Chapter 435 (2/2)
”THEN OVERRIDE THE GODDAMN SYSTEM!” Dee yelled, her face suddenly morphing into the heavy savage visage of the Lord of Hell.
”WE DON'T KNOW HOW!” Herod yelled back.
”My God, you two are fucking useless,” Dee snapped. ”IT'S A FUCKING COMPUTER! TELL IT WHAT TO DO!”
Sam looked up, his eyes burning code. ”She's right. We have to override the filters,” his face suddenly grew determined and he wiped away the tears. He brushed the clutching hands off of him and stood up. ”I need to hack into the exclusion filters, the black, gray, and white lists, and rewrite them.”
”You don't have long,” Dee snapped. More hands started reaching toward Sam and she growled. She sang a phrase real quick and appeared on the monitor next to Sam, the human woman gone and the massive figure of the Lord of Hell appearing.
The hands withdrew.
The Detainee drew a circle full of complex runes around Sam. ”That should do it. Tell me when it's time, I'll be ready.”
Sam just nodded. He didn't bother asking her what she'd do or how she'd do it.
He had put her in place to play her part.
Sam knew she would play it to perfection.
It was what she was.
”They're up to almost three hundred billion,” Herod warned. ”Plus, we've got a Big Bang Event.”
”Which means the system is largely locked down,” Sam said. He turned in place, code surrounding him, streaming by. ”Come on, where's the code I need. I'll override the threshholds and force an update. Put the data in non-executing holding files, we've got the space.”
Herod just nodded. He turned and looked at the display keeping track of the Big Bang Event.
Two more hours until safe levels were reached.
”Tell me what to do,” Herod said.
”Suit up and head for the star-tram. I'm going to need you to do a few things and we don't have long,” Sam said. ”Actually, head for the mat-trans.”
”I thought everything outside of Alpha Level was locked down,” Herod said.
”Dee just kicked on the system,” Sam said, shaking his head. ”Should have known she'd figure out a way to seize access to that system.”
”She's a little possessive of it,” Herod chuckled, heading toward the door. ”Keep in contact in case you start getting overwhelmed.”
”Anyone that starts bothering me, I'll send to the Detainee after a single warning,” Sam said. His voice was firmer, steadier. ”I can do this. We can do this. I found how to get in this system, how to reach it. I can do this.”
Herod just headed toward the mat-trans.
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Legion looked up as Dee suddenly shifted forms again into the massive brown skinned demon.
”What's happening?” he asked.
”Some kind of mass-cal event. Herod said something about possibly an X-Ray Pulse from the galactic core or something like that. Whatever it is, it's across Confed Space,” the Detainee rumbled. ”Tom.”
The man dressed in adaptive camouflage rose up out of the rock. ”Yes, momma?” he asked. His voice was not childlike, a mature baritone.
”I'm sending you outside. Look around, see if you can tell what's happening. Once you get a good look, pop your wire, I'll collect you,” The Detainee said.
”I'll do you right,” the man said.
The Detainee made a motion and the man vanished.
Legion frowned. ”Did you just send him outside the SUDS? I thought it was all locked down.”
”All but Alpha Layer,” the Detainee said. ”I sent him outside to get a good look.”
”To Terra? I could tell you what's happening there,” Legion said.
”Do you think I don't know that? No. There's a couple places where there's a Type-I Mat-Trans system stashed away. I sent him to one of those,” the demon said. It leaned back, reaching up to scratch its face.
Legion closed his eyes for a moment. ”There's nothing happening on Terra except the news that they're going to try to revive a Sleeping One.”
”Who cares,” the demon rumbled.
”Probably the Sleeping Ones,” Legion said with a slight smirk.
”I'm bored.”
Sam suddenly appeared in front of the throne, made of glittering golden code.
”Good. That means you don't have anything else to do. I need you to talk to someone while I work,” he said.
Dee rolled her yellow cat's eyes. ”Fine.”
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TELKAN FORGE WORLD
We're putting them in stasis as fast as we can.
Luckily, nobody's panicking. We're squashing the rumors this is a Lanaktallan bioweapon. It doesn't fit bioweapon parameters.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT
Could it be the SUDS?
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THE PLAINS OF SORROW
It's not the SUDS, you blithering idiots.
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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
BAH! Who the hell is that?
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CYBERNETIC ORGANISM COLLECTIVE
That's coming across a Gestalt master channel.
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THE PLAINS OF SORROW
We're about to do a hard SUDS reset. Everyone, everywhere.
As soon as that's done, I want to know what's causing this.
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RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT
We don't know. We think it's some kind of temporal attack.
It's reverting Terran cerebral tissue to pre-Glassing state.
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THE PLAINS OF SORROW
That'd do it.
We're going to hard reset everyone, do a full upload multi-pass copy of tissue and electrical activity and dendrite connectivity scan then perform a phasic counter-intrusion hard reset everyone with more than a 40% error state.
Hope all of you guys have good corpse disposal.
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
What?
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>>THE PLAINS OF SORROW HAS LOGGED OFF (INVALID IP)
MANTID FREE WORLDS
What are they going to do?
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CLONE WORLDS CONSORTIUM
They're going to kill everyone.
A phasic counter-intrusion hard reset strokes out the brain at specific points to prevent memory extraction by psychic races.
It's usually only used on combat troops killed in an active combat zone.
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
There has to be another way!
That's... that's MONSTROUS! They're talking about wiping out everyone.
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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
Not... actually.
Sis, I said it before, when TERRASOL and I were arguing.
Human's don't actually die.
Or rather, they don't necessarily stay dead.
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LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL
Really?
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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS
Wait, you mean the rumors that they'll reconstitute from a pool of blood that soaked into the ground are true?
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RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT
In a certain way.
You all realize that whoever that was...
...was talking to us from INSIDE the SUDS system, across a master channel, a control channel.
None of those have been used in 8,000 years.
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LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL
Hey, Hesstla...
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HESSTLA TECHNOBURROW
Yes?
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LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL
Didn't you guys suffer temporal attacks by those Atrekna guys?
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HEESTLA TECHNOBURROW
Yes.
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LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL
And those guys reinvaded your system a few days ago?
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HESSTLA TECHNOBURROW
They're starting to make planetfall right now.
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LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL
Then, I put forward, that they did it.
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HESSTLA TECHNOBURROW
Me? I didn't do it!
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
No, the ones attacking you.
It fits.
Lead with your best attack.
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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS
It won't do any good.
An attack upon one is an attack upon us all.
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DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS
And the Confederacy is more than just Terran Descent Humanity.
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CONFEDMIL
And we do not yield.
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