1 ASAIMC.7.9. "A phantom of the automaton"

ASAIMC/7/9

Time slips and spins before her like water in an ever-twisting dial. She watches it in a trance, unable to count the rotations as she fades, but does not become dizzy. Maybe if it were her first time, but she's had this feeling within her head so many times that it's almost a comfort now, like walking into your home; you get used to nothing bad happening to you in there.

Still, it would be great to be able to remember the time, as digits and figures screened past her as rain rolls down a window, the hours collapsing to the intoxication of the one thing she knew she could actually never live without.

She didn't know why the GBC had called her Tibet, and she'd done some digging to find out. For all she could surmise, it was a beautiful place characterised by great mountains and a hardy people. Of all the things to be compared too, she could not complain, but it was still something to ponder, in her waking life, when she wasn't wired in deep and slashing her way through military grade mesh, on the hunt for something fleeing behind its high walls.

Everyone saw something different, when they had their fittings tied and hooked up, and she had found subtle differences between her own and Moscow's interface many times, when they discussed the same operation and simply recounted two different events. For her, it was like walking across miles of flex and wire, a looming shape on the horizon against the amethyst sky designed as the spires of a city, to be reached and searched. Below her slipped nothing, or more lines far down and barley visible, but she didn't fall anymore and her balance on the sometimes very tight, tight by design, strips was honed, as it felt alright while falling, yet the landing had lost its novelty. Now she, as an image in the system, flowed as fabric in a slow wind, a child playing ghost under an ethereal fabric clad against her tight form, with spindly legs the only part keeping the component from being limbless, as though the body invisible as this shape wandered the vast netting of the many frequencies in reach, searching the ropes for her grand city of information.

She was approaching one of them now, tracing the line underfoot toward the structure of computerised towers of a washed out purple, tall and clear as the ghost took its time to approach, stalking a file coded to pull itself back behind another line whenever she got near. She'd already routed this one out twice, and she wouldn't let it flee again. It was hers now, hiding in wait somewhere between the obelisks, biding its time to lure her into a maze just so it could run once more.

She crouched to the cable, sunk her foot in deep and pulled it loose, seeing bright lines and wires coursing with green. Rising she scanned the scene, turning to her side and reaching up, reaching up in reality to pull a tab from her bag and slot it into the back of her head, into her hair where the receiver was waiting, working from the memories of muscles prone to this process, holding both arms out now within the system, although blind to her forelimbs, and allowing a synthetic line to spread from the one already in place, diverting the route around the straight, empty flat toward the city. Green was bad, she though, or just not worth the risk, as she continued down her new divergent, her cloth fluent in a simulated air, probably a vent interacting with the system somewhere. She was milk in water, on the waves of an informational stream: an image of contrast and distortion, or a phantom of the automaton.

Mauven had sent her digging and she'd quickly fallen down here, into the depths of a great space link, open to all channels if you have a pass. Some big boots with tabs on everyone's speech, but a code of access which declared you incorrect when the input exceeded the count of the actual code. Hadn't taken her long to gain entry. Now, she was on the prowl, following the safest thing she could find on this channel, with softs to keep it running until, presumably, it lured its pursuer into a trap.

The ghost rippled and seethed into the metropolis, staring up into the faraway shapes of fellow constructs, wired through intricate pathways and schemes designed to throw anyone following off. She could check those later, but she'd been struck by the simplicity of this entrance, its broad and welcoming appeal, and now moved through the centre of a floating formulation, a spanning set of spires and peaks lined with cables and lights and ports and vents, a vast and simulated computer, looking for movement between the racks. It was a trap, but to spring it they'd probably need a manual input, someone on the other end waiting for her to get close. It seemed too professional to just be someone cautious with something to hide. Maybe someone else like her, searching the stars. Someone like who Mauven was talking about.

She hadn't really known what to think during the captain's explanation, but had hid that discomfort alongside everyone else, save for the store clerk, in trust that any further speech would just confuse her more. Saying that, she'd heard stranger from stranger and worked for less, so to pledge herself in service to such claims was something she'd just have to bear and remember the limitless payment at the end of the road. She knew she'd get paid too, because she'd already checked. A relayed sequence to the limit of available figures. She was going to be rich again.

The centre of the complex came, and she turned to luck, instead leaping from her line to one of the spires and climbing, taking cords and files as points to hold, ascending in the dead silence punctuated only by the imitation hum of the computers before her. It was the song which made up her second life, her existence within the machine, as a rhythm of swelling beats and tones to drive you forward when the going got tough. In her current state, Tibet couldn't claim to suffer much hardship, as the prime of her kind, the strongest of the minds, but the occasional job would arise. Something would be sent, and she'd travel into a neon warzone.

She found the top and rose, looking over the intricate systems and peaks with an eye for motion, keeping the single leaving track in sight as to not let the bite leave without her. No matter the quantity she always felt most alive up here, alone or with Moscow, standing over the sprawling network of data just waiting to be tapped, at the edges of her grasp and awaiting capture. She could probably find a stat, but the swirling memories of her standing over every city she'd ever scaled were the things she dreamt of, as she waited for her next session in the cables. The next screening against the lids of her eyes.

It moved, a red speck sprinting down below, apparently unaware of what was above as it darted for nowhere in particular, too careless to check above as she pursued, curling from frame to frame with no intention of falling for a dive. She didn't know how but she figured a quick descent was what the bite was after so she kept her level, weaving across the monoliths like a sheet in the breeze, until the edge of the construct came and she dropped, keeping to the side until she found her footing and snagged, the ghost plastered in its covering for a second until the buoyancy returned and she leapt, bridging the gap between the cable and the computer to block the prey's path as it ground to a halt, caught in the light as she skipped in close and kicked, impaling the piece on her pointed foot.

Sparks spluttered but nothing else came, and she pulled it from her leg and prised its innards out and held them up, checking the structure for any defects save for the hole she'd put in it. Perfect condition; maintained and protected. Free of mites, so that she could slip in and spiral, drifting through a sudden nothing with the wound overhead until she landed on the track, crouched and flowing with a single objective ahead, on a wire connected to the furthest point of the portion. A lone cache, with one lone access point. Could be good.

She stomped and watched the tower tremble, its lights screaming with trembling wires as she reached down and heaved out a bundle of lines, exposed by her strike and fizzing as Tibet's body quickly reached blindly for a coil and fixed that to her skull too, opening her intake usually blocked manually for safety. Leaning in she tore through the line and relieved the stuff within, the information, which she ate with an insatiable appetite, gorging without respect or remorse and devouring it piece by piece, word by word and figure by figure through a vast cut of a mouth. It tasted of bitter secrets and sour lies and crackled down her spine like electric heat and quivered within her, trembling under her pale shawl as the Technomancer heaved, grinning wide and raw.

The ghoul stood, fangs dripping with siphoned thoughts, and leapt, folding into itself and souring up as a shot draped in cloth, rising from the husk and back out of the bite, tearing it apart as she left and leaving its corpse to fall into the nothingness. Somewhere, far away, someone was either staring at a monitor devastated, if they operated externally, or bleeding from every soft part of their body, if they were truly mechanised. She'd only every had that happen once. Only gotten jacked a single time. Why she worked so hard now.

But still she hungered. Checking what she'd just found could wait, she decided, as her breath settled and the thirst resumed, and the image of her child captain flickered over her vision, standing before a room of mercenaries and giving orders without a sense of threat or fear. Tibet had seen the caution of new command over and over again, yet this girl had met them on their turf, on unknown soil and routed them from a room full of hired meat. Unusual, even for the Blood Cell, who had followed Sahiel and his direction to a child, feet up and armed in search of a combat force purposed for defensive invasion. At least that was what Tibet presumed, under the ruling hand of a kid proclaiming the end of everything.

She retraced her path, wandering the line and slipping to a lower level, buffeting her descent with papery cloth and falling like a shroud on past data, shot and frozen when the ship had been docked on the Maza Ichana, soaking everything up like a conductive sponge to form her stolen cache. It was incredible; this machine, absorbing every wavelength in a vast, light net, easily concealable and quick to hide if anyone got close, compressing data to a fraction of its general and tying it tight and cold. She could sort through anything from overhead traffic reports and store closure times to concealed files, mineral documents and a certain brutal beheading.

Rounds through the back of a cloaked man, lain in the centre of a street on clean ground, discovered by a girl celebrating Yibirukushi with her friends that evening. Apparently, she'd had orange string lights woven through her hair. Nice tough, Tibet thought, as she crunched on cable and slipped sweet history down her throat, throbbing cold and broken as the ice shattered and the hot, slick gen within fell through. A body placed there, meant to be discovered but not too quickly, as it lay down a quiet road abandoned for the night. Noted that a single wound to the front was fired with a different calibre, a different gun from a different angle and still muscles indicated that this preceded the lethal bombardment which killed the weaponised robe.

The murder to come ahead this was reported as an execution, before the reporter suffered the same fate, to be left headless by the blade of a polearm belonging to the fallen cape. The message was thrown out there on a night when everyone was out, in the streets, away from anything to pick it up. Three read the words, two ignored the message and could be tracked out to the Stria's central road. The third left that place in reverse and took to the heights in search of the exact location of the report. All that came up when you tried to jack this line and find the user was a set of random numbers, with no correlation or meaning. Tibet wouldn't have had a clue on how to trace them, if she hadn't been sitting in the ship which processed the code.

Mauven had received the note and left immediately, abandoning her crew and heading out alone and at pace. The ghost sat back and read, staring at the crystal abyss, transfixed in her work as she observed the trail woven by the captain and then played it back, following who she presumed to be the executioner via the slight detail on a nearby sign, suggesting that it witnessed two figures at a speed too quick for it to keep up. Some tracking feature, trying to pin a target, flashing by its sensors.

Tibet took the filed description of the fallen murderer and his dying image and blew it out, relayed it across all frequencies for a split second on an encrypted line to her left, built into a randomly selected pylon on any of seventeen separate planets. It wasn't long, but enough to flash the interest of another, who raced to intercept the piece thinking it soon snagged by a fellow watcher, falling into the net with its arms outstretched, reaching for the documents as Tibet took it down to her freezer and saw it fall to the highly stacked piles of information, left dormant and unchecked.

A tracer, designed to catch anything resonating with an input the Technomancer didn't check but knew to be her dead cloak. It tried to flee, eyes wide, racing up the sides of the store but the cache was just too deep, and Tibet pounced on it from behind and tore it apart, casting the frame to the mountain of numbers and symbols below, bleeding evermore into the burial ground. It squirmed and fluttered but she dropped and slid dual spikes through its chest and allowed it to run into a stain below her pristine cloth, before scooping it up and over her snake-like jaws, which grew to allow its innards to slide freely from the carcase.

But she paused, mulling a thought on her tongue, and saw stats of the server's location on the Stria, hidden and concealed under layers of good mesh. Great mesh, only ruined by the death of this probe which bled its secrets through her fangs, displaying a sheet of corporate stats and a single line of authority over the top.

Museishingen. The best they had.

Tibet sat and stared straight, slipping through the sheet and reading its contents as she chewed on the loose wiring and boards hanging from her teeth, locating its prime base to be a ship, some kind of dreadnaught, tasked with searching for information classed specifically as of the Veniam Crisis. Dispatched by a Yendo, someone important, who sent a fleet to intercept any lowly travellers for questioning, releasing this code to hunt the frequencies for quiet rumours.

She grinned, savouring the almost smoky flavour as she swallowed innards and cable, a taste incomparable to anything she'd experienced outside her ghostly form. If Mu was mobilising then things were reaching higher heights than they'd anticipated, this far into the Crisis. She knew that both the Fools and their imperialist counterparts would eventually move to fight, but she'd have thought they'd wait longer, leave it until the opposition moved and they could justify their advance by claiming an enemy march. With this abruptness, they had discarded any possibility that the Veniam was simply a hoax, or not as large a threat was being said. Now, with the grandest military on the move, Mu had discarded any discretion they may have had to instead march toward another war.

There had been Imperials on the Stria, monitoring its activity and searching for possible combatants risen to their calling. Across the most devious of planets, she had presumed to find counter operations and attempts to disrupt the flow of combatants, but she had not expected something as bold as this. Nothing so brazen.

She read in the thundering quiet and hummed of a task force with a mother ship, sent with its own force to survey the threat and report, Tibet presumed, to whoever Yendo was. This wasn't just surveillance, she thought, as figures scrolled against her eyes, pressing down like the dark. This was an offensive, rising in synchronisation with the rest of the threats heading toward the Veniam. Not a defensive protocol, like she had predicted.

She took the sheet and referenced it with what Mauven had stolen but found nothing similar. New, a dispatch sent within the last few days. She could imagine that Mu's probes would not live long in this brutal climate, seen as too forward and obvious, leading to them getting jacked or spiked. Short life expectancy and given minimal information as such. Frowning, she stood and spat the worst of the remains, filing the quantity and size of data mined; useless information, which she left atop the stockpile of statistics previously untouched.

A waltz atop a mound of jewels, she walked to the edge of the cache and yawned, stretching as her prolonged session picked at the back of her brain. She must have been in here for close to three days now, constantly checking intake and monitoring whatever passed her in the vast black. She thought for a moment to compare herself to a fisherwoman, but she favoured a gold miner, digging through the mountains of dirt and rubble in search of a just one, shining rock.

Tibet reached for the rear of her head and unplugged the lines, feeling the cables lead through her skull from the backs of her eyes to the ports, slipping free as the green returned to her stare and she stabilised, diverting control back to her machine parts. It was a myth, to presume that one could be a true Technomancer and not sacrifice much or most of their body in turn. Not like she complained, the agent noted, as she rocked back and blinked at the vast space beyond, exposed by the captain's large windows toward the void.

She blinked. Standing by her chair was Sahiel, watching the lights, his back to the woman as she stood, carefully and quietly, holding herself upright as her vision adjusted to the density of what was around her, and things fell back into colour.

"You find anything?" He asked, turning with a smile. Most, Tibet thought, wouldn't have bothered to spin.

"Imperials are getting scared. Mobilising a specialist unit to address the Crisis. Lead by someone called Yendo." The deserter nodded, a hand on the seat.

"Nakashiro." The Technomancer raised a brow. "A commander. One of eight. If they've got them involved, then they're the big move." The woman of electric, serpentine eyes walked forward, her motion built on machine precision, each step the same as she neared and looked out to the dark, nodding.

"Looks like that. Although I wouldn't know if they were prepared to face another threat. War on two fronts, between these demons and their Fools." The deserter shrugged, joining her eye.

"What's the difference?" He asked, both treated to a passing light of a rich sepia, which made everything inside golden. "They're all the same. I didn't believe in Imperial doctrine, but I believed in them more than I believed in the Fools. I left one dual against nihilists for another." Tibet raised a brow but didn't turn, keeping the gesture to herself.

"But now there's an even thinner a line between right and wrong. At least before, you had civilisation and a system to fight for. Now, no matter what side you pick in this, you're going to land yourself with killers." Sahiel shifted, relaying her words, mulling them over as she shrugged and turned to leave, walking from the captain's perch and toward the exit.

"I still think I'm on the better side." He called over his shoulder, looking at the woman who span to move backwards, catching his stare. "Mauven's not like the others." The Technmancer let her surprise show now, a grin befalling her prosthetic jaw as she nodded, wondered for a moment, before glancing to the oversized seat the captain used and turned to leave normally, calling back to the deserter as she went.

"She made that chair into a throne." The snake-like eyes said. She waved Sahiel goodbye and departed from the centre, twisting her joints to loosen them as she went, lunging with each stride to ease tense components, her mind tired as she sought her quarters as something to smell.