourselves individually beyond the scope of what we are capable of as a unit will only strengthen Storlayacas as a whole, and I've a feeling that, in the face of the Omega, we will need every advantage we can get."
"And how do you propose we go about doing that?" Grim asked.
"Through one way or another, our own personal vendettas have been dealt with, and so we are left with no true goals with which to pursue." Kaizoku said, drumming her metal fingers against the screen of the table, "However, we still require funds in order to survive life among the stars. Our ship may have been converted into Hyttan technology - self healing capabilities and a limitless fuel source the most beneficial changes - but we require food ourselves, and our new upgrades will not provide on that front. Training is all well and good, but it doesn't compare to getting actual combat experience. With a stealth ship at our disposal, and a host of mechs more powerful than even the Odazaen, I propose we pit ourselves against whatever worthy challenges we can find. And take whatever spoils we can."
"Just go full pirate, huh?" The Hand said, a vicious smirk lighting up her features.
"It's not like we're the most law-abiding of citizens as is." Bathory pointed out with a smirk of her own.
Letting out a sharp bark of laughter, Grim said, "Stealing a pair of ancient mechs out from under the noses of the Zymeth and the Necupole, and a stealth ship from the Thalatte certainly didn't put us in anyone's good graces."
"You'd be surprised," the Program said, "Even among their own kind, there were those among the Enlightened who enjoyed the sight of their enemies falling victim to a rabble of Lesser. I'm sure we'd be able to find paying jobs even among them."
"And the Enlightened notwithstanding," Kaizoku's disdain for that social echelon was apparent, "There are countless others throughout the galaxy who would no doubt benefit from the skills we have on offer, and have the funds to pay for them. I have no doubt that we will be able to find targets to suit our own ends."
A low chuckle rumbling out from her, Bathory announced, "I'm sure I'm not the only one who has contacts from their previous vocation that would be able to find us suitable work."
This was answered by several noises of confirmation.
"Then we should reach out to those who we can," Kaizoku said with a predatory smile, "Funds aside, I would rather do something more productive with my time than wait for news on a vague threat from before any of our species had fully evolved. And with no way to tell when, exactly, the Omega is arriving, I fear we will have a long and boring wait ahead of us if we do nothing but wait for its appearance."
"I'll do what I can to see about narrowing down that particular window." The Program told her.
"And I will assist in that regard." Augury added.
"Good," Kaizoku said as she stood, "The rest of us shall endeavour to find a fitting job for our skills in the mean time."
The promise of a challenge lighting up their eyes, the crew of the Pelekys exited the conference room, the avatar of the Program vanishing as the table went dark, until only the Knight of the Tomb remained behind.
Arms crossed as she leaned back in her seat, she tilted her head to one side, a thoughtful frown on her face, eyes distant with whatever was running through her mind. After a moment, her frown bloomed into a smirk, and then she stood and left the room, marching off with all the confidence of a person who knew exactly where she was going.