Chapter 13: Flashpoint
“Oh, heck.”
Cato’s human frame felt like he’d been punched in the gut when he saw a full ten percent of his forces vaporized in a single instant. It was exactly the same thing that had happened on Uriva, and while he’d always known such a response was possible he’d hoped that the technique was limited. After all, the few times he’d needed to use System-jamming biotechnology, it hadn’t provoked that level of response.
He had planned for it though, so he simply slapped metaphorical buttons to cancel the deployment of all the bioweaponry still in distant orbit. There was nothing he could do about the forces on ballistic trajectories down into the atmosphere, and he’d lose another ten percent just from that. Not that they were deaths, but that was all biomass that couldn’t be used in the future. Worse, he’d have to deal with things in a far more heavy-handed manner. He couldn’t just leave a new planet to the System’s apocalyptic arrival. Billions of lives might be on the line.
Yet as the next wave fell into the atmosphere, nothing happened. The warframes and support biologics passed into System territory unmolested and intact. He stared for a moment, then scrambled to un-cancel the fleet movements he’d just canceled, because if they were going to give him an opening he’d take it.
“I wonder if that’s a limitation or they just think it’s not worth doing again,” Raine mused. In fact, most of the forces that had been destroyed were ones under her control. “How long is the cooldown on divine Skills like that? Or maybe it’s a cost issue? It’s not like divine intervention is common.”
“Exceedingly rare, in fact,” Yaniss said. This version of her was being allowed to watch what was going on — but Cato had restricted her use of the fungal radio network for the moment. Not only because he needed all that bandwidth himself, but also because he didn’t quite trust her commitment to operational security. “They usually work through divine classes and quests.”
They were all sharing a compound reality, part virtual and part real, so he could see her body language easily enough as she ruffled her feathers in thought. She didn’t seem too put out by the restrictions, certainly less than Cato was. While bandwidth wasn’t exactly sustenance for digital life, it was damned close and cutting people off even for good reason disturbed him in ways that were difficult to articulate. But he didn’t have infinite resources and infinite goodwill to play with, so he had to put restrictions in someplace.
“This isn’t the usual situation though,” Cato sighed. “I’m an outside threat, so there’s the possibility that whatever rules they play by will be suspended. Essence is weird and I might have to worry about running up against nearly infinite energy. I know each planet is separate, so it might not be that bad, but the worst case scenario was really bad.” The energies he was contemplating scaled all the way up to planet-cracking levels, and he really did not want to face the awful possibility of needing to kill millions of innocents on some world to save billions of innocents in the long run, in the remainder of the System and whatever worlds it targeted in the future.
“I think you’re putting too much trust in your simulations,” Raine said bluntly. “Even if it might be that you can stop entropy with enough essence, I’ve never seen anything even measuring up to what you do. Maybe there’s something in the inner or core worlds, but now that I’m out of it — the gods seem like administrators. They can do a lot, but they aren’t omnipotent.”