2-59: Setting Up
We finally broke through to the surface. I looked up and I took in a deep breath, and then I frowned and started coughing and spluttering.
"Is something wrong?” Varis asked, moving up next to me.
I noted that she took in a deep breath of her own. A deep breath that didn't seem to have nearly the same amount of trouble I was having.
"It amazes me that a civilization that's managed to advance as far as y'all still has so much pollution circulating in the air," I said, looking to the vast columns of smoke that rose from the various reclamation mines all around the city.
"There are purifiers and scrubbers running constantly," Varis said with a shrug. "But you're going to have that kind of thing in any city where you have industrial scale reclamation mines going."
"That's what I'm trying to tell you," I said. "We don't have industrial scale reclamation mines going in any of the cities back on Earth."
"You don’t?” she said, frowning.
"No, we definitely don't," I said.
"Well, that's simply because you don't have Ancient technology on Earth."
"Most of that stuff was found out in the solar system rather than on Earth," I said. “Like clearly they were on Earth because we were on Earth, but still. You don't even see that kind of stuff on terraformed worlds where there was Ancient tech found sitting around on the surface.”
"Whatever," she said. "We need to focus on what's going on in front of us."
I blinked as I looked at her.
"What ever do you mean?" I asked.
Varis leaned in close. She glanced up to Tmors and the Spider who were having a quiet conversation with one another well ahead of us. He’d been in the back, presumably chatting with the livisk and helping us out, but he’d since returned to chat with her.
There were also several livisk guards all around us. All of them carrying what passed for advanced weaponry down in the Spider's domain. All of them looking at us like they’d love nothing more than to have an excuse to use some of that obsolete plasma rifle weaponry on us.
That was the thing about an obsolete weapon. It could kill you just as dead as a state-of-the-art weapon if it was pointed at you when someone pulled the trigger.
I really should’ve brought my power armor with me when we came to the reclamation mine. I wasn’t going to make that mistake again.
"I don't know if we want to discuss it in front of our current crowd," I muttered under my breath, looking to the display in simulation space that showed transports and fighters moving through the Undercity to our current location.
Varis turned and looked at the Spider’s people, then she turned back to me. If anything, her frown deepened. I worried that she was about to say something that would give up our current plan. Or it would give up that I was working on a plan they wouldn’t like.
"I really wish I had one of those chips in my head,” she finally said with a sigh. "Something that allowed me to actually have a discussion with you ahead of time rather than relying on the link to make us more effective once the fighting starts.”
"You could always get one of the chips put in the back of your head," I said, hitting her with a grin. “That would turn us into a formidable fighting force. A battle pair that’s enhanced by a Combat Intelligence. You've already seen how much I've been getting away with because I'm willing to set Arvie loose."
Her lips compressed to a thin line. I wasn't sure what she thought of the idea of all of the stuff I'd been getting away with because I was willing to set a Combat Intelligence loose. The livisk were weird about their Combat Intelligences, for all that they didn't seem to have the history of media distrusting artificial intelligence like what we had back on Earth. Even though their artificial intelligences were far more capable of destroying shit than any of the stuff we'd come up with back on Earth.
"It's something I'll think about," she finally said. "But I don't know if it would be a good idea right now."
"Yeah, probably not a good idea right now," I said, frowning as I thought about my own reaction to having the chip implanted in my head. "But there's definitely some interesting shit I think we'll be able to do with this."
"What are the two of you talking about?" the Spider snapped, turning to look back at us.
"Would you believe we're talking about the relative incidences of air pollution in livisk cities versus what we have back on Earth, and whether or not the presence of Ancient technology on your planet has something to do with that level of air pollution?" I asked, hitting her with a wide grin.
I liked to grin at the livisk. It was considered a threat response in a lot of hominids, after all. Including a lot of the ones that had been transplanted to Earth once upon a time.
At least presumably they’d been transplanted to earth, though that was something that confused the science types since we shared common ancestry with a bunch of other creatures that grew up on Earth. It seemed like the kind of thing that shouldn't be possible from an evolutionary standpoint, but whatever.
The point was that a smile was a threat display with a lot of our close cousins back on Earth. And so I figured that was a good thing to throw around with our cousins who’d grown up on distant worlds.
Plus, when I was grinning they weren't taking me seriously. The livisk not taking me seriously had been one of my secret weapons so far. Might as well keep using it,
"I don't believe it for a moment," she growled. "Now get up here. We need to talk about what we’re doing here, because this seems like madness now that I can see the detention facility.”
"What madness?" I asked, moving up to stand next to her. We were on top of a building that was relatively low-lying as far as that sort of thing went in Imperial Seat, which meant it was a skyscraper that would've dwarfed anything back on Earth when they were first building skyscrapers. But compared to the Freudian monstrosities that the other livisk nobles were putting up in Imperial Seat on the regular, it was pretty paltry in comparison.
The Spider handed me a pair of binoculars. I put them up to my eyes and looked up at the building in question.
This one was even taller than the one we were on, but again, it didn't hold a candle to any of the larger monstrosities, which was a surprise. The empress was running a prison industrial complex that would've made the ancient United States green with envy, and she didn't even have a profit potential to put people in jail like those assholes did.
Now, the only profit she got was that everybody knew there was always a chance if you whispered the wrong word about the empress to the wrong person in a place where she could reach out and grab you, then it would be a hop, skip, and a jump to a bunch of faceless assholes wearing masks and body armor appearing seemingly out of nowhere and disappearing you to someplace where you might never be seen again.
Basically, see the worst hits of every wannabe authoritarian regime in Earth history, and crank it up to 11 because she really did have seemingly unlimited power.
Though I was about to test the limits of that unlimited power.
I pulled the binoculars away and looked down at them. Then I turned to the Spider and frowned.
"What?" she asked, sounding slightly defensive.
"This is seriously the best that you can come up with?" I said.
"That was the best that livisk military minds could come up with," she said.
I continued to stare at her.
"At least two centuries ago," she muttered. “We found a cache from the War of Glorious Independence Against the 13th Empress Clauseth."
"The 13th Empress Clauseth," I said, staring at her.
"She was an empress who was known for her excesses," Arvie said, piping in with a history lesson from his probe self. "Or at least the people who managed to overthrow her filled the histories with a bunch of stories of her excesses. Whether or not those were actually real is difficult to determine. There are some scholars who have posited that it was merely stories that were spread after the fact to make her seem far worse, and therefore make the glorious revolution against her seem more justified. Especially considering the way they tortured her to death in a public..."
"That's enough, Arvie," I said.
"It really is fascinating though, William. Whether or not Clauseth was a monster or somebody who was misunderstood. And the historical record tends to go back and forth depending on whether or not a sitting empress wants to declare her as a distant relative to add legitimacy to their rule."
“I said that's enough with the history lesson for now, Arvie."
Though I filed that away. Current livisk empresses using old empresses as cruise control for legitimacy was something I could take advantage of. Maybe.
"These binoculars are crap," I finally said, staring down at them.
"What's wrong with them?" she said.
"They don't even have any night vision capability. It doesn't tell me how far we are to that building. How are we going to set up a firing solution for those ancient mortars we brought along with us?"
"I still don't think those mortars are a good idea," the Spider said, looking back behind us.
We couldn't see the mortars, of course. They were still being set up. At least the livisk technology from a couple hundred years ago had the ability to set up a portable telescoping mortar that didn't actually melt the barrel when you fired something off, which was something I half-expected when I looked at some of the crap they had on hand.
I ducked into the simulation for a moment. The bombers were moving into place, and I just had to delay for a little longer. We didn’t want to get this party started before we were ready to go.
"Do you have actual firing solutions set up for everything, Arvie?”
"I do," he said.
"The drones and the transports are in position?”
I could see they were in position from a glance. From the way Arvie glanced over to the big board showing them he knew I could tell from a glance, but he didn’t show any irritation.
"They are," he said.
“And the bombers are almost ready?”
"It has taken me a great deal of difficulty guiding them through the Undercity to this position, but we are set up with heavy missiles ready to go."
"Seems kind of silly to call it a bomber when we're using missiles, but whatever."
"If you tried to actually release bombs, then it would be shot down quickly enough," Arvie said. "No matter how much stealth technology you supposedly have, there's no cloaking something like that for long over a city that is as suffused with scanners as Imperial Seat.”
"Got it," I said.
I dipped out of the simulation space, which earned me a look from Varis. No doubt she knew I was having a chat with Arvie and she wanted to be in on it, but it wasn't a good idea to do the whole computer chip thing right now. Not considering the reaction I'd had.
"Are we ready to make this happen?" I asked, glancing over my shoulder.
The mortar people were finally set up. I noted that at least one of them had a rangefinder.
"I believe we are ready," the Spider said, casting a nervous glance over her shoulder to the imperial detention facility.
"Good," I said, gesturing to the mortar people and making a waving motion with my hand. "Let's get this moving."
"Wait. I'm the one who gives the orders around here. You don't."
Whatever else the Spider was about to say was cut off as the mortar people grinned and fired. Two small sizzling points of light went arcing across the space between the two buildings.
"You're sure they aren't being held on that side?" I asked in the simulation.
"I'm fairly certain," Arvie said. "Though, there are no certainties in war."
“Tell me about it," I muttered.
Both of the mortars exploded. Both of them were like small fireworks going off against the solid facade. Neither one of them seemed to do much damage.
"I told you the mortars weren't going to do anything," the Spider said. "That is a reinforced building."
"Wait for it," I said, holding a hand up.
I held my breath and then I breathed out. I noticed Varis doing the same, her eyes going wide as she realized what I was doing.
And suddenly, the night lit up as the end of the world came to the local Imperial detention facility.