Chapter 56

Chapter 56

Now we are six.

My sisters sit watching while Ennos and I weave a symphony of hardware in the form of a blueprint. A simple engineering file, which actually isnt simple at all, and which will be acceptable input to the drone fabricator.

All this new power and Im still going back to that old trick of remote controlling a drone while inside it. Heh.

Im trying to focus on helping Ennos with usability, while out in the bay past the projection terminal were working with, Dyn and one of the new kids hauls a salvaged gun into a part of the hull marked off with a square of yellow binding paint, and behind me, at least one of my sisters doubts herself.

This is a bad idea. NanoLily whispers in a fractal meow. I dont think she means for it to be heard, but all of us have very good hearing. And the telepathic impression of a feline that is our newest revealed sister is also still helping us talk. So, theres that. Wait, am I talking now? Cer it, I thought I was getting better about this.

Im not the only one, though. The Lily of the bright black plasma field is muttering doubts too. And I suspect that the reason these doubts are coming out so clearly is because the - I dont even know what to call the new one of me. Psychic? Psionics arent real (says the talking immortal cat). Whatever. - psionic version of myself is having the same doubts, and amplifying them without meaning to.

Were going to screw this up. ExoLily says, panic creeping into her voice. Why are we doing this? Why dont we just nuke it? Or turn it into a black hole. Or just why dont we just leave it? It wont make it worse. Weve never had to say something like that before. We dont say things like that. We think them, obviously, all the time. But weve never been together. Weve never had someone to say it to.

Even when I spent months surrounded by Ennos and Glitter and Dog and Dyn, I never said it.

But now shes saying it. What were all thinking.

What were all afraid of.

That were not good enough.

I can feel it through the new arrival. And maybe thats why Lily said it out loud. Because we can feel it in each other, and because we can feel that emotion building in the background, waiting to boil over.

I pause with my paws over a diagram of an internally sealed limb joint that is also a grappling line, and glance up like I do when Im talking to Ennos. Hey. I mutter to them and them alone.

Ennos voice comes back to me, quiet and compassionate. The voice of someone who knows me, who I maybe *should* have talked to. Who I need to talk to more. Ill finish this up. They say simply. Go.

I flick my tail, and close down the part of the diagram Im working on, turning around to the back of the bay and the pile of cats there. Half of them on, or alternately underneath, the construction scarab, or Dog.

Of course its a bad idea. I say, and they all snap their focus to me.

Hm. Okay, not a great opener. I should find that time machine so I can try this again. Alas.

Its a bad idea, but all our plans are bad ideas. I say. I know we havent had a lot of time to get to know each other. They look at me, and I feel my chest contract in worry. Were sisters, or copies, or something. And were also strangers. But I can already tell you that all of *our* plans are bad ideas. OozeLily laughs at that, a strangely pitched and croaking noise coming from her slime body. But bad ideas are where we live! We do bad ideas, because every other idea is worse!

This is not a good motivational speech. NanoLily buzzes, her voice half a sniff as her self-loathing blends with dark amusement.

We dont do motivational speeches either. I say. None of us have ever done this. I add in a whisper. And how long has it been since thats been a thing? Since weve not been hyper-competent in our repetition?

ExoLily looks down at her companion, running the extended carbon fiber claws of one paw down the scarabs back in a gesture of familiar compassion. a long time. She says.

A really long time. OozeLily adds.

Well, heres a chance to start. I say. We might screw this up, sure. We screw stuff up all the time. And sometimes, we dont. My eyes meet five sets of familiar stares, gazes sharpening as they look back at me with raised tails and straightened backs. Sometimes we win. Even if it doesnt last, sometimes were *enough*.

I tell them what I suddenly realize I always needed to hear.

I guess PsiLily says slowly, words echoing twice in our heads. I guess if we nuked it, it would kinda screw up the surface cities thatre still going.

Colonies and ships up here too. ExoLily says. Theres a lot of people still hanging on. I see them a lot. And theyre not always shielded.

How did you kill these things before? My plasmaform sister asks. I can sort of place the historical logs from the reactor, but I dont know what you *did*.

They were smaller then. I answer. And on the surface, so I mostly just bombarded them to nothing. Except for one big one that grew point defense stations. That one was harder. I dropped an asteroid on it. The feathermorph kid passing by squawks as she overhears me, getting a reassuring pat on the shoulder and a shake of the head from Dyn.

OozeLily looks up from her AR display that shes started pulling information out of with paws like liquid whips. If we let it go for another two weeks, we could clear most of the debris around Earth. She offers. Uh and then it would be the mass of Eastern Australia. And would have eaten us, too. And a lot of other people.

Which would be bad. Three of us say at once, in a resigned tone.

PsiLily looks at me with nonexistent cats eyes, slits in the fabric of thought, narrowed in concentration. Youre good enough too, you know. She whispers.

An intense sheer gravity field catches us off guard, pinning us down under increasing turret fire, until my adapted sister flips herself like shes moving without gravity at all, and carves into the ceiling over head to destroy the projector.

A pair of familiar looking orbital marauder craft, engines set to lowest possible power and AIs slaved to the city seed, make a strafing run at us, until the apathetic AIs allow themselves to be distracted by two of my sisters and the chainbreaker harpoons on my suit cut into their cores. They stop firing, and start evading, still trapped in here and now taking fire from the city seed that theyve broken away from.

At every step, our suits are taking readings. Triangulating, probing, looking for the source. We cut down relay after relay, watching sections of the city go dark. We have covered eighty kilometers, all of it in pitched battle, leaving leveled buildings and shattered machinery behind us. And we are closing in on an answer.

The mental impression of a cat that is my sister finds it first, alerting us to the thrum of a real thought below the surface under our paws. Something more than a virtual intelligence. Maybe we were wrong about what these things are, because this city seed at least is becoming something more.

We form into a circle. There are no entrances we can find, no stairs or elevators or access shafts. So two of us pivot to continue point defense, cutting down gravity assisted artillery and an increasing swarm of aerial drones, while the other four focus on the artificial ground between us.

A paramaterial powered resonator is activated. The ground twists like its allergic to itself. Another device activates, and it thins out like its being drained of its metallurgical bonds.

A crashing drone strikes me in the head, and I slit my eyes. Were breaking them as fast as we can, and more of them are still piling up. Time to go.

I lead the way, bounding into the air, then manipulating my suit at the apex of the jump to pivot and activate the orbital fighter thrusters on my flanks and hind legs.

A combined wedge of energy weapon and force shield leads me by millimeters, the weakened ground giving way like a crumbling cracker as I crush through it, turning whats left of the material to vapor and cutting a hole straight down for my sisters to follow. Behind me, they ping the tacnet as they leap into the hole in my wake, different forms of maneuvering capability letting them fly or run after me.

Then I crash through, dropping fifty feet to another deck, but this one not pretending to be anything but a mechanical lair. The cavernous space around us lit up by the blue glow of a stable incorporeal computational matrix, the vaguely diamond-shaped object the size of a small corvette hovering over a myriad of input triggers that it uses to control the whole city, all the machines and nanoswarms and automation.

The six of us land roughly in front of a massive combat drone that looks like a repurposed construction mech. It activates, tries to kill one of us. It doesnt work. We take it down, running up its arms and carving out its control systems with precise laser strikes.

All thats left is the city seed.

I take a step toward it, feeling the cold deckplate in my paw through the enhanced tactile sensors of the much larger armored appendage Im wearing. A port on my shoulder opens up, missile ready to fire. But, I hesitate.

Its all alone. One of my sisters says softly. Or maybe its me.

Its thinking. Afraid. PsiLily tells us.

We all stop in a semicircle, looking up at the core. The city seed. The first time Ive seen one in person, actually. The kind of thing that killed half the planet below us, once. Its beyond dangerous.

Im dangerous too. Some of us whisper.

I make a decision. We dont want to fight you! I say loudly through my external speakers, and a dozen other methods of broadcast. Small notifications in my viewscreens show that some of them have been received and acknowledged. I up at the hole weve punched into this inner layer of the city. Despite all evidence to the contrary. I add, forgetting to turn off the broadcast. You dont have to be alone if you dont want to. I say. Just talk to us, please?

We wait. And wait. And wait.

I consider taking the risk of hitting it with a chainbreaker. But I didnt realize, coming in, what these things *were*, not really. Its not a physical object, now that its active. And it doesnt follow the same rules as a normal AI core. Its not even really an AI, not in the sense that Im thinking. Its just a machine learning algorithm that had a thousand years to sit and grow.

Apparently, thats enough to make a person. Though what kind of person, its unclear. It still hasnt replied.

Maybe we should Ooze Lily starts to say, taking a step up next to me.

The city seed does *something* to gravity, and rips her in half. I have a split second to widen my eyes before I feel a spike of intense pain, and everything goes blank.

I wake up, covered in my own blood, out of my suit with my sisters standing around me. They jerk to attention as I open my eyes and hiss out a nothing noise. Ow. I say. I tilt my head off the deck plate, and observe the flagrantly toxic cloud of smoke hanging in the air where the city seed used to be. Oh. I say sadly. Okay.

Youre alive! Plasma Lily says, suit speakers set way too high. How are you alive?!

Shes also alive. I accuse, pointing at my slime sister, who is also out of her suit, because her suit is currently in two pieces and one of those pieces is currently undergoing an unstable phase reactor meltdown in slowed time.

Shes immune to being torn in half! ExoLily accuses me. Why are you immune to being torn in half?! Oh, is that what happened? Yes! She snaps at me. Rudely. Shes probably capable of regrowing from that too, honestly. If my sisters are anything like me. Were not testing that. She hisses.

I stagger to my paws, legs not fully supporting my weight yet. A line of missing fur tracks down the center of my face, and I can feel the cold air on it. Its very annoying. Well. I say, tail held low, ears flat on my head as I stare at where the city seed had sat before four of us blew it up. We gave it a chance. The words come out hollow.

I dont like this place. Some of my sisters say together.

Another one mutters, maybe meant only for themself, I thought this would feel better

Yeah. I agree, Ooze Lily and I pressing up against two of the others so the teleporter recall function will find us through the transponders. Lets go home.