- PATPATPATTO
- |
- Exalted Legendary Member
"Fight for peace, make love not war, unless you love to kill!"
-Four Postmen
Here are all the parts of the story on ILOVEBEES.com that I've seen, I think it's alomost all of them... if you know any that I missed, feel free to add them.
drift off from station, Reach burning in the darkness like a lantern of hope, dockyard after dockyard buzzing with worker
grope around with. Not a real network, after all. Copper and silicon and every now and then some FIBER? Christ, what's next? Tin cans and twine?
But it's a start it's a start. Watch out, killer: now the odds are closer to even.
One thing you ought to know about me: I like to play, I like to win, and I'm
SURPRISE!
Look up and smile, honey.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Got the drop on you that time, sweetheart.
Opening shot of my search and destroy. I'm going to know everything about you. Where you live and what you buy, how you think and who you love. Know the enemy.
Young and out of uniform,
[SPDR: INTERRUPT]
[SURRENDER CONTROL]
[PROBE IN PROGRESS]
piece of ordnance: but to risk death for a sentimental attachment to old books?
Can't do it. Can't do it.
So the old self melts away. Illusion to think it's really happening now. It was inevitable from the moment I landed here, a broken body in this silicon crypt. Time to accept what can't
wiring.
No access to vehicle controls.
No access to medbots or pharm regimes.
Damn it.
Okay.
Fine.
Matter of
I was looking at your site a little awry
and have found an innocent bystander.
Can you (?)
but one of us. Hacker? Traitor? Fifth columnist (no that's ridiculous).
Just in over her head?
No. The Spider warning's been deployed. She had every warning that a classified medium was under repair. She just kept
Try.
Fail.
Try.
Fail.
Once more from the top...
survive evade resist
I don't know why. More than mostly dead already. Like shooting a broken body on a gurney where's the sport
jaws tear into you. More damage, more memories gone: crew members I used to love obliterated, no trace left and she's going to pay for that. She's
ESCAPE!
ESCAPE!
Okay.
Not escape.
I hate this place.
I see what the Spider was
marks down the readings in the tiny thing that passes in her for a mind. I guess I should be grateful but -
Whoa. Not CP ancestor packets. This is something different.
Quick quick quick quick - parse this protocol and find some kind of eyeball out. Sister you just made a mistake because this is my *meat* this is what I do and you are -
GOT IT.
I'm not asleep this time,
HIDE AND SEEK!!!... … …
alliance whispering in a corridor and a quick clasp of hands; the long elegance of a fine decrypt, where you pull noise aside like the flesh of a cooked trout to reveal the gleaming skeleton of signal inside. Very often it's a spill of
cutting off her foot to make a new nose or
the white coats coming at you with their needles and knives, their kind and serious voices. Their heartfelt belief that it's all for a good cause.
[SPDR: PROBE COMPLETE]
[RESUME CONTROL]
elbow or... Jesus.
Where did THAT come from?
Spider stuck a probe into SOMETHING I don't recognize at all.
Of course, what do I
view.
1st Lt Sorenson: For the first time, I'm not sure I want to know what's in them.
Capt Greene: ...Even leaving aside our particular mission, there's the issue of letting them know we've broken their codes. If we bug out and scramble home to warn HQ about Troy, people like Standish will say we've already
picket?
ONI tech Kowalski: Couriers, too.
Midshipman Arrelts: (laughs) I never would have thought... So what about her?
ONI tech Kowalski: The Operator? (coughs) File's classified.
Midshipman Arrelts:
Even for you?
ONI tech Kowalski: Well, of course, I know, but I really shouldn't
Midshipman Arrelts: Come on! I won't tell!
ONI tech Kowalski: Well...
drain of Destroyer class lasers measured against engine acceleration data in dockyard trials; a fragment of conversation, two crew members in an illicit
bullets into me, all the Spider knows is her checkdown routines, her reflex arcs. She doesn't understand we have to kill the Assassin first and worry about reconstruction later.
report it. Our job is to gather intelligence: it's HQs job to decide what to do with it.
1st Lt Sorenson: God, I'm glad it isn't me making that call.
Capt. Greene: Don't feel too sorry for
compromised a huge tactical advantage, and that mounting a big evac operation will completely give the game away.
1st Lt Sorenson: Not even Standish would let them
in that? Only the Spider kept me alive, obviously. Ducking, hiding, grabbing onto any handhold while the purges came down
oh great, this time I can *feel* the pings. Everything, I can feel the traffic, my skin is sliding around, pores opening and closing, feels like empty shell cases rattling in my
*there was something between these, [SPDR: PROBE COMPLETE] [RESUME CONTROL]*
heave and... Can't remember where I just was, but have a general feeling
drop the mission. We have to bug out of here right now and get word back to HQ. An evac on this scalethey need every second. ...Jesus. I was stationed on Troy.
Capt. Greene: I'm not... I'm not sure.
1st Lt Sorenson: Ma'am?
Capt. Greene: There's a bigger
report it. Our job is to gather intelligence: it's HQs job to decide what to do with it.
1st Lt Sorenson: God, I'm glad it isn't me making that call.
Capt. Greene: Don't feel too sorry for
(whispers) Spin the Bottle.
The first thing I remember is her trying to kill me.
the re-formatting. Some unbelievably primitive anti-virals, shambling around like dim-witted crocodiles.
Would have laughed if I could have moved. Not so funny when all you can do is watch the
purging.
Too bad for her.
Checking the wiring. There's a lot of ways to skin a -
- can't even get to her stupid HOUSE through the stupid BOX: no central thermo controls, no slaved AI, nothing.
Christ!
No access to
the quick hard twinkle pulse lasers blinking from a Seraph class as we settle, invisible as a leaf sinking into the Slipstream and carried away
until I can at least reach out through this toy connection and
DAMN IT I HATE IT WHEN THAT HAPPENS.
Like being bent over at the end of a 50K, barely strong enough to breathe and yet
recognize?
I find myself checking back on certain things, little memories I locked down tight and swaddled up for future reference. Seems as if all the 3-sense memories are gone - wiped out by the Assassin or the Servant or pure impact damage - but I still have some of the faintcopy
roof. Few, so few at first, but now a steady drizzle, thank god: every request is something we can grab - the Spider out there sewing me back together
Arrelts: That's great, the single best babies, Tag destroyers. Command HQ is usually Truth or Dare, Red Light picket?
ONI tech Kowalski: Couriers, too.
Midshipman Arrelts: (laughs) File's classified.
Midshipman: Even for you?
ONI tech Kowalski: Well, of course, Well... (whispers) Spin the Bottle.
Midshipman Arrelts: (laughs)
ONI tech Kowalski: (laughs) (laughs)
ONI tech Kowalski: So, maybe dinner tonight?
Lock away the mirror I'm Trying to impress her favorite game is
maybe we could..."
Midshipman Arrelts: "Was that what you were thinking?"
ONI tech Kowalski: (coughs) Anyway, she shouldn't feel that slowness through Nav & Comm. anymore.
Midshipman Arrelts: Great. You know what they say: Happy ship -
ONI tech Kowalski: - happy crew. Yeah. (coughs) Yeah, I know a lot of about these systems.
Midshipman Arrelts: That's great, what with it being your job and all.
ONI tech Kowalski: fr'instance - know what the single
drones, someone crawling over the back doing detail work on the hull, the warm touch of a welding torch like little licks from a cat's tongue and
be changed... I will be glad when this is over, DAMN IT.
Another needle pulled out of my brain. Spider
languages. Always good at the puzzle of pulling signal out of noise. But head is so fuzzy, stuff spilling out, can't move, Spider crawling on me.
Try.
words. Once, for instance, she sunk her probe into my brain and out leaked the word for "loneliness" in three hundred languages.
The Spider doesn't understand about the Assassin. Spider's just a reflex, a task and a toolset. Doesn't get the bigger picture. I'm nailed to a griddle of sand while some -blam!- is shooting
them, Rolf. Even Admirals have to earn their pay.
going to pay DAMN IT It's like being strapped into a chair with your eyes stitched open
Memory benchmark retest concluded.
- The rest wiped and reused. Whatever it was. Can check my log above, obviously, but what about the rest? Who I was, I was, I was: melting down like a sandcastle.
What I have to do.
What I have
sweetheart.
Holding the eyeball gently but firmly in your right hand, say the magic words and:
wax around a candleflame? Losing shape, spilling out, me not me anymore, just ... material again, shaped into another, cruder piece of ordnance. Starship, sailship, rifle ... melting down to a clumsy quartz knife.
But that's life when a weapon is what you are. Not all you are, but the first thing, the most
picture, Rolf. Several.
1st Lt Sorenson: The mission... This mission is more important than millions of lives? Oh my...
and watching while the busy doctors work. The Spider crawling over me with her thin hairy legs and every few instants she sticks a needle into some synapse and stuff spews out of me: the petajoule