Chapter 235: (The War) (2/2)
MANTID FREE WORLDS
We were just talking about all kinds of weird stuff.
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UNITED FEDERATION OF PLANETS
We're having some weird character class overlay overruns. We've got a few players who are getting SUDS scorched like Admiral Pikark did a year ago.
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DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS
WAIT! You had a guy get scorched?
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UNITED FEDERATION OF PLANETS
Yes. A player dual-classed with combined memory, took advantage of an IRL exploit and loaded up the memories of two different classes. Scorched his SUDS.
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CYBERNETIC ORGANISM CONSENSUS
Let us see the file.
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UNITED FEDERATION OF PLANETS
Sure.
>UPF TRANSFER REQUEST: PIKARK.NTF
There.
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CYBERNETIC ORGANISM CONSENSUS
DASS, look at this. Doesn't that look the same?
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DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS
It's damn close. Real close.
Hang on.
>DASS SHARES FILE: DOKIDOKI.NTF
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CYBERNETIC ORGANISM CONSENSUS
She still had her SUDS, huh?
Wow, that looks like a 0.1.a version.
Look at this, same kind of corruption. Let me check her Combine combat records.
>CYBORG whistles
Over three hundred mat-trans drops before she went crazy.
Damn, she was on Anthill for the entire duration.
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
Oh my loving Digitial Omnimessiah, that poor girl.
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DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS
If you overlay this, you see a lot of the same damage.
Whoops, hang on. I've found something. Let me strip out the...
Dammit, I can't do it.
CLONE, can you strip this time/date stamp from this section of the SUDS holographic file?
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CLONE WORLDS CONSORTIUM
Wow. The time/date corruption is bad. Who is this?
Staff Sergeant John Kwrawsh Danver, 1st Infantry Division, combat medic, power armor.
Wow, it's a complete memory.
Yeah, I can unhash it, barely. It'll be weird though.
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
Play it in here. Let's see if we can figure out what's going on.
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CYBERNETIC ORGANISM CONSENSUS
OK, I've got it. Isolated.
Running
9879babedfca8765123.mem
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The sky was the color of bruised flesh, low hanging clouds lit by the sun and the fire of the city burning behind him. Lightning snarled in the clouds, lighting up the dueling specks that reached out to one another with shafts of light and burning fury. Dust hung in the air as the artillery pounded the battlescreens and, where battlescreens weren't, the ground itself. The mud between the two forces was thick, red, and artillery impacts sent mud fountaining up into the air, suspended on legs of orange and red fire. Here and there the mud fountained up purple with black squares. Trees flickered in and out of existence, sometimes with troops moving through them slowly to ambush one another at point blank range, other times on fire as thermobaric rounds blew them into flaming chunks, other times the cellular walls collapsing from tactical use Rainbow Herbicide weapons, still other times swept away by the thermal shockwaves of atomic weapons.
Panting heavily/shivering in his compromised over/underheating armor SSG Danver dragged/carried two power armor close air support suits backwards forwards toward the flickering psychic screens, one with each hand, the legs and the power assist system in his own armor whining. The suit legs kept clipping through the ground, leaving thick furrows in the mud as the cracked and damaged warsteel heels dragged through the mud. The two had gotten hit by a direct Thwoop and spiralled out of the air to slam into the mud.
A creature from nightmares, slimy skin, four spider legs on a swollen and hair abdomen that was covered by thick warsteel armor, an upper torso of a bull and the sneering face of a balding human with pinchers extending from the mouth that was open in a scream of rage. It was missing its attendant but still intended on ripping Danver apart so it could rip open his skull with the mandibles and to him.
It screeched, the upper torso leaning forward.
THWOOP
The psychic blast hit him square, his psychic shielding flaring purple but holding. Danver felt his stomach twist as he saw the warsteel on his arms crack slightly. He let go of the one he was dragging with his right hand and raised up his arm.
The leaned forward again, part of its torso flashing between black warsteel and an plaid pattern of black and purple squares.
THWOOP
The creature screeched in glee, lurching through the mud, one arm blown away, the other with a snarling psychic blade it raised up.
Danver screamed in hate and fired his forearm mounted stubber, the 10mm shells streaking red as they left the barrel. The first two exploded on the creatures psychic battlescreen, the third caused a shower of purple sparks as it destroyed the psychic battlescreen, the last of them slammed into the creature's body, shattering warsteel loricated platemail, exploding out gray tissue.
Danver head its deathscream in his head as it collapsed, fat popping as flame ate at the interior of the and shook his head to clear it of the psychic howl of death. He reached back down and dragged the two CAS troops back, managing to get to the psychic shield reinforced battlescreen, feeling it tickle and tingle as it washed over him.
A pair of russet mantid, clad in body armor, their helmets bulging with psychic shielding boosters, ran forward and grabbed the two CAS, rolling them onto the grav-stretcher.
Danver swallowed thickly, past the fear, and raced back out across the mud, running for a warborg that was face down in the mud, the four Spodders that had managed to drop him already shredded by the fifties.
The world went shot with static, the skies crumbling and streaking downward in lines, purple and black squares covering the terrain, the trees and bushes flickering, sometimes wreathed in flame, sometimes intact, sometimes reduced to skeletal branches.
Sergeant Danvers jumped out of the back of the ambulance, landing on the ground, and sprinted toward the two downed CAS troops. One was still firing his drum-fed railgun, hosing high-v submunitions at the oncoming bestial creatures clad in warsteel armor.
The sky was the color of bruised flesh.
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
TuRn iT oFf PlEaSe HeLp HeLp HeLp I cAn SeE wItH aLl mY eYeS wE dOnT nEeD eYeS tO sEe In ThIs PlAcE tUrN iT oFf
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>UNEXPECTED TERMINATION OF FILE
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CYBERNETIC ORGANISM CONSENSUS
Anyone recognize that place?
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CONFEDMILINT
First Infantry Division is at Belvak-8 for force integration. They're integrating the Second Telkan Marine Division among others. WE haven't heard anything bad from them. We'll check the hypercom array, see what we get.
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DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS
That looked more like a drug induced nightmare than a real memory.
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CYBERNETIC ORGANISM CONSENSUS
The thing is, if you use the time/date stamp, it wasn't a real memory.
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
Everything was jumbled up to me. All I could hear was enraged bellowing and screaming back and forth in a thousand thousand different voices.
What do you mean it wasn't a real memory?
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CYBERNETIC ORGANISM CONSENSUS
Because you had me stop before it played out. It was five different memories layered on top of one another.
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UNITED FEDERATION OF PLANETS
All taking place at the same time, but hadn't happened yet.
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CYBERNETIC ORGANISM CONSENSUS
How did you guess?
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UNITED FEDERATION OF PLANETS
The Mirrorverse War. We had a few times that players from their game got combined with players from our games, giving them dual memories of wildly different events that according to their neural pathways happened at the same time.
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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS
Mirrorverse War?
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
I'll explain it later, dear one. It's really confusing and only happened to UPF.
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AKLTAK GESTALT
You'll tell me, right?
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
Yes, we'll tell you and Tnvaru too.
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CONFEDMILINT
The codes from their hypercom look good. Too good. I don't like this.
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DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS
Let me check. I know a few tricks.
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You're right. It's been compromised. That hash I had them reply to should have crashed the system and forced them to send a soft reset confirmation signal.
Belvak-8 is under attack or has been taken by enemy forces.
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CYBERNETIC ORGANISM CONSENSUS
No. Not yet. But whoever is out there is still trying to take it.
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CONFEDMILINT
We're going to have to redeploy our forces.
CYB, send the notification, I need to talk to all force leaders.
Make sure the Imperium and Combine forces are alive.
And prepare yourselves.
There will be an immortal there.
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
You mean Daxin.
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CONFEDMILINT
Yes.
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TNVARU GESTALT
Yay! We love Daxin!
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