TH - Book 2 - Chapter 40 - Bad Vibrations

TBoB might be late today. I started this chapter yesterday, when I normally do my edits, because I have a number of doctor appointments today and I didn't think I'd have enough time to get both chapters out. Hopefully they'll be finished at a reasonable time, and I'll get to TBoB before it gets too late.

What Skyler found was a support several hundred meters away, on the opposite side of the tunnel exit. The bridge to this pillar felt a lot sturdier than the one we took earlier, and from a distance you couldn’t really tell anything was wrong. 

Up close though, the place looked like a slaughterhouse.

Something had run rampant through this area. The wooden shanties and walkways had been ripped to shreds, there was blood splatter on the walls and, most disturbingly, there was a section of the metal grate flooring with strings of blood and meat dripping from the underside. Like something had been forced through.

“You’re right, I hate it,” I whispered, as I covered my mouth and tried to stop myself from gagging.

“I wasn’t even sure if this was an antithesis attack, or something else to start,” Skyler explained. “They don’t normally leave this much… meat… behind after an attack, but I found something else too.”

She slowly led me around the various pools of viscera, to the backside of the pillar and pointed at something up in the wires. With all the clutter up there it took me a minute to figure out what she was pointing at. About half way up the wall, nestled deep within the wires, was something that looked like a beetle with an oversized abdomen. The dog-sized creature sat perfectly still, except for it’s abdomen, which it occasionally rhythmically slammed against the pillar.

“What the fuck is that?” I hissed. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

{Athy: I’m not surprised, that’s an extremely rare antithesis subvariant. A SV-Seventeen-B.}

“Did you say B? What’s with all the modifiers?”

{Arty: The SV-Seventeen is a variant that has only been seen on a handful of planets so far, playing the same role as the regular Model Seventeen, but instead of strings, it uses ground vibrations. What you’re looking at now is not the actual SV-Seventeen, but a subspecies. The SV-Seventeen-B acts like a signal repeater, detecting the SV-Seventeen’s orders and repeating them over a wider area.} 

“And the antithesis can detect these vibrations by default? Why don’t they use these things more?” Skyler asked.

{Athy: Actually, most antithesis can’t detect these vibrations, or at least interpret them. A subspecies of Six is needed to detect the orders and pass them on. There were probably a number of SV-Sixes on the surface, but since they don’t appear that different from the base Six at a glance, they would have been overlooked.}

“So what’s different about them?” I grumbled.

{Arty: They have bigger feet. I realize that sounds like a joke, but it’s not. They have special seismic sensitive organs on their feet.}

{Athy: This seismic sensitivity might also explain how the antithesis managed to sneak past the wall sensors. Since the SV-Seventeen is sensitive to vibrations it would have tried to keep the swarm from creating too much background noise.}

“Smart enough to understand our defenses, and how to avoid them, great,” I mumbled. “If this… thing… extends the Seventeen’s range we should probably get rid of it. The last thing we need is for the remaining antithesis to be organized.”

I gave my drone a gentle nudge with my augs, and it floated up to the oversized beetle. One swift swipe was all it took to end the creature, and send its body plummeting down to the catwalks. It bounced once, splattering the metal with its sap like blood, before rolling off and plunging into the murky water below.

“I hope we didn’t need it for anything, because there’s no way I’m going in after it,” I muttered as it sank out of sight.

“There you girls are!” a voice called from above as I backed away from the edge. “I thought you were going to wait for me, but I see you couldn’t help but investigate without me.”

I glanced up just in time to catch sight of a female form clad in liquid metal plummet from top of the Canals. When she was about a hundred feet up she sprouted a number of metallic tentacles which lashed out, grabbing onto the cables and debris around the support, slowing her descent until gently touching down next to Skyler and me.

“Rain, Wind, it’s nice to see you again,” Grey Goo said as her liquid metal mask pulled back and merged into the rest of her suit. She quickly ran her fingers through her short brown hair before shooting Skyler and I a smile. “I hear you two have been busy the last few days, protecting the safe arbour project, saving other samurai, and participating in the harbour defense. You’re really starting to make a name for yourselves.”

“Grey, it’s nice to see you again!” Skyler chirped. “What brings you to this… charming corner of the city? I would have thought you’d have more important things to do than help us.”

“Well, I did, until Moljinar dropped that little present of his down upon the swarm. I’d been swapping off with a couple other samurai, trying to keep the swarm under control, but now that it’s shattered I’m free to pursue more stimulating tasks. Like doing an investigation in the Canals.”

“Is it really safe to leave the remaining antithesis running loose like that?” I asked.

“No, but that single strike depleted their numbers significantly enough that the scattered remnants could be easily handled by newer samurai. I don’t need the points, and the cleanup process should be fairly safe, so I’d rather leave it to them,” Grey explained before looking around. “Now, what have you stumbled on here? I mean, beyond the mess…”

“We’re dealing with an antithesis that communicates through vibration, a Model SV-Seventeen apparently. We found a subspecies it left behind to extend its range here but… it kind of fell into the soup when I killed it,” I said, glancing at the water.

“Hey, don’t worry about it. I don’t have to see the evidence, I believe you,” Grey remarked. “I don’t like the idea that this SV-Seventeen can extend its range by leaving proxies around though. Even if the message got muddled, or degraded, by passing through these secondary nodes, it still has the potential to command antithesis over an extremely long range. We’ll need to be diligent about cleaning up this subspecies.”

Skyler’s eyes suddenly lit up, and she turned back towards where we came into the Canals. “Wait… if it left a B here does that mean that it was expecting more antithesis to follow it down here? It didn’t look like any antithesis survived the orbital strike, besides the ones we followed down here, but if more wander into the area, or there are more tunnels, we could have a major infestation on our hands.”

“Shit…” I muttered. “Well, we could try and seal that tunnel, but I’m not sure I’d like to risk using explosives on it without at least a basic understanding of how stable the surrounding area is. We’d risk collapsing the tunnel on ourselves, or causing further damage to the outer wall. Even if we did collapse the tunnel, there’s no guarantee that the antithesis won’t just dig through again.”

“Then what do you suggest?” Grey asked, a small smile on her face.

“I’ll leave my drone at the tunnel, it should be strong enough to deal with anything that tries to sneak through, and if it isn’t at least we’ll be forewarned. Skyler, you might need to send a couple of your scout drones around to do a full survey of the east wall, to make sure we don’t have any more breaches.”

Skyler just nodded. I noticed a couple of her saucer shaped drones were already disappearing into the darkness behind us, so I sent my slower drone after them.

“Look at you two, such a well organized team. I almost feel like a third wheel here,” Grey grinned. “Now how would you suggest we track down the antithesis that are already here?”

“If this thing communicates through vibration, can’t we use that against it?” Skyler asked.

“Normally that would be an excellent suggestion, but I’ve been using my nanites to search for irregular ground vibrations ever since you told me about the SV-Seventeen, and there hasn’t been anything for a couple minutes. Either it only transmits intermittently, or it realized that you two killed the B and stopped,” Grey explained.

“Wonderful,” I muttered. “What about you, do you have any suggestions?”

“Just one,” Grey replied. “If this thing does communicate through vibrations, it probably wants a stable platform to do so. The bridges connecting to the north and south pillars look worn, and frankly unstable, but the one to the east. Rock solid. I suspect if we focus our attention in that direction it’ll only be a matter of time until we find more signs. Be it vibrations or… otherwise.”

I didn’t turn when she waved at the mess behind me, it was quite clear what she meant.

“Sounds reasonable,” Skyler agreed. “We should get going. I have a feeling the longer we let this thing run wild, the worse things are going to get.