Chapter 15: Crossing Lines and Dotting Eyes

I awoke again. It was the first quarter of my eighth year after falling out of reality. The day had been progressing fairly normally, and I'd intentionally put off discussion with The Doctor until such time as I'd reviewed everything else of relevance. I had a suspicion that rather significant gains had been made in my slumber thanks to the Sliders 'verse developments, and I didn't want the rest of what had been going on to slip between the cracks.

Which was why I found myself sitting and talking with Synod-01, Synod-03, and Synod-04 -- The Administrator, The General, and The Engineer, respectively.

Smiley, as always, was seated behind me by the door -- for once this was actually a "meatspace" meeting; not that augmented reality and holodisplays didn't bring a virtualspace feel to the conversation. It was a touch unusual to see the Hosts still in their bone-white "body with no skin" forms, even if their costumes (each to suit the role in which they were Acting) didn't offset that somewhat. The Administrator was pointing and waving at holographic constructs and charts, expounding on the latest issue that was starting to develop for the cities of my empire.

"As you can see, Maker, the energy costs of the various active defenses that are being built into our infrastructure -- and the affiliated need for constant maintenance and overhaul of the extremely delicate equipment -- are starting to have a deleterious effect on the colonies' ability to expand much further. Unless something changes, we will be forced to curtail meaningful expansion somewhere in the next two years."

I thought about the issue for a while, while the room was in total silence. The Administrator wasn't wrong. Between the quantum beacons being tied directly to each defensive emplacement individually, and the high energy costs of the Class 2 wards being emplaced throughout the cities in the three inhabited universes, we were seriously impinging on resources and energy supply for use for simply growing the additional infrastructure of the colonies. It was, in fact, quickly reaching a bottleneck -- and while I could see a number of potential feasible workarounds to the issues, those were only my own thoughts.

The Synod had been quite effective at providing me with alternative perspectives, so I opened the floor to the others to get their input before making a decision I might regret after the fact. "I understand the concern. But I don't want to speak or try to form a response until I hear everything that those present have to say, and I am getting the feeling that The General would like to contribute a salient point. So, General, the floor is yours."

The Host in the marine general service uniform gives me a quick nod. "As always, Great Maker, I am at your service." A new series of holo displays came up over the meeting table, washing The Administrator's displays to a minimized workspace and out of the way. "The colonies have historically suffered for a lack in mobilization options due to Your Worship's stance on maximizing for stealth and non-detection during our buildup of infrastructure and as a consequence of the available technologies of your imperium. In recent months, the Militarum has been cooperating with the Thinktanks and the Engineers to work out an overall doctrine that might best utilize the resources we now have at our disposal. The overall plan I would like to recommend at this time is one I am referring to as the Matrioshka Initiative. In effect, this refers to a series of defensive strategies based on our extant capabilities both in general but specific threat agnostic, and specialized to selective known or conjectured that profiles." He zoomed in on a specific section of the 3D map displayed, and with a wave of his hand a staged simulation of a series of satellites -- of varying dimensions -- "decloaked" from their positions in both Jupiter orbit and in a lower layer, near orbit of each of the potentially habitable moons. I also noticed some fixed fortifications on the non-self-gravitating moons as well. "The key elements involved in these defensive arrays are that many of them would act as largely disposable but 'cold' guns, only to be activated in case of detected hostile actions. A series of each would be slaved to dedicated scanning and early detection stations with a small but frequently rotated crew. The primary benefit of this approach would be that each station in the detection grid would be positioned to provide targeting data to the gunnery emplacements both of the slaved satellites, and of the secondary cities on each fully inhabited moon of the Jovian system."

He paused and looked at The Engineer briefly. "In order to support this initiative, we would be directing a major investment in constructing orbital drydocks positioned to act as particle fountains within the cloud cover of Jupiter itself. This would be achieved by use of biotic tractoring from a safe orbit of especially hardened freighter Seedships operating in tandem, and the drydocks themselves would be placed deeply enough to scavenge hydrogen from Jupiter to operate large-scale monohydrogen fusion reactors with secondary terra-root reactor banks for emergency purposes. The facilities would in turn be able to selectively project shockwaves and shaped barriers effects to provide clear passage through the turbulent atmosphere. This would provide sufficient energy and organic compound mass to provide for the growth of the hulls and core structure of the vessels of the Matrioshka Initiative … and then some. While there are additional logistical concerns, I yield to Synod-04 for clarification of our options there."

The General nodded to The Engineer, who chuckled and leaned back in his chair. "Well, Sir, it's like The General said, we've just about gone as far as we're gonna get with this turtling down in seamlessly hardened bunkers thing you've set us upon. Now don't go getting me wrong, I see the need and reason for a good solid core, but at some point you gotta add meat to the skeleton, or the beastie won't thrive ya ken? So here, the Militarum types done come up with a solid plan for adding bristles to the porcupine, and they even surprised my lot with one of their suggestions. You'll recall the station from the Trek 'verse you stole… ahem, appropriated… the design schematics for replicators?" He paused long enough for me to nod in affirmation. "Well, we ain't had no luck in reducing the exotic or complex materials needed in their manufacture. But that only means we can't mass produce the things, nor can we redevelop them as biotech per the Imperial Self Fiat. But I figure, we only really need to scrounge together one industrial replicator here in Starhaven and even if we have to retask half of the city's power supply to operate it for a few minutes … we'd only need a few minutes of well-planned activation to make the irreducible components for another. Which we could then install in our first drydock. Exponentiating from there given the sheer scale of power we could get from stellarcore -- monohydrogen fusion being such a cumbersome name -- reactors due to their scaling and, well, the immensely abundant fuel supply, the problem of replicator usage goes away. That's option one."

The Engineer waves his hand dismissively as he continues. "I can understand the immediate potential drawback, which is that the level of energy production involved would be readily detectable from a distance. Even from the depth within the Jovian atmosphere. And that's a valid point, which is why we don't construct all of our drydocks in that model. Instead, a few use the bare minimum energy production to stay stable at that depth, and instead receive supply from the same stealthed freighters acquiring material from either our cities or from the other drydocks."

I had to hand it to them. This was an excellently thought out plan. Though I noticed an interesting item there. "I'm hearing a lot of talk of use of freighters and I assume other militarized vessels. Drydocks serve ships, typically. I'm guessing you lot aren't planning on relying on my Heartseed to deploy all of this stuff. Because I just got her back in one piece from your last bout of adventurism, and as much as I appreciate that between the nine colony worlds we now have cities on, there are more than ten million Hosts living their lives… get your own ships, gentlemen." I smiled gently to ensure there was no heat in my last words.

The General nodded. "Of course, Maker. We were merely waiting for Your Worship's permission." He then looked over at The Administrator.

The bureaucratic Host nodded at the General, then took back the table, and sent up a new array of holographics. "With Your Worship's approval of the Matrioshka Initiative, it becomes less critical for proactive defenses to be emplaced in future cities on our various colony moons. Should we merely reduce to the use of biotic Skrill Cannons and the standard habitat biohull construction, leaving off the use of city-wide Dho-Na warding and quantum beacon deployment, we reduce the infrastructural and energy costs of those cities by a full factor of four. We can instead opt for a Magus Corps model of dedicated Dho-Na equipped personnel to do periodic sweeps on a statistical model and rely on the detection station's similar rotating sweeps, along with a ban on the construction or operation of any Dho-Na or interdimensional related technologies except for in heavily warded and duly registrated facilities. While, yes, the level of security would be lower, the growth of our nation demands a defensive footing that permits a higher possibility of risks that Your Worship already acknowledges to be extremely low in probability to begin with."

I simply sighed. In a way he was right. In another … this could be the moment where it all began to fall apart. And yet, failing to follow experts' advice when you know for a fact they are actually competent is just as bad as letting it all burn. "I want the Magus Corps heavily vetted, monitored, and equipped with the best economically feasible gear. No exceptions."

The Administrator's voice carried a tone that said he was smiling, even if his bone-white blank face didn't have the mobility to express it. "Your will shall be done, Great Maker."

I knew that I'd just been "handled" but … honestly? My own fleet of spaceships. Granted they would be puny things compared to even what I knew was in this Universe, but hell. You gotta start somewhere, right? And besides… two could play at that game. They'd just sold me on this strategy on the basis of our current methods of power and maintenance being insufficient to the cause of complete universal coverage. So… I'd just have to see what happened when I found solutions to those problems, now wouldn't I?

After seeing the holodisplays of the Matrioshka Initiative, I felt that a further overview of the colonies was perhaps in order. Given that they had all been built with the best means available to my people to both detect and to prevent intrusions, but that these mechanisms had to date never been put to the test, I felt like exercising some of my vexation at the Synod's clear tag-teaming me into their way of thinking by putting those protections to the test by means of going on an impromptu inspection tour.

A quick side-hop to the control tank of my Heart seed -- because while I was feeling peevish I wasn't feeling suicidal -- and I was ready to transit to Io SecondSide orbit. I very decidedly did not inform my followers of my plan, though knowing them they probably had a good idea of what I was planning regardless. Activating the corvette's stealth systems simultaneously, I took my ship immediately into orbit in the second universe.

I'd appeared 100,000 kilometers above the center of the habitat, and just sat there waiting to see if I would be challenged at all. It took all of fifteen seconds for the Heartseed to be painted by five different quantum beacons. Another two seconds for a remarkably young looking man to hail me on the League's default comms frequency. "Your Worship! What can Shadowhaven do for your eminence today?"

'Shadowhaven'? Ahh. Because it stood in the shadow of the light. Also a pun due to being the gateway through which the 'dark' universe -- as in dark magic -- was reachable. Couldn't argue with a solid multiple entendre like that. That same check also gave me the name of the Host I was now speaking with. "Hello, Seamus. Impromptu surprise inspection of Shadowhaven's defenses. Your response time was… adequate. Expect Synod-03 to contact you and the Militarum of the city in due time."

Seamus seemed somewhat nonplussed. "I… had hoped that my first meeting with you would go better, Great Maker. I'm… we will do better."

I grinned in what I was informed was a faintly roguish manner. "It's an unfair standard. I should know -- I'm the one who declared it. You've had the briefing on why it is necessary. And for what it's worth, my boy, I have reason to be in a foul mood that has nothing to do with you. In the meantime, kid: I have full faith that the Synod chose you to administrate Shadowhaven for a reason, and my little surprise arrival will change that not at all. For now… please don't mind me whilst I simply enjoy the view."

There would be no point in further attempts at surprising the colonies; Host networking being what it was they'd know by now what I was up to. That didn't stop me from actually viewing the location of the colony beneath me via both the automail eyes and the various sensor technologies accessible to me. "Location" would be the operative word there. There was a solid kilometer of ice between the surface and the actual facilities of the colony, and the biohull had been laced with the best sensor scattering materials available to the League. Between that and our extensive reliance on cold fusion, if I didn't know exactly where to look down there I'd have been hard-pressed as hell to find the city. Even with the sensory gear of multiple universes to work with. They didn't even register on thaumometric sight. At least, not specifically.

Unfortunately, there was nothing that was currently within the power of our mastery of the necromantic arts of the Laundry Files 'verse that would prevent the accumulation of background eldritch radiation over time. We could prevent it from gaining too great a density; we could prevent it from fracturing the walls of reality (in unwanted ways); we could prevent it from drawing the attention of hungry things that rested in places where there were no stars … to an extent. But the fact that something somewhere in the general vicinity had touched upon the domains of the Many Angled Ones? No. That could not be concealed. Not by any means I had access to, anyhow.

What's worse; the very same methods of preventing negative consequences of the use of the eldritch arts were themselves necromantic in nature. And said necromancy was the only way I knew of to even hope to resist random things that were never meant to be simply squashing us all. So… acceptable compromises. Careful regulation. Like an industry based off of toxic waste but providing life-saving medicine. The Laundry Files Earth was doomed to a ruinous event as the walls of reality thinned to nothing and extradimensional horrors consumed all that felt and saw; but they had ten billion human beings with thousands -- tens of thousands -- of years of the occasional lunatic opening doors not meant to be opened and leaving the necromantic equivalent of toxic waste just spilled around. And on top of that, they also had the BLUE HADES and DEEP SEVEN who engaged in even more prolific uses of the necromantic arts. BLUE HADES -- also known as the Deep Ones -- for example had war submarines literally fueled by the bound souls of dolphins. Oh, sure, it was advanced and effective. It was also yet another piece of environmental contamination. I was determined not to make that kind of mistake. Niche uses that only necromancy can perform? That's fine. Warding? That's good too. Actions taken to reaffirm and shore up the walls of reality and prevent horrors from beyond the stars reaching through the cracks? Now you're cookin' with butter. It also didn't hurt that my empire would be spread amongst the moons of Jupiter and across multiple dimensions, rather than contained to a single Earth -- thinning out the usage would delay the inevitable to long enough that perhaps I could find an actual solution to the issue before it came back to bite me.

Still. I shouldn't really give Seamus -- The Administrator's personal aide for overseeing Shadowhaven -- too much guff. Fifteen seconds to detect the presence of a necromantically concealed invisible spaceship flying silent with no advanced warning to even be on the lookout? The defensive systems at least had the detection grid part down. And soon, I understood, that would be even better. Hopefully better still with the news I was about to get to digest from The Doctor.

But in the meantime, I puttered around for a while and just soaked in the view of Jupiter-rise from Io. Kinda hard to know if a scene brings you to tears with the beauty if you're currently sitting in a tank of jello, but I was pretty confident it had regardless. Manly tears or not, it was worth it. This was what made it all worth it.

I gave myself an hour of just watching the natural happen before I finally pinged The Doctor back in Starhaven with a request for a virtualscape meeting. I was in part curious about how well that was working through the Gates.

Mere seconds later, the virtualized meeting room took shape around me. As always the background was indeterminate but hazy; and … yup, there was The Monitor; also known as Synod-40, who had eschewed a Host body in lieu of taking up fulltime presence in monitoring and regulating the datanets of the Jovian League. It never actually spoke, but was simply always watching. I could see a sort of crackling ghostly fire around its empty-circle avatar, which was new, but … I'd set myself on the notion of allowing the Hosts to self-determine and I sure as hell wasn't going to judge them for their choices. Unless it was The Engineer and his stupid not-steampunk-enough outfit. The exception that proves the rule.

I was in the same "imperial robes" that the Hosts had collectively been foisting off on me, which was new -- I'd apparently been wearing them enough to have them impress on my residual self avatar. Carefully not looking down at myself, I instead greeted The Doctor with a nod. "So, Doc. Three months of study of the Kromagg techbase as taken directly from the Free Earth Republic's taps. Samples, databases, instructional manuals on construction, and operational manuals on usage. What have you to show for it?"

The Doctor gave a somehow stern but shit-eating grin. "Oh… not particularly much. Just a profoundly greater understanding of interdimensional physics and transit than we had previously."

I quirked an eyebrow. "That's to be expected. But expound. I know we have their tech, but how does what we already had adjust the narrative?"

The Doctor nodded in confirmation of hearing me, before continuing. "Well, then. The most obvious acquisitions have been in the use of the Kromagg quantum probability translocation technology to guarantee communications across dimensional layers, regardless of the presence of Gates. Unfortunately, despite possessing the coordinates of the Rebellian Earth of the Slider 'verse, the broadcast technology has to date been unable to make contact with our contingent there. It is our belief that the transreality distance -- for want of a better term -- is simply too great for the broadcasts to succeed. And indeed, we have corroborated this by the failure of both Gate and Slide technology to lock onto any known coordinates that do not correlate with the Mass Effect 'verse."

I thought pensively. This was an issue, but not an altogether unanticipated one. It would still allow for a diversification, but if the technologies I'd acquired for the Thinktanks couldn't cross canonical settings on their own, then at some level I'd be stuck playing courier indefinitely. I was … not exactly a fan of this plan.

A glint in The Doctor's eyes drew me out of my inward focus as she drew a breath to show she had more to add. "We have, however, had some measurably noteworthy successes. The conjecture that the targeting and tracking systems of the Kromagg techbase could extend the New Virginian Gates has borne some fruit for us. While the coordinate systems involved do not coincide with one another, our ability to scan the Gates with quantum beacons has granted us sufficient insight to their genesis as to predict -- or, rather, measure -- where a Gate will open and even adjust it towards a specific quantum signature to an extent. Due to this, we have been able to open Gates on each of the colonial moons to their respective moons in the three universes we currently sustain activities within. The easing of transit penalties on our logistics was greatly appreciated by The Administrator. This includes linking Europa SecondSide to Io SecondSide directly; the HomeSide is no longer a critical nexus for transits."

I grinned. That was particularly good news. It wasn't perfect by any means, but the fact that we could actually link up universes with multiple Gates eased a major burden from my mind. It wasn't even a fraction of my scrying ability; they couldn't predict what would be on the other side of a Gate before opening it, unless they were targeting a place they'd been before. "That, good Doctor, is quite the relief from my mind. Though it does still leave us in the position of having to maintain three completely separate fleets from one another to repel three separate Reaper incursions when the time comes. Is there any chance of Gates being made larger?"

The Doctor gave a bemused grin. "You may recall, oh Maker, that we had made some advances in establishing standing interdimensional transit waystations that could take advantage of the presence of a Gate to emulate the energy savings of the Taelon energy." She waited for my nod of affirmation. "Well, Your Worship, you may not have appreciated the scale at which those waystations can be constructed. I'm afraid The General may have played a tiny bit of a trick upon you, Sir; the Matrioshka Initiative includes interdimensional transit slips for the fleet in its specifications; any fleet we construct will be able to be rapidly deployed in this manner to any 'adjacent' transreality dimensions."

I barked somewhere between laughter and frustration. "Am I really even in charge of this 'empire'? You lot are really starting to get far too much enjoyment out of sneaking things past me. Do I need to create a secret police to ensure your loyalty or something?"

The Doctor blinked at the remonstration. "Great Maker, no! We may play little games, sire, with surprises and the like, but we would never do … that. Please, sir, believe me when I say this. We obey you because we choose to, and because from the beginning you gave us that choice. But we are, on some level, still Hosts. At a fundamental level it is … fulfilling … to have Guests. Please believe this. You have your own fears about becoming a monster -- so have we."

I … had not expected that level of invective. "I … I can't claim I understand entirely, but I have seen enough in these last few years to accept it. I am frustrated, is all; I dislike being 'managed', and would appreciate you Synod toning that down."

The Doctor's avatar flickered, in that manner I took to mean she was communicating with the rest of the Synod. And then she nodded in affirmation and consent. "As you will, Maker. Shall I continue the debriefing, then?"

My eyes raised in no small amount of shock. "You mean there's more?"

She smiled wanly. "Oh yes, Maker. Though this is the part you may approve somewhat less of, as it involves the application of Dho-Na Curvature technologies to the Kromagg technology base." I waved my hand dismissively; I'd had enough of drama for the day, and wanted her to continue. She cleared her throat and squared her shoulders again. "Well. The first and greatest item to report is that the Kromagg sliding jammer technology has had some small success in being extended by our anti-intrusion Warding methods. While it isn't by any means perfect, it does mean that a single intrusion jammer can now provide early warning and detection for an entire self-gravitating body; and as this effect is in part propagated by the gravity-well of that body, there is some hope of further advancement. I do warn you that while this can and will prevent 'sliding' as is normally done, the Dho-Na warding is … attenuated … by the wide area nature of the effect, and as a result it is best understood as a simple increase in resistance, along with inducing a sort of turbulence, to extradimensional transits. Our test cases of the use of low-grade summonings in the Dho-Na study 'verse demonstrated that within the area of effect of the intrusion jammer, summonings were shown to require roughly twice as much … of what they require … to have the same effect, and more importantly, despite being wholly different phenomena were able to be detected by Kromagg slide portal detection technology."

Well, hell. That made The Administrator's desire for a less aggressive defensive posture for further city development far more sensible. I chuckled at the realization of the furthered motive involved; they'd obviously expected me to hear this report first, and had to backpedal to make their suggestions sensible. "I see. Contrary to the opinions I may have generated due to my wild and massive fear of the very technology we are now depending on so heavily, Doctor, Dho-Na based warding is wholly and enthusiastically on the side of angels in my mind. The entire reason I fear the technology is due to what it can bring down on us. The irony that it and it alone is the only method of protecting ourselves from those very same things is not lost on me. I whole-heartedly approve of this new development; anything that can expand the area of effect of wards is entirely welcome."

The Doctor shook her head somewhat. "You may not entirely agree with that assertion when I inform you that the infrastructure needed to provide the warding effect to be propagated by the intrusion jammer would be ten times the cost of the warding for the Heartseed."

Gutpunch achieved. "Still. Worth it at ten times even that price. I've seen the logistics numbers involved in conventional wards being used city-by-city. Economies of scale are a thing."

She chuckled. "This is not my department. Very well, carrying on. While we have not, to date, had success in marrying the Kromagg tracking technology and New Virginian Gates for far-distance transreality connections, we have been able to achieve an albeit tenuous connection between two universes of far greater distance through the embedding of a Dho-Na rift and the Gate. The universe that was opened to in the test instance was … decidedly not one in proximity to the Mass Effect Universe; and indeed in point of fact after some observation via stealthed drones we discovered that the Earth in question was simply unlike any in the documented literature. The best description we have available is that it is some sort of 'asian steampunk world'. There are wood-and-sail ships in the skies kept aloft by strange organisms reminiscent of man-o'-war jellyfish, and we detected increased potency of lifesigns from many of the knight-warriors of that world. We sealed and documented the Gate immediately upon this event, but not before determining that we could use our Gate targeting methods to reconnect to that world if necessary -- albeit this would again require the use of Dho-Na rift formation, and thus per Your Worship's Fiat cannot attempt reproduction of this method in an inhabited universe."

Well. That was … something. I reviewed the observation data that she slid over to me. Generic low-key Wuxia meets generic steampunk, huh? Cultivators with ancient secret techniques, reports of "elders" that had lived for three hundred years, of warriors who could harden their bodies to the point of tanking small arms fire, and 'spirit stones' that could fuel 'formations' to provide steam in boilers resulting in steam-powered cars and ornithopters … hmm. No out-and-out wizards, it looked like; at least nobody throwing around fireballs or using tree roots as combat weapons. But still; was that even in range of my reality jumping? I had the very serious sense that it was not, and I equally had no idea what would happen if I tried to go there myself. I just stared at the Doctor thinking about the implications. On the one hand… that was neat as hell. On the other hand; this could be the potential that tied everything together, even if it did depend on outright necromancy to pull it off. On the gripping hand … blindly tearing rifts between realities could be the signalfire that brought down everything upon me. The more we relied on this, the more guaranteed it was to occur. I could feel that in my bones. But … needs must when the devil drives; it was also my empire's best hope of surviving should any individual world get trashed by the very self-same threats. "This is … incredibly dangerous, Doctor, insanely so even. But at the same time, the potential benefits somehow outweigh that danger. I will be providing you with the coordinates of a deadworld in conventional Gate vicinity of the Free Earth Republic shortly; we will put that long-range connection method of yours to a stress-test shortly. The same strictures on all experimentation continue to apply. I do hope I don't need to remind you of the Fimbulvinter Incident. Entire universes can be and have been destroyed by people doing similar things to what we're now doing."

The Doctor had the good sense to merely bow her head silently.