BECMI Chapter 319 – A Recap
“You look absolutely horrible and are completely messed up, Captain,” I told the fellow in the cryo pod, cables plugged into his brain and Runic circuitry inscribed on his skull.
The holoprojector next to his bed lit up, and winked on a double-sized rendition of his uninjured face and head. The image blinked at me, than looked down at what remained of his body, mixed feelings moving across the cyber-sensitive image before an exaggerated sigh came out of the speakers.
“Well, that was not how I thought my brilliant spelunking career of adventure and exploration was going to end,” Captain Emeril, commanding officer of the remnants of the permanently grounded FS Barhund remarked with something resembling good humor. “Given no work is being done on regeneration by either science or magic, what’s the diagnosis?”
“A lethal cocktail of necroic and Curse magic combined with fatal hard radiation. The air down there was saturated with it once you breached the lower holdings, it’s why the vivus flared so much. Once your suit containment was breached, you were all infected with it. It’s horribly invasive, very powerful, and it was mixed together with Immortal Power.”
His image took a deep fake breath, and translucent green eyes flashed. “It’s time, isn’t it?”
“Every Divination is collapsing towards the present. The longest we’ve got left is two weeks, and that basically relies on the absolute apathy of any Immortals interested in what is going on,” I replied to him softly. “Code Charcoal is already in effect. We’re evacuating people and livestock in transports and hustling them out the Portal as fast as we can.
“What happened that led you to that particular location, Captain?”
“It’s the terminus point of the communication link with the Ei of Hazz,” he said grimly. “The AI fled the island once the last of its qullan tribes were slain and we breached the thrall beasts of its Nest. Nearest we can figure is the primary program pulled its hardware by spatial movement and destroyed the teleporter behind itself so we couldn’t follow. We found the hardline for data transfer it used, however, and we’ve been following the bounce through the last three deepcrawls we discovered.”
I nodded slowly. “Part of the same network under Castle Darkmoor, as I recall,” I confirmed for him. “Although the programming was different, and the Ei only had marginal influence on the Castle’s operations.”
The Castle was famous throughout Darkmoor as the place for adventurers to test themselves. The fact that is was also a training location for jaded citizens of the civilization from four thousand years ago, now empowered with magic and just continuing its operations with all safety protocols lost or fallen away by time, made it rather perfect for the task.
Act like adventurers, it acted like a dungeon. Act like an invading corporate raider seeking the secrets of the system, it acted like a merciless dungeon overlord trying to kill you.
I had seen the suborned systems in the heart of the Castle, behind fused chambers and doors with no true entry, and Immortal Power pulsing in the heart of what was basically an Artifact tapping the massive Darkstone field that underlay most of Darkmoor itself. That stone was a natural locus of magical energy that made extremely powerful and strange magicks possible… like the Ei of Hazz raising its entire island out of the Dark Sea two centuries ago, turning a former subsea naval base into its own extremely warped rendition of a military hardpoint, prompted by powers and influences which had brought low the original civilization that had made it.
Immortal influences, and possibly things that were not Immortals, given the nature of some of the powers and energies in operation down in its base. I didn’t know if that long-vanished nation had forayed into dimensional territories it should not have, the Immortals had pushed them into doing so, or they’d just been stumbled upon and the Immortals had found them out.
Likely all three, given the cross-purposes Immortals worked at. Any interference from Entropy could be bought off by them fighting off what were certainly forces of Mythos getting involved in the mortal plane, forgiveness earned in return for timely help against forces that threatened all of them.
Probably all by design. The secrets of technology were lost to the world again, and this time they’d be hidden much more thoroughly, or outright destroyed, given the devastation behind everything, and if the Far Shore was any indication.
“Just a bare remnant under the Castle, the equivalent of an internet link for casual data exchange, nothing encrypted or truly able to get through to secure systems. The Castle wouldn’t even give up information on its repeated users to the Ei, so they weren’t part of the same secured system in the slightest.
“Each delve gave us clues to the locations of the next one, the Ei wasn’t able to burn the hardlines connecting them. But it’s plain something was there waiting for us at this last one, as the violence started as soon as we breached the security of the deeper vault after locating the access point, overcoming the passive defenses, and headed deeper.” The captain’s image paused in thought. “There is something really, really bad down there, Edgina. I can feel it in the guts I no longer have. What kind of reaction has that vault been having?”
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“It bored out the plug I put in it and now is starting to set up fortifications. Apparently Federation tech scans as alien invaders, and the remnants of the military technology is mobilizing to resist your coming and eradicate you. It probably doesn’t help that we moved in artillery to shell the place to fuck-all and back, and I’ve brought down their shielding three times so they can’t build in peace.”
“If it’s the Ei, it’s backed into a corner, I don’t think there’s any remnants of the planetary defense network it can escape to, now. If it keeps churning out combatants, and they keep being destroyed, then when it runs out of machines, it will likely initiate a planetary wipe to deny the world to alien invaders, targeting the base of operations for its attackers,” he pointed out logically.
“Darkmoor City,” I nodded agreement. “I don’t think even the Barhund’s shields could take the hit of what is coming. The Doom is cycling closer by the minute. I’ve already issued all the warnings I’m going to that the Code Black is imminent. We’re basically waiting on a shielded missile launch while the plasma cannons keep the deployment zone molten and chew a path down to the vault to stop the deployment of nuclear launchers and worse.”
His holographic eyes flickered. “Fifty-three years. Longer than you expected, less than you hoped for. What about your other matters?” he inquired carefully.
“I’ve got three Immortal traps ready to go. Don’t worry about them, the focus is on you. I’ve got Professor Encheliff coming to oversee the upload process to the computer network of the Barhund itself, I’m not trusting you to the Darkmoor network. The magitech neural interface is complete, so we’re not uploading merely a brain engram and copy, we’re actually uploading your soul, much more like a Magic Jar effect.”
“I see.” He looked around in consideration at the chamber he was in. “I’ll be inhabiting my ship, then?” A holographic hand rubbed an illusionary chin. “Well, that will definitely be an expansion of my mental capacities, all things being equal otherwise, and if I want to feel ‘real’, I can just log into Exudar IV or something similar that provides equivalent feedback.” He hesitated just a moment. “How are the kids taking it?”
Fifty years was a long time for the crew to hold onto a grudge, especially given the change in their captain after they moved out of the ship. He had an armlist of lovers from the scholarly and adventurous populations alike, and four kids among three different mothers, passing on his bloodline properly even if he wasn’t actually married to any of them. He’d taken proper care of his kids, who were all burgeoning adventurers or serving in the military themselves.
One of them, Chbilla, was actually a Shogun pilot suppressing the Ei’s forces up north, getting proper vengeance for her dad and his team!
“They are read in and know what happened to you. They expect some contact once you upload, so keep that in mind.”
“They’ll be heading out through the Portal, while I have to remain behind,” he nodded reluctantly. “Do you have something nefarious in mind?” he dared to ask. “I seem to remember that the Barhund didn’t get out of what is coming unscathed.”
My eyes flashed once. “I’m going to be stealing an unorthodox Ascension from a random soul. On the other shore, Encheliff managed to get blasted into Immortal status during the Doom of Darkmoor.” Emeril’s holo blinked at me in surprise. “The only way I can believe that happened has to do with super-energizing of the neural technology and mind transfer modules he was working on, combined with a fantastic amount of thaumic energy suffusing it.” I waved my hand tellingly all around us. “Most of the Barhund is devastated in the eruption over there, despite being hundreds of miles away, shielded, built of unearthly metals, and the like. The only parts that survive unscathed are basically engineering around the fusion core.”
“… I see. You want me to absorb as much of the incoming energy as possible and bootleg myself up to their status?” Emeril deduced thoughtfully.
“It worked once, no reason it should not work again.”
“And you’ve the systems in place to support this move!” he guessed with a knowing smile.
I nodded once. “I do indeed. It’s like I did more during the last fifty years than just study high technology and super-science!”
There was a shout in the Markspace, we both heard it, and turned to listen to his youngest daughter shouting out that at least a two hundred megaton atomic weapon had just detonated at the entry to the Ei’s Vault, blowing out the side of the mountain and sweeping over them as their force fields valiantly deflected the shockwave five miles out.
“We don’t have much time. Encheliff will be here in minutes, we’ll start the upload process. I have another stop I have to make.”
“Go. Either I die a satisfied man, or I Ascend to become an unsatisfied Immortal.” His holographic knuckles cracked loudly. “See you on the other side either way, Edgina.”
“Emeril.” I bowed to him slowly and formally, holographic feet clicked as his hologram gave me a full military salute in return. I swept back out the door, murmuring the spell that would Teleport me to my next stop.
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“Lady Edgina asking for immediate conference with the controlling AI for the Darkmoor Castle Entertainment Environment,” I said aloud as I phased into being there.
All around me were banks of computers in crazy patterns never put in place by humans, lights blinking, wires and bulbs sizzling and dinging as they ran in formations that had nothing to do with electricity, and everything to do with some weird form of magitech that definitely wasn’t of the same family as the Ei of Hazz.
All of those lights flared and then winked out abruptly all around me, plunging the place into darkness, except for a single viewscreen chased by red neon lights that was flashing dangerously ahead of me.
“If I hear those arachnebots coming in, I’m going to leave while gifting you with an acidic Meteor Swarm for your rudeness. Don’t be rude.”
Rasping and clicking sounds from the adjoining corridor stopped. The chill and low-lit atmosphere obviously weren’t discomforting me, and the internal defenses here were nothing to speak of.
The viewscreen ahead of me winked, and text scrolled across it in a language dead for over thirty-five hundred years here. WHAT DO YOU WANT?, it asked, reluctance obvious in the slow pacing of the symbols.