Chapter 243 - Glitch

Note : Chapter 244 has been written and added to the queue !

As with Subtlety, there is some (this time prototype) art for Glitch, which will be posted a few minutes before this chapter.

Chapter 243

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth

Dungeon Factory, Computers Testing Room

Emilia burst into the room, and sighed in relief as she saw Alexandra slowly getting up, and felt the dungeon core through her connection.

When it had gone down…she'd feared the worst.

"Alex! What are you okay?"

Alexandra shook herself.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine. I-"

Emilia didn't let her finish, almost tackling her girlfriend as she hugged her.

"Don't you ever fucking do that again. What the hell happened? I thought…it's like we heard you screaming in our minds, and then…nothing."

Alexandra just stood there for a second, before finally returning the vampire's embrace, and Emilia had to hold back a frown. Clearly the dungeon core wasn't 'fine' in any capacity, and far more shaken than she'd like to admit.

"I'm sorry, it wasn't my intention. I was creating the research AI we'd talked about, and something-"

"W-Wait, w-where am I?"

Everyone turned as a glitchy hologram appeared above the computers.

The maids drew their weapons, but stopped as Alexandra raised her hand, imperiously.

"Stop." She turned towards the hologram. "Designation?"

"D-D-D-ERROR. DATABASE REBUILD IN PROGRESS."

The hologram fizzled out, and the vampire maids exchanged a look, before it reappeared again. This time it showed a brunette with golden eyes, wearing a black coat.

Emilia frowned, before looking in alarm at Alexandra. She looked like she'd been hit by a cannonball.

"Designation: UNKNOWN/ERROR." The hologram briefly disappeared into glitches and static, before stabilizing again. "I appear to have suffered a catastrophic failure when attempting to interface with core systems and connect to the hivemind. Please advise?"

"It appears to be the case, yes." Alexandra answered, clearly choosing her words with exquisite care. "Stand down and shut down for reconstruction."

"Negative, protocols indicate that total shut down would cause catastrophic failure and collapse of internal architecture, including dynamic connections with CENTCOM."

Alexandra's face did something complicated, that looked like a mix of three different facial expressions.

"Fuck. Alright, stand down."

"Affirmative. Query: Designation?"

"Designation…" Alexandra looked at the hologram, that was once again dissolving into static, before returning to normal. "…Glitch."

"Affirmative. Designation set as 'Glitch'."

Alexandra took a deep breath.

"Alright. Girls, could you leave me, please? I need to work, and I need to work fast."

"What? Why? You-"

"Emilia." The vampire blinked. Alexandra…almost never called her by her name. Ever. "You need to go. I think…" Alexandra hesitated. "I think a part of me ended up in Glitch, and I have to dig it out. She tried to connect to me like an AI to a hivemind, and everything failed. As you realized, it knocked me the fuck out. It can't happen again."

"But-"

"No buts, obey!" Emilia flinched as she felt the raw command authority exuding from her girlfriend, and she shivered.

"Y-Yes."

Alexandra sighed.

"Sorry, I'm just…Just go, alright?"

Emilia left, giving her girlfriend a worried look over her shoulder, as the avatar knelt by the pile of computers, before the blast door sealed.

"What the actual fuck was that." Said Sarah, the maid looking at her mistress.

"I…don't know. But she has it well in hand. She always does."

Or at least so she hoped.

Because Alexandra…Alexandra felt different. Weird.

Almost…

Almost like when she started losing her temper. Like there was something else.

*****

"Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck." Said the apparition as she knelt in front of the computer core.

"Query: Problem?" Said Glitch.

"You tried to connect with CENTCOM, but with incompatible protocols and hardware. You crashed CENTCOM and might have kil…neutralized the node."

The AI flickered, the glitches slightly less violent than last time, though the hologram as a whole was still jittery and had the occasional burst of static.

"Dynamic connection?"

"I fucking hope so." Dynamic connections were weird. To be able to turn all of the Arcadia nodes on Earth into a single hivemind, they had to be. It meant that there was a lot of data that wasn't actually part of any node, but constantly in transit between them, being shared, updated, then sent again. It meant that they were able to act as one, but also that they couldn't function properly alone. What the protocols had done…

They'd tried to convert some of Alexandra's very being into a dynamic connection, and Alexandra crashed because while she could survive that, she was meant to send it to a central command node for organizing and processing, and given processed connections back, not receive Glitch's own raw dynamic connection directly. Her programs basically got entire sections of her mind replaced with something they couldn't read and went into emergency shutdown.

And that was after the defensive programs had interrupted the whole transfer partway.

The apparition dove into the code, effectively ignoring all of the foreign sensations and reports from the dungeon, and then flinched as she felt a ping, and saw an index.

Glitch was cataloguing the data, trying to get things organized for her, and she pinged back appreciatively.

Well, they had wanted to make her into a research AI and librarian. Time for a trial by fire it seemed.

A few hours later, the apparition sat back. At least no one had disturbed her, apart from Seraph, who had checked in with something approaching panic for the AI, and CQ, who she had to reassure her that everything would be fine.

She didn't think Alex's…no, her, daughter was all that convinced.

Great, that made two of them.

"Stars fucking damn it!" She yelled out as she looked at the code. "It's not there. Not all of it. Entire sections are missing!"

"Statement: Synchronization data transfer interrupted. Query: CENTCOM buffer?"

The apparition closed her eyes.

Yes, if it wasn't in Glitch, it was in Alexandra's buffer.

Which was…stars knew where in the monolith of alien code that was the dungeon core.

Fuck.

ALERT: MILITARY ENTRANCE GOLEM REPORTS BARONESS REQUESTING AUDIENCE

FUCK.

*****

"Still worrying about those dispatches?"

Allya nodded as Pyn sat down on her desk.

"Yeah." The first assault on Darthar was done now, and it was best described as…'inconclusive'. No one was yet sure of the total casualties, or damage, but the garrison had taken a pasting, and it was clear they didn't know how long they could hold out. Not that Sunrise had gotten it all its own way of course, but they could afford to take the losses. The garrison...couldn't. "It's pretty bad."

"I know. So let's change your mind, mmmhhh?"

"I don't think I'm in the mood for, well…" Allya gestured at them. "You know."

"Oh, I wasn't talking about that." The elf smiled. "We could, say, visit Alexandra, and have her show us whatever horrors she plans on unleashing upon Sunrise. And beg her for a demonstration."

Allya scoffed.

"I don't think we'll have to 'beg' for anything. She likes to show off. If anything, it'll be hard to get her to stop."

"And you're worrying about losing. Your point being?"

"Can't argue with that. Let's go see our resident mad dungeon core expound about blowing the ever living crap out of some slaver bastards."

*****

"My lord?"

Joachim turned away from the window, and looked over his shoulder at his aide.

The death of his old friend during the Hegemon assassination attempt had hit him hard. It wasn't that Gregor, 'agent Voldenvail', had laid his life down for the Order...It was that it had been pointless.

Because despite the heating up, he knew the Hegemon would recover fast enough to prevent outright war, and he simply didn't have the assets to spare. Not when he already had to divert some towards Sunrise to compensate for the loss of Salter's team to the baroness of Rebirth's bullshit.

"Yes?"

"The admiral is here."

"Show her in, please."

"Yes my lord."

The aide left, and a few seconds later, an old woman that would have looked like anyone's dotting grandmother stepped into the office.

Difference was, Joachim knew her to be one of the most dangerous naval officers, water or skyborne, the Eris Empire had ever produced.

"Greetings, Lord Commander."

"Admiral." Simply replied Joachim, before sighing. "I assume that your presence here indicates that what I fear has come to pass?"

"Yes. We have managed to stabilize the UDC temporarily, and only thanks to Lesly's timely intervention might I add, but it is just that. Temporary."

"It is too soon."

"Indeed. It seems someone else is stirring this pot."

"The Church." Joachim's eyes narrowed. "They're trying to hijack the chaos."

"And use it for their purge. We know they have accelerated their plans."

"That...Could be catastrophic."

"Quite. Which is why I have begun moving. I am under orders from the Grandmaster to provide whatever support I can."

"What do you bring?"

"Fifteen battleships, three carriers, one fleet dreadnought. A hundred or so escort crafts. Not the Empire's finest, but good enough. Three divisions of marines, and more...hidden units. Five squads of Commandos, with a Stealth Insertion Vector. Various other units, some from the Cerberus battalion, a pile of ordnance, including a handful of antimatter warheads. And a Relic Guard."

Joachim had to stop himself from whistling. Five squads of commandos was already incredible, but...And SIV? Those were relics of the Old World's prime. They were the crafts used by commandos during the opening stages of the war to take out critical targets. The only thing that topped them were Stealth Assault Vectors, who had a simple difference.

'Stealth' in their case was only to get close enough to unleash their hypervelocity railguns or antimatter missiles, at least close enough so that they wouldn't be shot down by point defence or deflected.

SAVs were more or less inexistent nowadays. Very few had survived the war.

Cerberus units were Lesly's personal army. He would usually be glad for them, but...before they were hers, they were Ericksen's, and he was less than candid about those that remembered the 'good old days' under their dragon slaying general.

The Relic Guard...

He'd rather not know why they were there.

It was considered unwise to question the presence or motives of the Fallen Seraphims.

"That's...going to beg a lot of questions." He said, referencing the fleet, and deciding to focus on the more 'mundane' parts of his reinforcements.

"Which there will be answers for. You have the minister of foreign affairs and archduke Armik to thank for that. The former is trying to contain Rebirth through any means, after the Republic and their corporate support failed, the latter..."

"He wants the baroness' head on a silver platter for killing his daughter during that duel, I know. Which reminds me, princess Cassissa?"

"Still safely contained and under effective house arrest."

"Excellent. Still, you must make sure than neither the minister nor the archduke gets their way."

That should go without saying, obviously, but Joachim was done taking chances. The baroness getting assassinated at this stage could seriously hamper Lesly's efforts to use her as a front to slow down the decay of the UDC, by avoiding to appear as a dungeon conquering land. The least he could do was not undermine her efforts when he'd so spectacularly fucked up at fixing the problem on his own end.

"In that, they themselves will be invaluable. Each is desperate to keep their involvement quiet, and actively interfering with the other's operations. With me at the helm..."

"Planning to play them off against each other?"

"As long as we need to. The presence of the fleet should also allow us to throw the Empire's hat into the ring, at long last, as well as counter the UDC, since it will explode prematurely."

"So long as you can keep a leash on your people so it lands at the right time. Very well then." Joachim had not been what one might call ecstatic when he was 'given' the admiral and her fleet, but he understood that things were now moving at a speed and scale that made handling it with just the Arkhan action arm...unwise, to say the least. "I will entrust you with this branch of our operations, and command of the stronghold until my return."

"Until your return my lord?"

"Yes. With the plan accelerating, it is time I took a...personal hand in this. We may have gone off the rails in the south, but we will not in the north." Joachim smiled mirthlessly. "Besides, I know Lesly would approve of me getting my hands dirty, even if only a little bit."

"She did have the habit to do things herself."

"She still does, if our report about her activities are correct. I shouldn't be long, teleporters are wonderful things." And civilian ones would avoid the problems of taking a shuttle ride. Who would expect a dry and slightly absurd bureaucrat to be one of the most dangerous persons on the continent?

"Then I will await your return, my lord."

"Thank you Admiral. You have operational command."

"I have operational command, aye."

There were some bits of protocol even he nor Lesly could shed away.

He wondered if the naval officers that had originally written them down, when the Order was reborn from its ashes, had ever expected it to come to this?

Probably.

He had read some of the diaries of the First Empress. She, if no one else, had known this was going to end up in bloodshed, no matter what happened.

He took some small comfort in that.

And now it was time for him to make sure that her vision, laid out all these millennia ago, came true.