“Much speculation has been had, and will continue to be had, about the Collective’s military capabilities. And yes, it is true that in the dark between suns, an unknown number of self-replicating, infinitely patient True AIs awaits. But if they had wanted the death of humanity, they could have already had it.
My personal guess is that they are waiting. Waiting for a purpose beyond resource collection and the occasional trade. What this purpose is, I do not know. But when it comes, the question of their military capabilities will finally be answered. No matter the outcome.”
An introduction to the wider galaxy, chapter twenty-nine
The group stood eleven strong, with Jason and Bea next to him and the rest behind. Some had even strapped on patches of armor, looted from the dead, and Mat joined them. He didn’t know how to fight in patchwork armor, but it wasn’t too heavy nor particularly restricting.
For everything else, his training, a phase shield, and medibots would have to do.
“Ready?” Nova asked. His attention seemed more present, like other things had been resolved. The AI hummed. “Good guess, it has. I have taken enough ground that the ship's AI, which doesn’t even have a name, by the way, barbaric, can’t simply overwhelm me. Honestly, after so long stuck in just your head, I’d almost forgotten how inflexible most of them are, and how superior I am. Thinking they can take back their lost servers by initiating a proxy chain of reboots. Pathetic.”
Can this superior being tell me what’s waiting on the other side?
“It can, actually. Forty two guards, eighteen droids, and several mechanics. The latter of which are currently welding the door shut. I’d recommend hurrying.”
Fuck. Mat pointed at the door. “We’re out of time. We go now, or we’ll have to cut through the doors by hand.”
That would be bad, which Jason and Bea seemed to realize. Some of the others didn’t, but by then Mat was already moving forwards. A small, childlike part of himself was eager to see his newest perk in action.
The rest of him knew he would have to wait until he could use it to counter another speed biomod, even though his own technically wasn’t one. Regardless, it was an equalizer, not a trump card.
Unless someone didn’t have a speed biomod, of course. Then it very much was a trump card.
This domus had a pair of chambers just like his own, which he’d skipped past on his way in. A waiting room, a small arming station—empty now—and then the wider hallway system. The mercs had clearly set up outside, not wanting to fight in the cramped spaces. Smart.
Bea walked past him, a small, square shape in hand. Mat didn’t need to ask what it was, even if he had no idea how to use one. Explosives. Phase shields would protect against anything going over a certain speed, of course, but it would rip apart the door and hopefully seed chaos.
Whatever she had been before, he was starting to suspect it involved the military.
Mat rapidly backed up when Bea tapped one side of the cube, which sunk in like a button. Phase shield or not, standing too close affronted every last one of his instincts, even if he was as skilled with explosives as the average cheese farmer. Bea shrugged, taking a few big steps backwards before turning around, blocking the door.
She was bored. Even now, she was bored—
The device detonated, spewing forth metal and wind alongside a blinding flash of light. Bea’s body blocked most of it, and even then the force had been directed outwards and into the hallway. She turned once more, striding towards the newly made hole. Mat followed after a heartbeat.
Outside was an army of stunned, stumbling mercenaries, only those on the outside seeming mostly coherent. Over a dozen droids stood scattered across the wall, half of them broken and damaged like a sea of metal flesh. More turned towards them, but Bea’s moleblade was already carving them apart.
Mat joined, ghosting forward and slipping under a textbook perfect but wholly predictable swing. His own blade carved through metal, taking the droid out at the knee. Jason was a fraction behind, finishing the machine while Mat moved on.
It was chaos. The mercs on the outside couldn't shoot in, not without doing as much damage to their allies as the bladeslaves, and the hallways limited the effectiveness of their numbers. Moments later Mat was already among them, local omniscience, cat’s grace and untiring singing together like a symphony.
He carved through one arm while dodging the swing of another, kicking out and shifting his center of balance. Without looking he turned to avoid a knife hunting for his spine, and moving with the twist, he kicked out to bring a recently stabilized guard back to his knees.
Poor fighters, the lot of them. Hesitation, overcommitment, poor form, overly fancy footwork, and more. Every mistake one that no bladeslave would survive making. And now neither did they.
A dozen bladeslaves emerged from the domus, wielding swords and knives and more. Table legs and tranblades, empty hands that dove for dropped weapons. More and more of them flooded outside, Mat and Jason keeping the left side in disarray.
On the right, Bea was carving through mercenaries like a dance, a waltz of red violence. Mat spent one long moment admiring it, a moment he judged to have time for.
Then one of the mercenaries, stumbling away, surged with sudden speed. Mat pulled on his own perk, slowing the world way down. Next to him, Jason was bringing his blade up high to block, while a second and then third bladeslave fell onto downed guards.
One second in reality. Just the one, but a second that felt like much more.
Mat slapped aside the blow of the well-kitted mercenary, one whose speed now merely matched his own. The man’s eyes grew wide, the thought of a biomod that valuable being possessed by a bladeslave an impossibility. Yet still the man moved, processing the information in a heartbeat.
His blade twisted sideways, and Mat stepped into the man’s guard, deflecting the weapon with his own. His other hand lashed out, copying a move he’d seen Bea do so very recently. The guard tried to block, but he was just a hair too slow.
Unlike Bea, Mat clearly hadn’t managed to hit that perfect spot to collapse the windpipe. Also unlike Bea's opponent, this guard didn’t seem to possess hardened flesh. The man gasped in instinctive fear, the kind very few people ever tried to master.
Enhanced speed faded, his own a fraction of a second after his opponent's. Mat pushed forward, and the man managed to push past the fear. Around them, reality sped up again, their little bubble of altered perspective gone.
Mat attacked high, forcing the man to block, and then a second blade entered the guard’s neck from the side. Jason tsked, withdrawing his blade and turning away. “A speed biomod. You’ll have to tell me how you hid that from Obedias later.”
“Don’t get distracted,” Mat barked. He turned himself, and found the guards running away. A few droids covered them, but not many. A whole tide of bladeslaves was boiling out of the domus now, picking up weapons and more from the dead. Mat cleared his throat. “Nevermind.”
Jason offered a lopsided grin. “I’m flattered you care. So now what, oh sergeant mine?”
“Now we need to secure more jammers,” Noah answered. Mat turned, finding the large man striding towards them. He’d found a weapon for himself, clearly, and four more men stood behind him, similarly armed. “You’ll be assisting us with that matter.”
Mat sighed, flicking the blood from his blade. “Are we going to have to do this every fifteen minutes, Noah? I don’t answer to you, and neither am I particularly pleased that you’re trying to intimidate me. Ah, fuck it. Let’s go do something rash.”
Noah tensed the moment Mat moved, falling into a high guard as his moleblade thrummed to life, but Mat only activated his newest perk. The man slowed, reality itself slowed, and Mat flowed past his guard with three steps.
The man was bigger than him, taller and broader, but every inch of him froze when a moleblade dug lightly into his neck. Noah’s people tensed, stuck between anger and fear. Noah himself slowly, very slowly, looked down, and Mat offered a flat smile.
Then he stepped back, and put his blade away. “Right. We’re all murderous bladeslaves here, so I hope that this whole ‘gurr, me in charge, you obey me’ caveman thing is over? Because I find myself both willing and capable of picking up a rock to cave your skull in, if you’d prefer.”
“I do not prefer,” Noah replied slowly, holding up a hand to stop one of his people from opening his mouth. A ghost of a smile fluttered over the man’s face. “You biggest caveman. My tribe yours to protect.”
Mat smiled, because otherwise he would probably have scowled. A test, then, or maybe a desperate man wanting to take his measure. Either way, the plan could continue without interference. “Wonderful. Now, we do need more jammers. Let’s go see what we can salvage from the droids.”
Tobi hadn’t been at peace since Mat was taken from the ring, kidnapped in one of the most blatant shows of power to date. Shortly after, Obedias had followed that up with another, one far grander in scale.
Reg and Tim were in the cell next to him, and outside a droid passed them by. More patrolled their level, and more still the levels above and below them. Downstairs, where would normally be hundreds of bladeslaves training and laughing and eating, now stood a hundred mercenaries, armed and vigilant.
With them was an officer, easy enough to pick out from the rest, and a terminal sat on her wrist. Not five minutes ago, that officer had used said terminal to kill nine people. Tobi had known two of them. Elroy and Ben. Both dead now. Not in combat, not for a good cause, but to make a point.
It was like he was back home again, among the murder and intrigue. He could almost hear his father’s footsteps coming down the hall, clicking like the scythe of the reaper.
Even here, in a place far less dangerous, he could still do nothing. Thick skinned he might be, emotionally and biomod both, the enemy had weapons, phase shield and droids. Four to one, and it would still be nothing but a slaughter.
“Have faith, my friend,” Reg murmured, one hand landing lightly on his shoulder. “Toncon provides.”
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And Mat had a plan. Tobi finished. But Mat might very well have been executed the second he was out of the domus, plan be damned. Then again, what else but the plan could have warranted this level of caution? It would have been far, far cheaper to just lock them in the domus.
Obedias was a stingy man, and while he might have deemed a show of force worth the expense, why would he? What could have gone so extraordinarily wrong as to warrant it?
Tim sat on his bed, and Tobi spared the man a thought. Not a bad person, though not someone Tobi overly enjoyed speaking with, either. A middling fighter, the man was doomed to die, though that was true for most of them. Yet unlike almost all other bladeslaves, Tim had been an accountant.
“How expensive is this?” Tobi asked. Tim looked up, blinking in confusion. Tobi waved his hand at the door. “The mercenaries, the droids, danger-pay, all of it.”
The man shrugged. “I didn’t deal with military contractors, but a lot. Most of it would be coming from risk clauses in contracts, but droids aren’t free to deploy either. Every minute this goes on, the expenses rise.”
So there was something big going on. Interesting.
Yet things did not suddenly happen. In fact, nothing happened for nearly half an hour, at which point even the guards were starting to get nervous. Tobi could see them whispering to one another, clutching their weapons tight and double checking phase shields.
Things were going wrong for them. Good. Tobi rolled his shoulder, once again glancing at the door. Rather than do nothing like every other time he gleaned at it, the door actually opened. Tobi’s eyes widened, and he watched six small, cubed shapes being thrown into the domus, after which the door promptly closed. Tobi blinked, and then things started to happen very, very quickly.
First, a droid moved past his cell, lumbering through its patrol without pause or distraction. Tobi rushed it, briefly wondering what the fuck he was doing, and then it was too late. His biomod-toughened skin absorbed the impact of ramming a steel golem, and Tobi heaved. The droid tipped, then stabilized, its hands reaching for him.
Reg slammed into the droid a moment before the thing could get a hold of him, and this time it fell, going over the thin railing and plummeting down below. Tobi didn’t wait to hear the thing fall, since he doubted the short distance would destroy it. No, he needed to get back before—
The explosion rippled through the domus, a flash of light followed by an overwhelming wave of noise. Tobi dragged Reg back, joining Tim to cower at the back of the cell. Reg snagged one of the chairs up while they did, expression vaguely pleased.
The priest didn’t like waiting any more than Tobi did, even if the man was far better at hiding that fact. Now, though, now something other came out to play, and Tobi shuddered as Reg’s face split into a wide, toothy smile.
Reg moved back towards the exit, stool in tow, and his tone echoed loud in the ensuing silence. “To war, my brothers. To battle and death and victory. We are born free, a blood-soaked right carved into the essence of our being. Remind them of what happens when they cage a tiger. Remind them of what happens when they trample over your honor, over your pride and over your Toncon given right to feel the sun on your face. Carve your rage into their insolent bones, and crush them all.”
With a scream that should not come from a human throat, Reg threw the stool into the mass of guards, no doubt to bounce harmlessly from a phase shield. But a moment later a tide of bladeslaves roared, dozens and dozens and dozens of them. Those of the resistance, those who were angry, and those who had been so close to breaking, so close to shattering apart, before a kind man offered them a piece of chocolate.
Tobi found himself right behind the mad fool that he called a friend, and from every cell bladeslaves boiled into the wider domus.
Mat felt the grenades detonate, nodding to Jason. The man activated their jammer, a shadow of guilt in his eyes. Mat felt the same. They would be killing people with this. Fellow bladeslaves. Those who had bombs that could not be jammed. But some were better than all, and not a soul Mat had asked knew of a better solution.
The second round of explosion was far quieter, and yet far, far too loud.
He turned, marching back into the domus. With the bladeslaves safely back in their cells, he and the twenty behind him could spill inside, distracting the guards. They would have to move quickly lest their phase shield be overwhelmed, but it should allow the others a chance to join the fight.
The door opened, and Mat found a domus at war. From every cell bladeslaves rushed into the battle, dying in droves as the mercenaries opened fire. He was frozen for a long, stupefied moment.
Nova!
The AI understood, and a card was played which Mat would have liked to keep for a while longer. But this was it, and as Jason pushed him onward, Nova turned the droids against the guards.
Not all of them. Not perfectly. But enough. The tide of bladeslaves, stuttering at the abrupt death of their unlucky friends, fell on the suddenly unsupported guards. Mat cursed, and dozens died before he could join the battle. But it was perhaps the single most effective distraction to have ever been put into practice, and only two shots glanced off his phase shield before Mat was among the guards.
This wasn’t an unaware group, rushed and uncertain. They had a fortified center, proper officers and heavy weapons. Given half the chance, they would kill everyone, jammer or no.
A great, terrifying roar rose from the charging bladeslaves, and Mat was almost startled to find it coming from Reg. Kind, easygoing, patient Reg, now bellowing about blood debts and the rights of human souls. It was whipping the others into a frenzy, one that would get them killed.
Finally Mat closed the distance, and Cat’s Grace let him vault over a low, artificial wall, one hand on the hard plastic. The other sliced forward, and his moleblade cut through the shoulder of some guard. The man howled, and those beside him turned. Five against one, a poor matchup for anyone.
Jason and Bea were at his side a moment later, and three of those five guards flinched away from her like she was the reaper itself. The two that didn’t rushed forward, discarding their rifles for blades of their own.
Mat bullied past them, abusing local omniscience to avoid an errant swipe. Seventeen more bladeslaves were joining the fight, and Mat knew nearly two hundred more were in the hallway outside, both to secure it from potential reinforcement and to wait until Mat and his group had cleared the way.
According to Bea, it would have been stupid to rush in all at once, risking death by heavy weaponry without the space to move. Of course, neither of them had expected Reg to provide such a distraction, let alone go gallivanting into the melee.
Mat flinched away from yet another blow, forcing his attention back on the fight. Around him dozens and dozens of guards fired into the rising tide of bladeslaves, and Mat wanted them gone. The good thing, though, was also the bad thing.
The entire attack had turned into chaos.
So Mat slid his moleblade into the back of someone too busy taking aim at a trio of unarmed men to notice him, then did the same to the guard next to him. It was a cramped space, this fortification of theirs, so Mat rolled over a low table to clear space, scattering a host of items he didn’t care about.
He glimpsed four bladeslaves rushing forth, shielding themselves with small tables, and watched them die under a hail of gunfire. There, Jason gutted some massive, lumbering woman, and further back he could hear Bea carve through entire packs of enemies.
Then he finished rolling over the table, and on the other side, a pair of women were waiting for him, moleblades in hand. Mat scrambled back the moment they came into range of local omniscience, but the table stood in his way. Two blades lashed out, and he could only block one.
Twisting sideways, Mat raised his weapon high, intercepting one and dodging the other by a hair’s breath. He kicked out, but his foot hit steel, bouncing off the woman like he’d kicked the wall. Mat reflexively activated speed, using that moment of slowed time to think.
The other guard, the one not with skin like steel, sped up to join him. Mat lashed out, twisting aside from a blow that he knew was coming, only to have the woman retreat. His attack missed, her own never came, and moments later, reality returned to normal.
Mat blinked, frozen for just the slightest moment.
She made me waste my speed.
The steel-skinned guard sped up, and Mat bodily threw himself backward, cursing himself for moving away from Jason and Bea. Most of Obedias’ guards were cheap, undisciplined and rusty. The kind that won’t bankrupt you when hired en-mass.
Then there were guards like these two, who actually knew how to fight. And for all his experience, all his perks, Mat didn’t. Not like this. The only saving grace was that they were rare, something that wasn’t going to save him now.
He could see the attack coming, and yet there was nothing to do. Throwing himself back saved his head, but her blade passed his left arm, taking the limb just below the elbow.
Pain screamed into his mind, and Mat fell backwards over the table, his phase shield sparking with effort as his second opponent opened fire with a sidearm. How much power his shield had left he didn’t know, but he wasn’t counting on much.
Prone, wounded and off balance, Mat watched a droid crush the skull of the pistol wielding guard, two hands slamming together with her head in between. Her companion twisted, surprised and furious and already moving to attack. The droid took the blow without complaint, choosing instead to punch.
Steel-skinned or not, the woman was thrown backwards and away, bowling over another guard and ending in a sprawl of limbs. Two bladeslaves fell on them both, one taking her dropped moleblade as the other pressed a gun against her head, pressing the trigger.
“This is fun,” Nova said, though thankfully not using the droid. Mat stumbled when Nova picked up, steadying after a moment. The bleeding, he saw, was already stemming, though he doubted the hand would be quick to regrow. “Down!”
Mat ducked even before the droid pushed him, and the blade took off the machine’s head. Nova scoffed even as Mat put his own blade into the guard's stomach, having managed to keep a hold of it. “I have more, you asshole.”
Reinforcements were flooding inside now, but more importantly, Jason moved up next to him, a gash on his own shoulder but otherwise unharmed. The man glanced at his stump, eyebrow raised mockingly, but before he could speak, trails of energy slammed into Mat’s phase shield.
Once, twice, then thrice, and the shield finally gave out. The fourth shot took him in the chest, slamming him back down into the ground. Only the armor he’d scavenged stopped the blast from drilling straight through him, though even now he could feel his ribs break.
But then there was finally a moment of peace, the battle moving away from them both. Tobi’s concerned face joined Jason’s, and Mat raised his head just high enough to watch the guards get utterly swarmed by bladeslaves. The second his fellows had distance closed, numbers mattered.
“I think—” Mat coughed, spitting blood. “That’s not good. I think I’m just going to lay here for a while. If Noah shows up and tries to take command, tell Reg to throw his weight around.”
Tobi grabbed at his armor, face set into a scowl. “We need to stop the damn bleeding, is what we need to do.”
“Medibots,” Mat managed. He gasped when the armor was torn free anyway, and his skin indented an inch inwards. “Fuuuck, no shit that hurts. Wait, no, come here.”
Mat slapped the rich kid across the face, injecting a wave of medibots into him. Jason snorted. “Supposedly, those’ll get rid of the bomb in your spine.”
“I see,” Tobi replied, taking the weak slap without complaint. The man glanced at his stump. It had stopped bleeding entirely, the perfect cut already closing up. “No, actually, I really don’t. Can you finally tell me what that almighty plan of yours was, Mat?”
Jason raised an eyebrow, flicking his hand at the continued butchery of the mercenaries. “I’m pretty sure you’re living it, my man. I’m Jason, by the way.”
“Tobi,” he replied. Mat nodded, pleased. It was always nice to see one's friends getting along. “Even if he has a medical nanobot mod, he’s lost quite a bit of blood. Help me get him back to the cell.”
Tobi slashed out, cutting down a stumbling, wounded guard that strayed too close. Jason scowled, turning to intercept another. And then another.
Mat groaned as Tobi lifted him up, but didn’t complain. Now that he was here, Reg could take over. Yeah. Noah was an asshole, but Reg he trusted to lead. Which meant this whole disaster of an uprising could now be someone else's problem.
Toncon be praised. Mat hoped the god liked blood sacrifices, because already the floor was soaked with it.
I think I’m going to pass out now. Oh, yeah, there goes my eyesight. Nova, don’t let anyone—
Afterword
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