Chapter 6: Back to the Front
Sixteen million, four hundred twelve thousand, eight hundred ninety two souls.
“That’s the largest mass digitization I’ve ever heard of,” Cato-Uriv commented to both sets of sisters as he perused the data packet. The information had been sent out from Gyvestral before the portals closed, the number including one pseudo-AI in the form of the mindripped System Interface. Despite completing the process only half an hour before the world’s exterminatus, the digital minds were in dedicated Summer Civilization technology. The framejack there stretched those final minutes into weeks of subjective time for interviews and debriefing, the summary of which got relayed through FungusNet just before the planet’s surface was destroyed.
Unfortunately, planet-wide System-jamming had done nothing. It had always been a long shot, but Cato would have been remiss not to try it. The next item in the data packet was more interesting, as actually being able to talk to an Interface gave Cato some insight into the administration of worlds. For the first time Cato had a peek into the economics of essence, the esoteric energy that ran the entire System. Frustratingly, the AI had no idea what essence was, or what specifically generated it, or anything about how the System-physics were applied or the System itself spread to new worlds. It was like asking an accountant who kept the books for a fusion power plant how exactly the power generation worked.
Despite not finding any instant and easy wins, he fed the data went to various analysis algorithms to crunch for possible vulnerabilities and was pleased when it quickly became clear that the day-to-day operations of the planets couldn’t deal with the scale that Cato was prepared to apply. In fact, he could make planets too expensive for the System to maintain if he just constantly knocked out dungeons, a slow attrition of logistics. On the other hand, planets did make excess essence, which was funneled back into the larger System or off to the gods for whatever reasons.
Surprisingly few of the insights were actually useful for Cato. The conflict between him and the System-gods had escalated beyond getting away with long-term, wide-spread, and low-level sabotage. The success of the mass digitization campaign, horrific as the necessity was, demonstrated that he had a functional, albeit personally revolting, answer to the threat of exterminatus.
Ripping people out of their bodies and putting them on a digital platform went against everything that Cato believed. It was a horrific invasion of privacy and obviation of someone’s personal choice, agency, and their very self — but it was that or let them die, and the latter option was so very final. It should never have been necessary, but the System-Gods and their ilk had forced it, denying Cato the option to take down the System and limit the damage to only Bismuth and above. They wanted people to die, and if only he could reach them Cato would have directed every single particle beam at his disposal to obliterate every last atom of their presence.
Unfortunately, he could only take his victories where he could get them, and he was hardly the only one displeased by events — admittedly for very different reasons. Cato-Uriv didn’t spend too much time talking directly to Initik – their relationship was still uncertain, based on the slowly evolving habitat – but the option was always there. He had a frame on standby on the moon, monitored by a low-level process to check if Initik needed his attention, and he activated it when the comms device chirped and Initik’s visage appeared in the air.
“I do not wish to accuse you of incompetence,” Initik began, his tone making it clear he had no such compunctions. “But I do not wish to contest the Core Worlds directly just yet, and that is what would happen if your agents become as blatant here as they were on Gyvestral.”
“Believe me, I don’t want it to happen either,” Cato assured Initik. “Although it might help to know that everyone who was on Gyvestral is safe. The planet being sterilized is far from ideal, but not an insurmountable obstacle.” Terraforming generally wasn’t worthwhile, but with an already-extant atmosphere and magnetosphere, it was as simple as dropping a few billion tons of carefully curated biomass to kickstart an ecology.