Ch. 84 - Xenocide Act VII; I'm A Mom! …Maybe.

  "Parenthood: Life's greatest joy; your biggest headache.

  Congratulations. You'll never be the same."

  – Why is it that so many parents try to scare others away from becoming parents themselves?

  ***

  "Oh, fuck. What do I do now?"

  Well, I would propose deciding whether you wish to upgrade the Quanta, or not.

  "Wouldn't that…kill the ones that are already growing?!"

  No, not with the correct precautions. They may be safely migrated to the upgrade. But it would reinstate your control over their formation.

  A flash of rage scoured me and left me sweating.

  Fuck no.

  "No. If they've already started forming, then I'm not going to reach in and force something. They don't need to go through what I did, Tynea! Not as a child, and not as an adult with you! And, actually, please be fucking careful with them? I will not tolerate the same manipulative behavior from you around young and developing personalities under my responsibility."

  Understood.

  …

  Fuck, I was gonna have to see how that went.

  I pinched my eyebrows.

  "Okay. That still leaves me with, What the fuck do I do now?!"

  I would recommend working with Leah and her colleagues in the long run. Spend time with their orphans, watch how their personalities are reared. Growing these AIs will be somewhat similar, if I have read the mutations accurately.

  But in the short term, finish your current mission, and help Leah return home, perhaps?

  That…actually made a lot of sense. Good advice. Alright. And Leah probably would have a lot to say when I told her about this.

  And instead of panicking, I should probably have taken another look at these unusual selves.

  Which I did now. It turned out the, um, buds, weren't even close to conscious or anything. Yet, anyway, according to Tynea.

  They were exactly the same artificially engendered organic thought-selves they previously were, just with extra access to emotions. And those emotions were my own, but, uh, invoked involuntarily? When these buds called them up. A bit like intrusive thoughts, maybe. That was what would eventually allow them to grow beyond their designs.

  But.

  Nothing big had changed so far. Well, everything had changed. But not yet, and, apparently, not any time soon.

  So.

  No reason to panic.

  I recalled the chaos of motherly emotions I'd just experienced. It had been extremely powerful, something I'd not gone through before. Not as Aden, and not as Tinea either—though maybe my reaction when I'd found Leah came close?

  Was this another one of those things that came with being a woman? Maybe. I'd probably want to do some research about that too, once I had time.

  Releasing a last breath, I stood up again and started washing all the mud off of me. When I sprayed my hands and droplets hit my face, a sudden shadow across my eyes forced me to jerk back. My hands came up defensively, but…there was nothing to defend from.

  My arms slowly sank again, and I took a moment to calm my beating heart as my mind caught up. That had been membranes across my eyes. Nictitating membranes!

  I blinked repeatedly, but didn't really…feel anything out of place. No third eyelid popping out.

  Uh... Right. I'd been washing myself off. Water had splashed up into my face. So…reflex?

  I raised my tail and dunked myself, and paid attention to my eyes. There was a tiny tug accompanied by something flashing across my entire vision.

  Yup, there we go, reflexes. The membranes were back and covering my eyes with an almost unnoticeable tint. I could see through it just fine, even if I toggled the simulation off, and they didn't fuzz anything, or create distortions. And I also could blink normally still, which was a relief.

  No creepy staring Tinea. Nice.

  Ah, but this was a slight problem. How might I make the scales work on these lids if they were going to blink out of my control?

  Uh, wait a moment. I was being hasty again.

  I called the drone hovering in front of my collarbones up to take a look at my eyes, and let it observe me through the thin water spray.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Yep, scales already there, and I didn't even feel them. I could see dim pupils through the membrane, which was dead fish-eye levels of weirdness, but ignoring that, the tiny scales glittered like that diamond dusting I seemed to be putting on everything. They were actually positively pretty.

  I'd have to do something about the uncanny translucence, though… Maybe I could make the skin itself entirely transparent, so that you'd only see the sparkle and the pupils would look normal? Or move the scale patterns around so the translucence wouldn't be noticeable?

  Focus. That could wait. Now was for fighting. I breathed in and let the air stream through my lips, and took stock again.

  I left the simulation off, since I could all but feel it burning calories. AI-I would reactivate it if something interfered with my sight. I'd probably take a bit to get used to the new blink reflex, and not having my normal eyelids close automatically was weird. Unsettling, even. But I imagined that combat would make that a quick affair.

  What else… Ah, yes, the production of missiles was three-quarters complete. I had about a thousand total ready to launch, of various types. The map showed Leah well ahead of me, already engaging her horde.

  I seriously needed to move.

  As I kicked off and began building speed again, I spoke to Tynea.

  "Please prepare a few dozen Long Hands with acids. Might come in handy if Leah needs backup."

  Understood. Highlighting the optimal route for you.

  A path appeared through the forest, color-coded handholds, places to jump from and to land at, where to sprint. Just like the last time.

  "Thanks."

  I moved, and breathed, and allowed all the complications of the last minutes…and hours…and days, to just flow from me.

  Wind tousled my hair and a grin tugged on my lips as speed sent my heart racing again. My feet propelled me faster until I flew past trees and even my traction claws began slipping around corners. The water droplets around me stopped falling downwards and started streaming past me, and just as the rushing air began irritating my eyes, my new membranes snapped shut.

  Laughter spilled from my lungs as Mission Control-me and Combat Command-me put our heads together to adjust the launch plan.

  There'd be loads of chaff across the entire horde, and mini-lures all around with mines nearby. I'd be done building my last rocket just as I'd arrive and we'd queue up support for Leah.

  But my allotment of aliens would feel the effect of my armaments momentarily. My grin widened into a smirk when Combat Command finally initiated the launches and a veil of kerosene exhaust trailed behind me like a procession of harbingers of extermination.

  Hundreds of little plinks lit into tiny stars around me, and the recoil of the raw mass of a shitload of micro-missiles being magnetically ejected pressed my feet into the ground until my light pitter-patter turned into thumping stomps.

  Wild laughter rang through the air around me, and I used the traction gained from my temporarily increased weight to go even faster.

  With hands and tail I flung myself around trunks and heavy branches, and barely more than a minute later, artificial fog streamed towards me between the trees. Lots of little refractive crystals threw confusing shadows, and indeterminate forms seemed to move just beyond the range of my vision. Voices joined the visual cacophony and incoherent whispers and shouts multiplied the pandemonium.

  That's the audio-visual chaff. Would you prefer to use the simulation here? It would allow you to see past it.

  "Do it!" I yelled as I slid to a stop.

  The unreal fog disappeared instantly, and I saw hundreds of disoriented and agitated Antithesis milling around, snapping at mirages, chasing indistinct human voices and recorded echoes of my earlier laughing.

  I unlimbered the rifle and sought out the Sixes, whose alien and hypnotic hymns rose to call the lesser models to order.

  Just as I was about to pull the trigger to blow the brains of the first one, several dozen loud pops in the middle distance drew my attention. Pings on my minimap informed me that the lures and mines were finished setting up.

  The clamor of the chaff suddenly cut out, and even the Sixes shut up, looking around themselves, trying to spy something to trample.

  Then, bad, tinny imitations of the Sixes' song warbled, just loud enough to reach the field.

  "Crap, those sound fake. Are they going to be any good?" I whispered on mental comms.

  They'll work well enough to draw the outer units, through out-of-place wrongness, if nothing else. But you may want to kill the Sixes as fast as possible anyway.

  "Gotcha."

  – Advice: Timed shots. –

  Combat Command threw a…timeline? Onto my HUD.

  Pips moved right to left across a marked line, and I just knew that AI-I was giving me a visual countdown of plant beasties hitting the first Standoff mines.

  The excited expectation of explosions going off momentarily fizzed through me, and a quarter second before the first pip hit the left-most mark, my lungs were evacuated and my pupils dilated as time nearly froze.

  My grin was a rictus on my face as that pip hit the marker and my finger gently tightened on the trigger with the rifle's barrel pointing right at the head of the nearest Six.

  The blast of a nearby splitter mine tore apart its victim just as the primer of the chambered cartridge ignited its gunpowder charge and drove the bullet along the rifling.

  The ear-shattering screech, which pushed the rocket-propelled bullet straight into the hypersonic, tore at the thundering blow of the explosion for a Schr?dinger's fraction of a second, before the skull, neck, and shoulders of the Six ceased to exist in a shower of mulched matter.

  I didn't even notice as a blastwave rushed past my face and triggered my nictitating reflex. The next pip was up, and another Six died.

  Eight to go.

  Many more than eight pips.

  A Five looked my way, and I noticed its quills bristling. But quick as thought, Mission Control communicated the location, orientation, and velocity of my new javelin to Combat Command.

  Free of strain and distraction, Combat Command set new coordinates somewhere in the back of my mind, and the flying spear hissed from the sky to skewer the heart of the alien shotgun monster. A broken heartbeat later, the freshly buried engines sparked and grilled the dying organ even as they pushed the javelin back up, where it remained ready to deliver further fatal judgment.

  Motion from above the trees drew my eyes, and I saw several hundred Ones begin to swarm towards me. They clustered tighter and tighter, but Combat Command asked me to compress them just a little more with my remaining Ripfeather rounds.

  My back hit a trunk without delay and I braced the rifle with everything I had, before I let the Sentinel communicate my rage with tornadoes of fire and steel that tested the endurance of my gun.

  Like stars crashing through astral gas clouds, the cruel splinters sent the entire swarm spinning, and it began to condense into many smaller clusters in the motion.

  Pinpricks lit up throughout the surrounding forest, and dozens of fun-sized missiles, packed with high explosives, sprinted the last two or three hundred meters to smash themselves against the clustered Ones in glorious mayhem. My point counter jumped by four hundred and twenty points.

  The skies were clear, and my demented grin turned onto the remaining Sixes.

  ***

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