Embers After Flames, Chapter 13.4

13.4

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It didn’t take long for her to get local control. She had physical access to the hardware, and that was about all anybody ever needed. I attempted to slow her, of course, but my own design decisions now worked against me. Each of the silos were surrounded by layers upon layers of varying material, all for the sake of safety in order to prevent a Coral disaster. Unfortunately, that very same design also hindered the electromagnetic interference that I could cause. If I’d stored the Coral in larger colonies inside of larger cells, or if I’d added it directly to the control mechanisms, it would be a different story, but as it was...

I can’t buy very much time at all.

The first thing she does with her newfound access is open the cells up.

And so, they do. Across all three of the storage areas, the tops of each cell shift, the relatively thin caps sliding open and revealing the Coral contained within. Nothing happens immediately, of course- the cells had not been under pressure or a lack thereof, and the Coral within had been completely stable. There’s no force to push it upwards, and each area was dense with Coral, the Convergence Effect pulling each location to itself rather than any of the other three storages.

ALLMIND’s units shift again, spreading out as quickly as they can throughout their respective areas. A preliminary action, for the sake of simple unit preservation.

Her plan very rapidly became obvious when the bottom sector of the cells began to charge with energy. Separated from the upper parts, the lower sectors contain small amounts of Coral that aren’t in contact with the rest. The machinery built around these small fragments was made only for a single purpose.

The Coral is excited, induced into Surging. Temperature rises rapidly, the containers building heat at such a massive speed that there were vanishingly few materials that could survive it for more than a few seconds. My designs had made allowances for three.

The trigger process only called for two.

The final step of it is simple; an electromagnetic field of truly enormous power flares for just a brief moment. The Coral responds to it, condensing, and all that heat rushes past the point of no return.

The Coral ignites.

The containers disintegrate. In every direction except above, there are massive, thick walls, layered over and over and over to provide some resistance to the energy that had just been unleashed.

Above, however, there is little more than air, thin metal, and a very thin sheathing of liquid.

The pressure built from that single instant is immense. The results are simple physics.

An observer watching from outside would have had only a moment of warning to look away. It wouldn’t have mattered, of course. If they had a direct line of sight to the storages, then the light of the burning Coral would have incinerated their skin just as easily as it scorched the skies.

Coral erupts, propelled by its own burning mass. It looks like a mix of lightning, flame, and burning water as it shoots upwards, three blast waves of stressed, soon-to-be-Surging Coral washing through the air.

The areas around the storages vitrify just from the passage. Chemicals ignite, metal explodes, and the very lovely areas I had spent so long preparing had their cores made molten.

This is good. This the limited version of the Coral burn.

Not even one percent of the total mass has been burnt. The rest of it is rapidly launching into space, spreading out like a cone, becoming diffuse and preventing the chain reaction that, if it had started, would have turned this entire solar system into a storm of flames.

I run the calculations immediately, projecting the area that’s going to be affected by this. It takes me a second, and then I run it again under the reminder that only the three storages had been released.

A very important thing to note, because the Vascular Plant was raised to the stratosphere. It is not in the path of the Coral as it shoots upwards, but there is still a lot of Coral concentrated in there, enough that I do have to take into account the Convergence Effect on the rest of it.

The result looks a lot like a curving comb. The Coral will twist towards the Vascular Plant as it rises, and continue, roughly, on that trajectory as it passes the Vascular Plant. As the three blastwaves get close to each other, they’ll start converging, draw together through their own disparate Coral. Trace amounts of Coral will litter their entire path, but everything that gets caught in the blast wave itself will be utterly annihilated.

... Which would not normally be a problem, but which is in fact currently a very big problem because, as it happens, that area now includes a very large chunk of all the C-Weapons that were rushing down to intervene.

Mmm. Not good. Not good at all. That was a lot of my forces, and I really could not spare that much.

... The ones at the absolute tip of the converging blasts would be able to sneak in just underneath it. All the rest would have no such luck. Diverting them upwards was not an option, because the blasts would continue upwards and they’d get wiped out all the same. Diverting them sideways was... Still going to eat about fifteen percent of those forces, but, much worse than that, would dramatically delay them. It would take significant amounts of time for them to clear the blast area, and then longer to come back because they could not afford to slow down until after the blast had been cleared. An intervention timer of several minutes had just extended to a minimum of thirty, if not more.

... Shit, Flatwell’s transports might get here before them. They were at least already going in the right direction.

Alright. That’s all very bad, but the three storage areas collectively did not contain enough Coral to trigger the runaway mutation. All the Coral would eventually coalesce again, and when it did, it would be growing faster than ever in that environment, but the time table on that was still long enough that I would be able to split it back up again.

There’s no way that ALLMIND doesn’t know that, however. She has the data to calculate that if she wants to trigger Coral Release, then she’s going to need the Coral contained in the Vascular Plant as well, and that means that she definitely is not done yet.

The problem for her, however, is that the Vascular Plant didn’t have the same ejection system that the three outer storages did. The circumstances of the Vascular Plant simply didn’t allow it... But all she really needs to do to make Coral Release an imminent issue is to get the Coral up there.

It did not really matter how. The Coral didn’t even have to leave the Vascular Plant.

And if I immediately saw how to get around that particular problem, then she would as well.

All of her machines... Yes, crawling all around the Vascular Plant, isolating systems block by block, getting physical access, and kicking me out in the process. She was making priority targets, going straight for the propulsion and the energy feeds above all else.

The Vascular Plant had not been designed with self-sabotage in mind. It had been so large and so important that it had been defended with everything. What had brought it down had come from within, not without. The same would be true here, save that ‘from within’ meant infiltrators rather than Nagai.

It was spectacularly irritating. All my efforts to make this entire thing as safe as possible had in turn set up the only series of events that could lead to me not being able to stop this outright. A position that I was only in because of a bit of bad luck, luck that only mattered because we’d been ahead on the time table and now didn’t have as many people as we’d wanted.

An extra few months, and it would have been crewed ships that ALLMIND would not have been able to seize silently. A slightly higher supply of platinum, and I would have never bothered sending a ship in the first place. If I’d been less efficient in my construction, I wouldn’t have needed the platinum.

Alright. That’s enough of that. What’s done is done.

I just have to deal with it.

“ALLMIND has triggered the emergency measures of the outer Coral storages.” I stated. “You’ll hear it soon enough, but that means that three quarters of the Coral supply is now rushing into orbit.”

“Fucking what?” Carla asked. “Is she trying to cause a Coral disaster?”

“Pretty much.” It was too long of a story to explain while they were all in combat. “Unfortunately, I can’t actually stop her from starting the whole thing at the moment. Everything else she’s sent to the Vascular Plant is currently in the process of trying to take over the Skyrmion Engines, and there is no logistical way to stop them.”

“What do we do, then?”

And wasn’t that a good question... What could be done about this?

Unfortunately, not much. Even if they all split up and the other three were to spontaneously develop Raven’s level of skill, their ACs were simply not physically fast enough to stop the enemy. There was no way to stop the Vascular Plant from lifting into the sky...

But, perhaps there was a way to delay the convergence, and if I could buy enough time, then we’ll be fine.

“Finish up as soon as you can.” I told them. “I’ve got a plan.”

Raven chose that moment to Pile Bunker the remaining SOL’s neck, shoving a giant spike more or less directly through the Core of the warmachine. The internal explosion of Coral tore out through its vents and between the gaps of its plating, simultaneously blowing off every limb. Raven didn’t wait, immediately turning around to go assist the others with the SEA SPIDERS.

Most of them were half dead already, honestly. The Coral weaponry that they were all equipped with had taken its toll, even with the defensive measures that had been installed by ALLMIND. As I watched, Carla and Ayre both picked one of them and fired off their missiles. Coral Lightwave blasts flew in every direction, swirling manically through the air as they homed in on their target.

Already compromised from strikes all over its body, something eventually had to give way. The sheer amount of energy coming its way made the structure finally fail, and the SEA SPIDER fell to the ground, twitching with broken internals.

A five-on-three became a four-on-four, but the truth of the matter was that it had only become more unfair, not less.

Walter claimed the next kill, a shot from his Coral Rifle punching through the weakened shielding on his target, but Raven took the one after only a second later, using LOADER 4’s blade to cleave open the cannon before firing shots directly into the capacitors. The energy feedback fried the circuits, a problem that the original version did not have.

The last two weren’t far from destruction themselves when the situation changed.

A deep groaning noise echoed throughout the structure, a hum beginning to build up.

“She’s activated the Skyrmion Engines.” I told them.

It wouldn’t be long now before the Vascular Plant began to rise. It fortunately hadn’t been designed to do so that quickly, though.

Between the four of them, the last two SEA SPIDERs were finished off quickly, and I wasted no time in sending them the coordinates for their next objective. They all went immediately, but only a second later I heard Walter grunting in confusion. “You want us to go back outside?”

“There’s only one way to prevent the Coral from coalescing. It has to be scattered.” I explained. “I do have a way to make that happen, but you’re need to stop ALLMIND from destroying it.”

“What’s your plan?”

“It’s simple.” I said. “Protect the Xylem.”