Godclads

Chapter 4-4 A Milk-Run…

The SRU Nightmantis was a good platform. Don’t ever let the Syndicates fool you about that. Not the rig’s fault those bastards keep doing direct assaults using a scout-exo. ‘Course, a recovered Nightmantis is still far superior compared to say, an Atlas Lifter model with some armor plates bolted onto it.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s got problems. Substandard power grid. Single weapon hardpoint. Audio-glitches. But those are more “current” problems. ‘Mantis was made by Voidwatch some five-hundred and sixty years ago. The fact we’re still using it is a testament to its design.

Why is the Nightmantis so popular? Same as any other armor the Syndicates like to use: licensing. The corp that made the Nightmantis is dead as Jaus, so there’s no one enforcing the proliferation of its design. Of course, most of these rigs are still secondhand hand-me-downs because the auto-fabs themselves are licensed and the Guilds won’t outright sell one to the little people down below.

Something about the balance of power and all that. Can’t have the FATELESS get too creative with their own lives, now can we?

-Quail Tavers, School of the Warrens

4-4

A Milk-Run…

On wounded streets of cracking rust did Avo begin his run. Speckled pockets of thoughtstuff lined the periphery of his cog-feed, and ebbing indicators flashed through his armor’s HUD. As the dappled shine of the daystar spilled across his war-touched rig, Avo felt himself an intruder in this local ecosystem, his gleaming form like a knife descending once again into an open wound yet to heal.

Broken bridges and shattered streets caked in mucus lined the sprawl around him with an oily sheen. Left by the slugs was Avo’s guess. Visual telemetries scanned the substance through his myriad of optics, yet his database came up empty. Didn’t know if that was because there was nothing on the creature or if his rig’s internal systems were just a blank slate after whatever the Syndicate did to it.

“You mean ‘omni-cochlear’?”

“That’s what I said, Jadan.”

Avo heard the tech state his actual name once more. Chambers responded by telling him to throat a fusion burner. Avo ignored the conversation and decided that he would have an easier time figuring out the rig on his own. Carefully he focused his attention on the ripples of two nearby voices, the rig’s HUD narrowing on their position.

Immediately, he felt diminutive flaps and dishes extend along his shoulders. Pulsing representations of sound waves bounced along walls, guiding him to a more optimal position to perform his reconnaissance. Avo heard a crackle run through his ears. Another sputter, and suddenly he was listening to a drunken conversation between two slurring men, their position triangulated to be three stories up in a run-down tenement.

Loose looping threads of thought pulsed free from their minds.

“Works,” Avo said, interrupting Chambers’ tirade against the tech. “Stop yelling.”

“...And… and I says,” a slurring voice crackled. A squatter, Avo presumed. “I says to him, I says, ‘look here you half-breed of a half-strand, you stepped in my territory.’ And so I popped out my mono-knife and guess what he did?”

“Pulled a gun?” A softer voice this time. Another person. More static with their words. The rig’s EI was compensating hard to sort their words from the general ambiance.

“Pulled a gun, he did. Stole my good knife from me.”

The analysis had both of their vocal signatures recorded and stored for future analysis. Additionally, it had placed a pulsing outline of their best-estimated position. Updating its systems to the new data, Avo’s EI sent him recommendations for engagement.

A solution for a firing vector appeared in his HUD. The walls of the tenement were mottled and porous. They looked to be of cheap plascrete to begin with–easily penetrated material with little chance of stopping a precision gauss cannon at close range. His HUD was calling for him to move a foot to his right so he could get both targets with one shot.

With a thought, Avo layered his Phy-Sim over the armor’s calculations. Phantasmic and binary targeting lanes ran up exactly.

“Chambers,” Avo said, curious. “The tech? How early?”

“How early what? Jaus–use your words, consang, come on! How early was the tech developed?”

Avo grunted.

“Shit, ghoulie. Rigs are six centuries old. Well, six centuries old since the Voider-fucks sold it to us terrestrials for squatting rights on the moon. Those half-strands probably had this shit for thousands of years.”

Thousands of years. A coiling discomfort twisted inside Avo. The Low Masters had made their kind within the century. They were supposed to be monsters beyond monsters; a bioweapon to surmount all bioweapons. Come to realize that even just one of the Guilds could have slaughtered his kind centuries ago. It didn’t take a Regular to kill a ghoul. All it took was someone in a rig.

There was a special kind of horror to realizing you were created obsolete; useless. The Low Masters were fools.

With Draus, at least he could bath himself in the delusion that she was specifically better than her kind. More weapon than a person; a proselytizer of death and messenger of the Big Nothing.

Now, in this armor?

A child would have made quick work of a dozen ghouls. He knew it. Felt in his movements, in the lesser omniscience it offered him. Even in the dark when he thought he was safe, in the depths where he thought he was hidden, they could see him. They could always see him.

Pure fortune was the only reason he survived the war.

“So, you gonna shoot those squatters or not? Test the gun?”

Avo turned away from the firing vector. Another interface flashed into his mind. He felt the weight of the cannon inside him, tuned to fire on mental command. It had twelve shots a stack, and three stacks in total. Seeing that each dart was the length of one of his fingers, he doubted they were meant to be wasted on infantry, much less FATELESS.

Still, it was a struggle to spare them. Part of him wanted to just put the shot through them. Watch their flesh bloom and liquefy before supping up their ghosts and Essence. That would let him have his Hell and reactivate his Liminal Frame.

He wanted to shoot.

He was going to shoot.

Spinning on his heel, he aimed at the ruined chassis of a downed aerovec. With a thought, he felt the gun begin to link to his mind, a firing trajectory lined by both his Phys-Sim and his HUD. It was a strange presence, being able to feel the gun. It felt more like a weight in the back of his head than a proper limb or phantasmic.

Still, the ease with which it acclimated to his neurology surprised him. If not for the ease and maintenance of ghosts, Idheim would’ve still been ruled by metal, silicon, and circuitry. That was a world that would have belonged to Voidwatch, indisputably.

Instead, in the world that was, the Voiders hid close to their Lagrange points, their fleets scattered wide in fear of terrestrial thaumaturgy, well aware of their vulnerability before the Godclads.

Avo commanded the gun to fire. He felt a surge spike through his armor, the power grid along his ribs whining loud. A spike clicked into place, spiraling between the barrels before it tore loose with a lurch of mag-flung force.

Like a stone pushing through the center of a page, the chassis folded and then opened, rusted alloys and plastics spraying loose in an eruption of damage. The shot continued, a streak of pulsing arcs lingering in the air. It punched another three feet into a half-standing plascrete wall to an abandoned storefront before finally halting.

The sound rattled loud and far. Avo shot a look at the Gouge in the distance. Didn’t matter. Gunfire was like birdsong in the Warrens. Would take some repetition before anyone came looking, especially a street gang.

But just to be careful, he pulled away from the streets and down into an alley. He stepped over a sleeping family, three unmoving bodies laying against a ragged carpet with an auto-chef hovering above them, rumbling as it steamed cheap rice.

There was a story there. One that Avo didn’t have time to examine. Technology and poverty made for strange bedfellows in the Warrens. Most people took what they could get. Or steal.

“Wanted to test shot on something thicker,” Avo said. “See penetration.”

He continued, circling across the local alleys. Aratnids and hydrapedes scattered, fleeing back into fissures along the wall as he stomped along. Ghosts lingered along walls, their memory structures slowly fragmenting as the gang signs they were meant to be bear slowly fragmented apart.

“Sure,” Chambers scoffed. “That’s the reason why you didn’t shoot those two. I know you wanted to.”

“Want isn’t what matters,” Avo said.

“Then what is?”

“Choice.”

“Fuckin’ sounding like a message from a lotto-engram, ghoulie.”

Life clung to crevices and alleys in Burner’s Way. Street brats held their corners, glaring out at him with holographic slurs hap-tattooed across bare torsos studded with cheap chrome. They hefted cheap pipes and fusion torches, hurling invectives as he passed them quickly. They had little idea how much they incurred the beast’s hunger.

Another reason he was glad to be wearing the armor.

Around him, once tower stacks of industrial blocks now billowed gouts of blackened waste into the skies above, their ringed structures melted clean of all matter but metal. It looked like the ribs of some metal giant had been layered sloppily over each other.

Through the thicket of alloy and dripping mucus, Avo saw the jagged edges that lined what used to be the hexagonal edge for this plate of Layer One. Faint particulates of rising blackness spilled up and into the air, the rising presence of the Maw licking up at the edges of the city proper. That usually happened when one of its sections wasn’t fed enough matter.

Pressing on, Avo pushed himself to a run. The armor was surprisingly quiet even as he sprinted, his legs launching him forward. Fifty miles. Sixty. Ninety. Trash and debris burst across his armor, lighting up blue-tinted impact areas in his rig-integrity interface. No penetration. No damage.

Around him, the streets blurred and beaten figures stared out at him over ledges and windows. He would have been worried about them sending a signal to the local gang. Would have been if most of them weren't slumped against the ground, bodies misshapen by excess doses of joy.

Broken skyways and the rubble of overpasses remained as clutter on the streets. About the only thing that still worked was the street lights, their neon holograms of ever-alternating red, yellow, and green.

Down the artillery-pounded alleyways, Avo ran, building up more speed as he passed ruined husks of fallen golems sheathed amidst the spooled wreckage of collapsed buildings. He plunged out from within the alleys, legs digging into the soft matter of the street as he sprayed plascrete chunks free.

Moving was beginning to feel better. The synchronicity between him and the rig was growing. Back along the main avenue of Burner’s Way, the building cupping the district looked like cracked teeth. There were a few more of those large maggots stuck along the walls here too. Ahead, the Gorge awaited, a scant four hundred feet away.

Four hundred feet, surrounded by parapets built from layered aerovec wrecks, and manned by two guards drunkenly chattering, laying on their backs and staring up at the holographic clouds projected by the bottom of Layer Two. Far behind them, shrouding the Gouge itself in a blacken haze, the ebbing curves of the daystar's light spilled down across the edges of the district like a waterfall, clashing with the artificial radiance projected by the holograms above.

“Sloppy,” Avo said, looking at the state of the Gouge’s security.

“Told you. Total milk–”

A crack of shifting rocks sounded from across the street.

Avo spun, following the accretion of thoughtstuff he saw in his periphery before his HUD even identified the threat. His cannon was lined and primed, a shot chambered and spinning.

He froze.

A juv was staring up at him. A hooded, twitchy juv with nine different kinds of arms, six insectoid legs, and eighteen different eyes planted across her face. Pinkness ballooned from her lip as she continued blowing her bubblegum. Her gaze was flat, betraying no terror or care that he was aiming his gun at her.

Pulling a hand from her pocket, she winked at him with half her eyes and mimed shooting at him first.

He powered his cannon down.

She stopped staring at him and went back to skipping down the road.

“What’s wrong with her?” Avo asked.

“Ah,” Chambers muttered. “Godsdamned FATE-donor. Looks like whatever Syndicate owns this one overstuffed her with mods. Rough shit.”

“FATE-Donor?” Avo said, studying the girl. None of the eyes resembled the others, and as he zoomed in on her, he guessed that they belonged to different species and designs as well.

“Basically a walking bio-mod farm. Parents take an, uh, non-standard loan to grow a kid and have their FATE registered with one of the Guilds. Their sponsors get to plant a bunch of questionable shit in said kids and sell them as they grow up. Win-win. Well, long as the juv don’t die, that is.”

“Impractical?” Avo said. “Could just clone the organs.”

Chambers scoffed. “Copyright consang. Ain’t no Guild’s going to abide a cloning vat or a bio-printer in the hands of a Syndicate. And if they catch us stealing some, they’ll fucking scapel the whole district. No fuss.”

“Growing mods in children solves this?”

“Yep. Puts one law against the other. Copyright law against the…the fucking…what was it–Charter of Sophont Rights! Thank Voidwatch for that shit, the Massist half-strands. If the organs are carried by a legally recognized sophont, the state can’t just repossess their organs because that will kill the individual. So, here’s the results of that legal shit.”

Ultimately, it still didn’t make much sense to Avo. The Guilds needed people to die to fuel their Souls and feed their Heavens. But not so inhumanely that it offended their sensibilities. Perhaps it was a certain moralistic aesthetic that Voidwatch was going for. Something more palatable than functional.

“Anyway, enough of the gammaware growing on her face, you should be focusing on getting me my betaware up in the Gorge.”

Avo growled. “Not even used to the armor yet.”

“The fuck you mean? You can move. You can shoot. You can read. You got two more advantages than most our guys. Anyway, enough of this shit, get down there and snatch our stuff so we can get back before the boss gets curious. Tests don’t last that long.”

Sighing with a disgusted snort, Avo began his slow approach to the Gouge. To his left, he studied the factory block he wanted to ascend for a vantage point. Maggots littered its sides in clumps. Looked like that was off the table now. Good thing the opposition was even softer than expected. Made things all the easier to deal with.

Despite that, he still moved cautiously, moving to clamber over the walls surrounding the Gorge instead of just trudging in through the front gate. Feeble and loose of thought though the guards might have been, it was still better for him not to get their attention.

Best for all sides to keep this from being a mess. As far as Avo was concerned, he was still untrained with his rig. Chambers clearly didn’t know what he was doing and Janand was just going along with what he was being told to do. Any escalations would be Avo’s burden to bear, and he was getting pretty close to being done with that arrangement.

As he reached the topside of the barricade, he peeked over using the optics on his hands and looked for patrols. A long drop into a deep channel filled with stale water greeted him. Avo frowned.

“Holy shit,” Chambers said, actually sounding impressed, “the half-strands built a moat. On the wrong side, technically. But still.”

Avo looked at the ditch filled with dirty water. “Moat?”

“Fuckin’...super ancient warfare fortification. Doesn’t let people on horses just ride up to your walls.”

Avo blinked again. “Horses?”

That question actually stumped Chambers for a moment too. “Think it’s like a nu-dog that’s big enough to rid–besides the point. It’s fucking cute, but you’re in a rig. Jump over it. Get in there. Get my–”

“Case,” Avo said, finishing the enforcer’s words. “I know. All you want is the case.”

Aiming for a particularly soft patch of soil to cushion his landing, Avo pushed off from the barricade and landed, the weight of his rig kicking sprays of soil into the air. Scanning the area through his omnidirectional optics, he waited for a moment before continuing. No guards. No patrols. Just lights and music pulsing down overhead. The hallways inside the former megablock were exposed to him like someone’s ribs. It was like looking at a mortal wound that just didn’t take.

A low humming drew his attention as two drones drifted on by, hovering unevenly in the air. They scanned the ground beneath them, and not much else. Ten feet away, Avo went undetected.

Chambers laughed. “Oh, this is so adorable. Shit, I almost wanna take a picture of this. Two drones as overwatch. That’ll stop someone.”

Studying the flight patterns of the drones, he watched as both rounded the sides of the tower simultaneously, leaving entire sections unmonitored. Poorly programmed patrol patterns. It was beginning to look like the milk run Chambers had promised.

Avo approached the tower, treading slowly over stretches of ovoid depressions parted into squares within a grid of glassed matter. It appeared that bored artillerists had indulged in a game of tic-tac-toe during the war.

Amusement finds a way.

Keeping low, Avo detected a trio of gangers stumbling out from the partially collapsed front entrance of the block. Smiles stretched each of their faces in an unnatural rictus and sharp giggles escaped from their throats. Their bodies looked atrophied and withered, cheap cyber with faulty servos keeping them moving despite their sapped muscles. Their clothes clung to them in tatters and flecks.

A few of them seemed to have murky pustular growths along their necks. There was a translucent sheen to the living cancers. They reminded Avo of the jiggling backsides of maggots.

“Fucking joyfiends,” Chambers said. He spat the slur without any jocularity; all rancor.

“Don’t like happiness,” Avo said, prodding him in return.

“Don’t like it when people take that joy shit. It’s poison dressed as something else.” Avo heard the enforcer swallow. “Ain’t right.”

Something was more personal here, like a weight resting on a nerve. Avo wanted to prod again, see what reaction he could provoke, but his better senses warned him against it.

He waited for them to saunter behind the block, making for a shack. They were laughing, weeping with joy, finding amusement in everything and nothing. It wasn’t an uncommon sight in the Undercroft. But joyfiends were easy fuel for the snuffing.

Getting close to the block, Avo found himself studying his choice of ascent. The front door was seemingly unguarded, but that was too direct. Would pull too much attention to him–he didn’t want to risk anything that might catch someone’s attention. He knew the armor was stronger than his flesh, but if anyone here had explosives, he would probably just end up as pasted meat inside a can.

Last he checked, the rig didn’t have inertial dampeners built into it. Meant he still bowed to the whims of physics when it came knocking.

The other option, then.

Down the sides of the tower ran opaque panes of glass frozen as if tides mid-undulation, parted into four sections by strips of holojectors. Without something being projected, however, it made the tower look like a studded, wavy paddle of some kind. Ridiculous, in a word.

At least the projector strips allowed him something to latch onto.

His ascent was thereafter a quiet affair, with him using his optics to keep track of the patrols beneath him. Thankfully, they were too drugged out or inattentive to look up. The climb continued to the accompaniment of Chambers humming a new pop-tune to the lyrics of slurs.

Despite the vulgarity of the man’s parodies, Avo had to admit the enforcer could carry a tune. “Wrong line of work, Chambers.”

“What? A compliment? From you?”

Avo grunted. He left it at that.

He settled into a near-meditative trance as he rose. Beneath the false light projected by Layer Two, beside a gleaming tide of blackened glass, it occurred to Avo that he was experiencing something he never enjoyed before. He was outside during daylight hours without wearing a shroud, without masking his eyes behind mirrorshades.

He took a moment then to savor the moment, lifting a hand as if to clench the holographic orb that was supposed to mimic the daystar in his fist and claim its mantle for his own. It was such an absurd act that he nearly laughed. But he enjoyed what little power he gained over the light all the same.

And then, the moment was promptly ruined when a pane of glass was lifted above him. A puff of smoke gusted out as a wheezing ganger stuck her head over the edge to empty the wetness coating her lungs. Her face was a collection of copper piercings, strobing neon-bright hap-tats, and prehensile hairs that changed styles from minute to minute.

Avo froze in place, his fist still grasping for the light.

She was a few floors above him, coughing out from the window of floor one-hundred and seventy-seven.

The destination marker shone in Avo’s HUD like a beacon.

He pulled himself close to the building. Alright. This was simple, he just needed to–

She leaned down and spat a mouthful of bile. Bile, which then splashed down over shoulder of Avo's rig.

Blinking, she rubbed at her eyes and froze, noticing him. “Holy shi–”

Avo fired his Celerostylus.