Bright sunlight bathed the podium on which the three athropoids stood. A nice breeze tickled Mir's cheeks and played with Rin's hair beside her. Calming leaves rustled above the rest of the crew, 410 in total, who were arranged to watch them depart. The captain and a political delegate stood with them.
"Comrade Mir", the CC delegate said, approaching her with a medal. She took hold of one of Mir's hands, and placed the honour in the palm. Then, she looked up to meet Mir's eyes.
This CC delegate was hundreds of years old. She had lived on Earth. Like the soldiers, she was an arthropoid, but of the old type, back when they were designed with biomimicry and had thick armour made of chitinium. Mir, and Rin and Lariophel had shed most of the insect features, and only really shared size and intention with the older model.
In the symposium, they lived in purely human bodies. If they were to survive the war, they would have their cyberbrains replaced into Porth's mind arrays, and they would return to being in practice be no different than any other being, though in reality people did still treat others differently based upon past phyiscal body plan.
Olivia, on the other hand, retained her distinctly abhuman body. It was that of a bee, a mass production model that had been built in Britain during the end stages of the Red Solar War 250 years ago. She had lived the nation of England, before the Human Empire had reduced that name to royalty, control and a standardised habitat design.
Mir felt the badge be applied to the shoulder of her physcial form. It was a waste of mass, really, but the sentiment was nice. It came with a digitised letter signed by all the crew, and the Party leadership out in the Oort Cloud. She murmured, "Thank you."
Olivia shook her head. "No, comrade. We thank you, for your bravery and sacrifice. You're going to fight in one of the most daring operations that I've seen since the Earth War. We all wish we could be with you, and I promise, if this was back on Earth I would, but the rocket equation limits our ability to shift the mass of physical bodies. So, the mission lies on your shoulders. And after getting to know you all these years during the transfer, I do not think anyone could be more up to the task."
Mir smiled. She felt proud. She wasn't capeable of feeling fear, and if she could, she would have been paralyzed. But she'd discarded that emotion when she volunteered for this, having her human brain copied into an arthropoid. She was happy to die with Rin, with whom she often shared a bed.
"I feel nothing but excitmement. I am ready to take on the mantle of all you that you stood for in the past, and bring into fruition the goal of a society where no intelligence is exploited", Mir said.
"We were all like you, when I was young", Olivia said, sadness in her black eyes. "It's just… thank you, and good luck."
Mir sensed words unspoken, a habit of the old world, where lying was possible. But she did not care to ask. Olivia probably felt guilty, but the decision to fight had been her own, and she was a professional.
"I can't wait to feel real atmosphere on my skin", Mir said.
"It's not at all different to the simulation", Olivia said, before turning away.
Lariophel was spending his last minutes with his boyfriend in the crew, while Mir could not find anyone out of her friends or lovers that she would rather be with than Rin. The rest of the crew were cheering them. She took Rin's hand.
"Only a few minutes until the drop", she said. "I won't let you go, not until the end."
"Yeah!", Rin smiled. Her expression shifted as her autumn eyes looked into Mir's. "Oh, you look a little sad. Why's that?"
"I wonder what the original me is doing on Porth. Probably wishing she was here", Mir said. "I don't know. Why did I - she - why did she reject immortality on the cloud? I never disliked it."
"Someone had to", Rin said. "If we didn't have volunteers, we wouldn't be able to fight. Then we'd be stuck running away from capitalism. Also, maybe we still care about the people we were cloned from. We're fighting for the betterment of their material conditions."
"Or maybe they just made a bad decision and now we're stuck with it", Mir sighed. "I was conditioned to want to join."
"How else would they get soldiers to fight for the revolution? We don't feel the weight of the Imperial System out in the Oort cloud, but the need for soldiers is just as much as it has ever been with their stellaser set up", Rin said. "Do you think conscription, or cultivating bioforms specifically for war, are better? They are infinitely more brutal."
Mir nodded. "And, you know, I want to benifit all of humanity. Someone needed to do it. I'm proud of myself. That's worth dying for, not that it will matter when we are on the ground."
Rin squeezed her hand. "We might make it, you know. It's not like we'll self destruct once the mission is over. Maybe we'll find some way to survive."
"Maybe", Mir said. It wouldn't happen, and anyway, she was happy to die.
The symposium was gone, and she was within the vessel's cargo bay. It was a coffin, affording her no space to move, though she had tested each muscle group and hydraulic system already. Attached to her body was the heavy ballute system, on top of the nitrogen cooling loop that would take them from their landing site to the target. All three were holding hands.
Agile 1, ready. Agile 2, ready… Agile 3, ready
Vox would always be strange to Mir. She didn't have a strong intenal monologue, so she wasn't used to hearing voices in her head. Anyway, it was almost time to drop. She clenched her muscles.
Goodbye, Jaft. I like you a lot, Mir, and I love you, Rin.
It was time. The bay doors swung open, revealing the totality of Venus. Endless layers of clouds swirled beneath them like the gas giant her class had designed in school. High atmosphere cities, where the biological Humans of the Empire breathed oxygen, could be seen through the beige clouds. None of them had seen a planet with atmosphere before. Porth and Atahualpa only a tiny percent of this rocky planet's mass, and even though there had been some heat within them thanks to radioactive decay, they were much too far from Sol to host any gas.
Mir, however subsumed to the merge as she was, felt gripped by the planet, as if the goddess was clasping the arthropoid within her pretty hands, ready to bring her down to her breast. This wasn't an incorrect feeling. Gravity would soon take them down into the beautiful, deadly, atmosphere.
The ballute shuddered, and they were flung outinto space by the explosive separator. It was amazing. If Mir had been afforded a personality interface (there had not been the mass allowance for it, nor was it necessary for a short mission like this), she would have opened her mouth. The three of them spun through the air, holding on to one another tight with their backs to the gargantuan ballute.
The vessel, disquised as an Imperial Tanker, engaged it's engines and fell away from them like a rock sinking into the ocean, or a train leaving a station. It would be 20 minutes until they hit the atmosphere, at which point correct angling of the ballute would be integral to landing close to the target. It was going to be hard, like jumping into water from a height and receiving concrete. Until then, they could coast and chat. None of them had nerves. They had prepared several for this day.
I meant to put as the title, but my post got deleted
Suborbital trajcetory, Venus, 2407. T - 30 minutes until drop
I very much enjoyed reading that OP, thank you.
>>776470That was good! I wonder what they are going to accomplish with just three of them though.
The Empress' tour brought her to every legal settlement occupied by Humans, from outposts in the Kuiper Belt, to the terraforming stations at the base of the Venusian spires like the one she was visiting now. It was a small settlement of a million citizens, most of whom worked with the sublime authorities as demon overseers. The one she was to visit now was called La Rochelle, which was based on the French mould.
It existed not just to help remote settlements be heard, but to remind everyone of the cosmic order. The Empress was a goddess, everyone knew, who had given up a part of her sacred humanity in order to govern the whole universe magnanimously, to protect the sanctity of every citizen's fragile, weak, and beautiful human body. In other words: Imperial Socialism. The cyberized elite, those who had displayed will to power, to be above just the desire for perfection, and the arthropoids, these also had forsaken a part of their purity for their positions as heralds of FALGSC.
Irina tried to hide her scowl as she accompanied the Empress down the grand lift to La Rochelle. Her life was to keep Her Holiness safe. Her current orders were frustrating that. She'd had half a mind to have someone removed for treason when they'd first came through last night. But the Empress herself had verified them.
But she couldn't help asking again. Her heart would not sit right if she didn't.
She said, "My Lady, I say this not to doubt your word, but because I was born to be your protector. Do you really want to go forward with this? There will be a threat to your life, only a fraction of a percent, but it is still far too much for me to be comfortable. I can have the terrorists all arrested right now, if you wish."
The Empress turned her green eyes to Irina. Her delicate expression carried the grace, love and dissapointment that Irina was used to.
"Bringing this up again? A knight wouldn't know the complexities of rulership", she finally said, with distaste. "Do I need to spell it out to you? Our Empire is a commonwealth built on control and stability. The order we have now is good - but fledgeling. The Imperial System must systematise the Ultras as well, turn them into cliched villains, who resist us only symbolically. It's not like it'll be difficult to make those demon-lovers, or really, half-demons, into such a role. Is that enough for you?"
"Yes, My Lady…", Irina sighed. "It's much too late to change plans now. My security team will keep them on a tight leash. This will go forward exactly as planned."
"So it will, for if I am hurt, you will die", the Empress said.
…
Though it was no Atlantis, the citizens had prepared their city nicely for what it was. Pleasant clouds rolled over a bright blue sky on the skylights far above. The walls were French neoclassical apartments built of stone textured as granite, from which banners and bunting hung. Humans thronged the streets, cheering wildly for their ruler as she passed.
The Empress' jade gown was like a fresh, grassy meadow hidden on a mountainside. Her black hair was as smooth as obsidian, and contrasted with her inhumanly pale skin. Her smile was the sun and her gaze love. She was 20 metres tall. She glided down the street, and every citizen that watched her, even those crowded in windows, knew they were seen. Irina watched through a thousand cameras from her action position hidden at the square.
They chanted, "FALGSC! FALSGSC!"
They had celebrated Irina as well. After all, she was the most famous arthropoid, and the strongest hero. But she was too anxious to deal with it today, and anyway it wasn't her job to be loved. She had quickly checked the route from the sky-dock to the main square with her own eyes, before meeting some of the security team in the Imperial Cathedral.
She spoke quickly with them over vox. Half the terrorists seemed to have chickened out, these would be arrested after the action, but the rest were already inside the skylight rafters over the square. They were planning to detonate explosives in order to bring the roof, and spire structure above it, down onto the Empress. Security guessed the strike would be after the children's gift giving, when the adults would start coming forward with their libations.
The Empress and her procession would soon be at the square. Children from good families were already waiting in anticipation for the god they were taught to love in school. Some of them might die, because the plan was to let at least one explosive detonate. There was an echo of disgust from a version of herself long dead. But right now, she was more worried about how she would come out to whisk the Empress away to safety.
"Element A, be advised of radar detecting potentially hostile object entering atmosphere within Her Holiness' designated security zone", HQ transmitted through simple vox-text.
Irina snarled. She grabbed at her compartment's door release. "HQ, please specify details of object entering atmosphere."
It was confirmed how massive the object was, and where it had come from. Irina didn't doubt this was an Ultra attack. The ship would be dealt with by other sections, but, frustratingly, there were no weapons to shoot this rogue lander down from within the atmosphere. Venus did not have planetary defenses; there was no need. She'd deal with them once they reached the ground.
Quickly, she transmitted, "My Lady, I have been informed of a likely hostile object set to land nearby La Rochelle. It is almost certain this is an element of the terrorist attack that our intelligence failed to predict - I think it's likely that it is a lander carrying demon robots or petit-arthropoids. I am using my knightly authority to take charge of the situation, terminate all known terrorists and evacuate you to the designated zone, as well as all citizens to the city bunkers. Surface agents will confront the object at it's most likely landing zone."
The Empress was entering the square. Balloons filled the air, and her smile was as fair as ever. Without a twitch of her fair lips, she snapped, "I am aware. Now, you will most certainly not do all of that. Get rid of the human terrorists, certainly, but these new ones are an amazing opportunity. They will go through the whole city to get me, and hopefully they will even take down the spire and sky-city. Think about how evil that will make the Ultras look."
Irina shot back, "We have Demons to generate propaganda! Isn't your whole plan to control the Ultras, use them? These ones are not under our control, they could be planning naything. Let me do my job!"
"Idiot demon-lover", the Empress spat, "You're unworthy of the special love I give you. It's your fault that your intelligence didn't pick this up. These Ultras or Demons must not find an empty city, but a city of celebration, of love, an emotion, and they will defile it."
Irina sighed. Fuck.
She said, "I'm sealing off and evacuating the distrinct beside the airlock. We will engage any hostiles there. Only a few of our units are equipped to fight them outside anyway. The celebration won't be affected."
She was glad the Empress didn't respond. Checking the object's trajectory again, she saw how close it was going to land to La Rochelle's maximum scale airlock. With how thick the atmosphere was, any arthropoid would have left the lander long before then and angled towards the airlock, so the they would probably not spend enough time on the ground anyway for surface units to be meaningfully effective.
Irina's forces would outnumber them in the city. But she knew that evacuated district or not, this was going to turn into a bloodbath. And the magnanimous Empress, who deep down she loved dearly, was going to let it happen. For a long second she considered evacuating the Empress against her wishes, but obviously she never would. She sighed again, and got to work.
Oops, fucked up the formatting. The italics in that post are meant to be bold. Bold = vox, italics = internal monologue (which I'm not using in this), Bold + italics = vox blending internal monologues into one through the meld.