The Eternals were the mighty iron fist of that cabal.
Hundreds of years of breaking, and then rewriting, the wills of its captured subjects, and even its own members, had given the Uplifted of the Pantheon a sophisticated level of mind control and will manipulation that would not be replicated by even the best latter-era Republic’s finest psychological warfare programs.
Within hours now, a combined Uplifted force would take Ice Station Hades and its valuable storage cloud. A gem long coveted by all allied Uplifted tribes. On the cloud were all of Spilursa’s best-kept technology secrets, including a new mass-produced hyperdrive capable of being fitted to smaller warships and freighters without the typical excessive space requirements. As of yet, the Uplifted, though they understood the hyperdrive, had no way to reliably mass-produce the device and balance it to a new ship design. At best they could only install captured tech on already made ships and hope for the best with each jump execution. Time and time again their best scientists warned them that this was a recipe for failure. A colony ship carrying upwards of a hundred thousand Uplifted could come apart within jump space in the blink of an eye. The loss would be total, and of course, catastrophic to Uplifted culture.
Really, any loss to the slowly amalgamating Uplifted tribes would be devastating when weighed against the greater numbers of the hyperdrive-connected worlds of their descendants and predecessors. Even when combined into a massive stellar nation, the Uplifted would still be outnumbered by the combined, at that time, galactic population of the human colonies.
If there was one thing the Animals did well, it was breed.
It was suspected that some of the Uplifted tribes did in fact possess stable mass-produced jump systems, or at least had captured such, but if they did, they refused to share their tech with the whole for purposes of reverse engineering. Spilursa, however… that was the chance for everyone to have access. Several Uplifted intelligence assets had confirmed that the specs were being held within the confines of the cloud guarded by Ice Station Hades. Along with a number of other great leaps forward in technology ranging from weaponry to energy production.
A raging debate among the governing councils of the Uplifted as to which tribe would have the honor, and trust, to take the coveted station, had ended in a combined forces group being assigned to the task. That group would come from the task force currently feinting an attack on Espania. They would arrive in eighteen hours, unaware that they were not, in fact, the first Uplifted to arrive. With no reason to suspect that a rogue element within the Xanadu Tower of the Pantheon had decided on a preemptive strike using the Eternals, and that after a successful infiltration by this, the Uplifted’s premier combat force, the best the Pantheon could field, an electronic pathogen known as the Unity Virus had already been uploaded and hidden within the cloud.
And in the chaos of the arrival of the combined Uplifted force attacking the station and the military forces of Spilursa across the world, the Eternals would seamlessly mix in as the rest of the Uplifted raced to hack and access the already hacked and accessed servers.
In the end every tribe would be given, or would simply take, almost immediate access to everything within the cloud in a mad rush to acquire the new tech ahead of their allies. Even if that meant just by seconds. And in that madcap, headlong smash-and-grab, no one would notice the little something extra. The little something known as the Unity Virus, buried in the cloud and ready to infect and replicate with stealth and speed.
Crometheus heard the section bulkhead in his hold groan terrifically and cave in as a torrent of ice-cold seawater rushed through the crushed hull of the captured scout freighter and into the cargo section of the lower deck he and the forward assault team had been racked in. The water was a livid aquamarine blue and his onboard HUD temperature already indicated a temperature of one point eight Celsius. The reflex armor was rated far beyond the frozen temperature of the waters now rising around their chests.
Maestro released the installed restraining locks, freeing them to egress the crashed vessel. Eternals struggled upward and grabbed their carrying systems, shrugging into them as the water rose above their mirrored face visors.
Servia’s Gamble had flown her last run and come to rest on the bottom of a frozen sea on a distant alien world, disgorging four hundred Eternals onto the almost lunar surface at the bottom of the arctic ocean. Compass headings and route navigation came to life in ghostly blue images within HUDs. Bone-white rock and featureless sands spread off in every direction, disappearing into a murky nether. Great undersea canyons fell into irretrievable abysses in those unseen compass headings they were not taking.
Falling into one of those meant no escape.
Teams, squads, and full platoons linked up into wedges and columns beneath the crumpled ruin of the sunken freighter, still shining its floodlights out across the murky bottoms. Soon they began their long march across the floor of the sea toward the ice passage. The access point that connected the Great Crater Lake at the top of this world to this lonely arctic sea.
Crometheus noted a download in his HUD as the floodlights of the freighter finally gave out, dropping everything in the deep ocean into a midnight blackness.
Gods: Chapter Twenty-Four
Strong undersea currents pulled at the armored figures marching through the shadowy gloom. It was as if invisible winds were trying to shift the Eternal task force off course as they trudged toward the passage that tunneled beneath the ice shelf and into the Great Crater Lake at the top of doomed Spilursa.
The bottom of the ocean felt as barren as some lost world devoid of oxygen, or love, or even the gravitational embrace of some larger kinder stellar body. But it was not uninhabited. In the deeps of this undersea world, the Uplifted glimpsed the shadowy, almost mirage-like migrations of the giant snakewhales native to Spilursa. The leviathans passed like silent flocks of giant birds, undulating off into the nothingness and distant great sea canyons from which there was no return.
Even for one in Uplifted reflex armor.
Within the silence of their HUDs the Eternals heard these monsters making deep croonings as they passed by and then swam off into the dark.
There had been three armor malfunctions so far along the route to the objective. Armor integrity, at this crushing depth and temperature, was horribly revealed as some element of deliberate manufacture—not design flaw of course, assured Maestro—and three Eternals now lay in the forever embrace of their ruined armor, drowned and crushed and game-overed. Their waterproof equipment packs, carrying weapons, ammunition, and explosives, had been loaded onto the towed pallets being pulled by some teams. Ammunition and supplies would be redistributed at the objective, instructed Maestro, who acted as the unit’s NCO.
Commander Zero was in charge, of course.
“Nearing the passage. It’s going to get tight in there, Eternals,” said Commander Zero. “So don’t lose your marbles. Lead elements entering now.”
Maestro had advised the commander that some of the Eternals were experiencing schismatic personality fractures due to the inherently claustrophobic nature of the underwater environment and looming ice canyon that would quickly turn into little more than a mere tight squeeze through the ice. No doubt the personality fractures were brought on also by the stress of cybernetic chassis integration… but the operations environment wasn’t helping.
“I’m stabilizing them by rewarding them with achievement points,” intoned Maestro quietly within her comm. “Some of the others are receiving messages of encouragement from the other Uplifted. Messages I am manufacturing as we speak, Commander. Social proof is an excellent means of stabilizing the ongoing faults. It should get them through the mission, or at least into the initial breach where numbers will provide a significant advantage during our attack. In the event I detect a full-blown psychotic break in which they might harm their fellow warriors, or jeopardize the mission goals, I have another, final op
tion at my disposal.”
Crometheus was unaware of this conversation and instead was squeezing in under the narrow shelf of almost ethereal blue ice in order to enter the underwater passage when just behind him, one of the other members of the advanced forward assault team stumbled. His armor suddenly malfunctioning. Near-frozen seawater flooded into Player Titanix’s armor, causing an immediate heart attack. Maestro also disabled backup power, and so Titanix was dead, both physically and mentally. Which was what the Uplifted of the Pantheon called… game-overed.
Maestro had detected an impending psychotic break and felt it was best not to risk having that occur inside the passage. What with everyone carrying explosives and all. Who knew what someone not in their right mind might decide to get up to in such tight quarters beneath tons of ice.
The rigid body of the dead Eternal, animated and moving not thirty seconds ago, began to drift along with the swift undersea current trying to enter the ice passage along with the warriors.
Crometheus put out a hand to stabilize the body of his dead comrade while Commander Zero came over the comm.
“Player Crometheus… pull his pack. We need everything we can carry on to the objective. Let the body go. No one will ever find it down here.”
The Eternals are not hampered by their dead.
To do so would be weak. As weak as the superstitious Animals and all their concerns about souls, religious ceremonies, and never leaving one of their own behind.
Simple sentiments for the simple-minded.
Crometheus hit the quick-releases on the equipment ruck as he held on to the dead man’s drifting armor, fighting against the current’s desire to carry it off under the fissures of the crushing ice. Downloaded muscle memory made the work of getting the ruck off and tethered to his own armor swift and simple for Crometheus to the point that he didn’t even need to think too much about it during the process. Within two minutes the column now threading the narrow ice crevice under the massive shelf of glacial ice was underway again.
The body of Titanix, released, drifted off under the shelf and became stuck in a nook just a few feet to one side of the tunnel.
He’ll stay there forever, thought Crometheus as he began to pull forward, fighting the jet stream current at his back, forcing his mind not think about how many tons of ice they were all crossing under. One sea quake and they could all be crushed in an instant. No amount of rated armor, or next-generation cybernetic chassis, could do anything about that. Worst-case scenario… they would be pinned and immobile waiting for the internal battery to run out so that they could be game-overed. That is, if they survived the panic and claustrophobia that would no doubt come for them. Turning their minds into drooling fear-struck puddles of gibbering mayhem.
The one thing you learn as an Uplifted is that the mind is very powerful. It can work for you, and it can definitely work against you.
You decide which way that’s going to go. And it’s best to decide early on and stay ahead of the carnival of madness the un-governed mind can choose to attend.
But what unfolded next, as the cavern began to wind its way through the giant sheets of ice, was the most beautiful thing Crometheus had ever seen in all of his very long lives. The tunnel wasn’t much of a tunnel in the standard sense. It was really more of an accidental passage through the ice formed by two sections of the glacier not quite coming together. Found by underwater recon drones and identified as a possible assault axis point on Ice Station Hades. No one had actually been through this passage before.
It was simply and marvelously beautiful. Otherworldly, and absolutely.
Still, hours of march soon began to seem like forever, despite Maestro’s constant download of achievement points. There was no other world to retreat into here. Nothing but the deep hum and swish of the ocean’s cold currents swirling past jagged yet beautiful walls of sheer ice and over the ominous shadows of other armored figures in the gloom ahead. Above were sudden cathedrals of climbing ice, or sculptures of fantastic frozen giants and strange beasts, or other things the mind imagines within freezing water sculptures in the dark of ancient oceans on alien worlds.
The whole place was like a hidden mansion of icy wonders never seen in probably the entirety of the galaxy’s history.
It was almost humbling.
Other Eternals died. More armor failed. But the failures in time became less, and in the end, as the narrow crevice opened up into the wide panorama of the massive lake at the top of the world, as seen from the bottom of it, the strike force of Uplifted Eternals was still at eighty percent unit strength as they closed on their target objective.
The mission grid fell over their collective HUDs. Three kilometers forward of the crack they’d just emerged from on the floor of the lake, lay Ice Station Hades. In the tactical overlay they could see its shape digitally rendered by radar augmentation.
It looked like an upside-down wedding cake, with its top, the pinnacle of the cake, resting on the floor of the ocean.
Within the HUD, massive ghostly blue arrows swept forward from their egress point and fanned out into three wedges. Assignments were broken down and unit tags came online once more. All three masses of the Eternal strike force were to converge on what was being identified as a main geothermal core tap that provided energy to the mostly underwater cloud server facility.
“We do not expect this entrance to be defended,” intoned Commander Zero over the comm, “but response will be swift once the attack is underway. The bulk of their forces are located up along the receiving docks and landing platforms and they’ll be responding to the shock troopers who are ready to drop on my command. So move fast and take as many of the lower levels as you can, Eternals, before they organize a response.”
For the next hour, like silent sentinels, the three wedges of Eternals moved through the underwater gloom toward the objective, undetected.
The lead scout clan, followed by a group of combat engineers with reflex armor systems suited to that sort of breaching work, were the first to rise over the last underwater dune and see within the very bowl of the lake the massive structure of the ice station rising up and expanding out over their upward-looking mirrored helmets. Some looked up in awe, others continued forward, intent on the coming breach.
Up there, in the depths above, the whole spectacle of this massive, multi-tiered, luminescent structure rising up over their assault inspired both awe and vertigo. Platform lights and rotating cylinders gave it the appearance of some kind of bizarre carousel of many layers, and its sheer size was nothing short of impressive.
Bad Thought, corrected Maestro gently. “Nothing the Animals have ever produced will match our glory and brilliance once we’re free of their infestation. Once we’re free to really create.”
Bad Thought.
Bad Thought.
Bad Thought.
Already, in the blue-hued gloom of the lake, the cutting torches of the engineers, forward of the assault teams, were ablaze with bright fury as they cut a breach point into the base of the upside-down sunken wedding-cake fortress of Ice Station Hades.
“Breach in progress,” said Player Cerebruz, the Eternal running the scout clan. A minute later the commander for the first wedge, forward assault team, gave the order to move into place for breach.
The other Eternals around Crometheus stacked into a column and trundled through the dense water at the bottom of the lake as fast as they could, heading for the opening that had been made into the central cylinder of the server fortress’s base. Perhaps the engineers had been able to bypass any security sensors… perhaps not.
Crometheus knew that this was when their attack was the most vulnerable. They had no weapons; everything was stored inside waterproof carrying systems or palletized on the sleds. If the fortress wanted to…
On instinct alone he looked up. Like some pro tip had suddenly popped into his subconscious.
&n
bsp; Falling through the gloom above were shadowy canisters the size of large dogs. Drifting down through the depths rather lazily. Tumbling end over end. They were falling down in what looked like a semicircle. Silhouettes passing in front of the lights and sensors of the upside-down wedding-cake base in the background.
The instinct that had caused him to look up, visualizing a weapon the Animals would surely have ready, but not being able to bring a name along with it, now ordered him to take charge in that same dangling commitment instant.
“Forward assault, move out for the entrance! Now! Double time!” Then over the general comm he shouted, “We’re under attack!”
The first depth charge landed on the sandy bottom not ten meters in front of the second wedge. It came to rest like nothing more than a mere garbage can that had drifted down from the top of the frozen lake and landed on the desolate bottom below. By chance. By accident. Not intended to wound, maim, or harm.
Then it violently detonated at a velocity of roughly six thousand meters per second, reduced because of the underwater atmosphere it was being exploded within, at a release point of four hundred megajoules of dynamic energy.
Fortunately, the underwater explosion itself was rather contained. It looked as though a genie suddenly made of bubbles had erupted into sudden life just in front of the approaching wedge’s point man. The Eternals farther back saw the point man blown off his boots and back toward them in the sand. They saw this in the same instant they were hit by a hydraulic shock wave that crumpled their armor systems like crushed beer cans. Devastating them instantly as integrity failed. Fifty Eternals were game-overed in a single moment.
Gods & Legionnaires (Galaxy's Edge: Savage Wars Book 2) Page 23