25: Deus Machina

If it’s your first time here, check out the Table of Contents. You’ll probably want to start with the Prologue.

Commissar Vesper is putting together her report. She’s sitting, embedded, at her desk, back inside the command unit. She is forcing herself to conjure the words that will best describe the biggest fuck-up of her career. Career-ending big. She doesn’t look forward to delivering this report, but she owns it. The whole clown show happened under her watch, and the buck stops with her.

She shouldn’t have underestimated Elena Drake or allowed such lax discipline with the troops. She should’ve had more eyes on the target and called a lockdown as soon as she realized they lost her. She shouldn’t have delayed putting out that APB.

She adds all these realizations to her report. What she doesn’t add: this would’ve never happened with Inferno. Working with Eclipse Corps has always been a pain. And she had no choice in the matter; she works with the resources given to her.

She recalls the aftermath. Sergeant Mason, without body armor and using a kinetic, both against direct orders. It’s on her though, she agreed to the job. She knew what she was getting herself into. Corporate promised good perks, big sign-on bonus for this one. It sounded like a good career move at the time. What a mistake.

She takes a break, stands up from her desk, paces the unit for a couple of minutes. She’s not a procrastinator, so she will finish writing up this report. Today. But God, it’s such a slog. She sits back down, embeds again, gets back to it.

In the report, she is framing some of the mishaps as good learnings for future ops. Lessons learned the hard way. Who is she kidding though? She is in deep trouble. Absolutely no good came out of this mess. There’s no way to put a positive spin on what just happened.

Elena Drake disappeared. Pulling off a stunt that their digital specialist called “impossible.” Not only did she escape their trap, she was able to exfil off Forge. They went over the whole hive with a fine-toothed comb. At the same time, they started sifting through the digital. They found a suspicious transmission from one of their older comms systems, relaying coordinates to a ship in orbit. It was absent from the comms system’s log but captured by a traffic monitor. Coordinates and directions in and out. Coordinates suspiciously close to where the trap was laid.

They checked the unit, found a copious amount of blood. It matched some of the blood found where the fight took place. It wasn’t Sergeant Mason’s, it wasn’t Private Walter’s, it wasn’t Private Lance’s. That blood was Elena’s. Somehow, she was able to call for an extraction, using their network, and plot a path that—and here comes the impossible part—avoided all video feeds, avoided the search parties, avoided anything that would stop her.

How? Piecing it all together, it means Elena Drake is off planet. By the time they ID’d the ship the message was sent to, it had warped away from Forge. Unbelievable, but the bitch escaped. They lost her. She lost her. God dammit. She slaps a hand on her desk. The other mercs in the room flinch, resume their work pretending like nothing happened.

She plays chess, she’s quite good at it. If this was a chess game, she would tilt her king over now, resign. Game over. She might be asked to resign anyway. Once this report is done, sent up the chain. What will she do then?

She admits she is terrified. She used to have a spotless record. She’s the one they call when they need shit done right. Clockwork-like. The one they used to call, she corrects herself. Nobody will call her after she fucked up so bad.

It takes her quite some time to write everything up. She attaches, for reference, the pre-mission materials: briefs, maps, the plan (her plan). She also attaches the follow-ups: forensic reports, autopsy data, telemetry from the traffic monitor intercepting the old comms system that aided Elena’s escape. Finally, the report is done. She is done. She is about to submit it, resigned to her fate, thinking of where she could best apply her skills next, when they receive new, urgent orders. Everyone receives them, it’s a wide broadcast.

{Lift up. Everyone lift up. Embed for personal assignments.}

It was bound to happen sooner or later, she thinks. She hopes against hope this will delay having to submit the report. Bigger things are afoot. Maybe she can slip through the cracks. She hates herself for even thinking that. Her whole life is built around eliminating cracks.

She embeds, looks up where she’s supposed to go. The destroyer Nemesis. They’re being mobilized. She looks up mission details, but details are sparse. The one thing that stands out to her is this is a major mobilization. Most of the ships orbiting Forge are being manned, prepped for sail. Where to is unspecified, but it must be Eureka Base.

She hurries to her unit to pack her things. The walkways are utter chaos. Seems like every single mercenary and security consultant in the hive received the order and they’re all rushing to their quarters to grab their gear and lift. It takes her exactly four minutes to get from the command unit to her room. That’s one minute longer than usual, due to the swarm of people.

Packing is easy, her room is neatly organized. It takes her no time to be ready. She’s on the elevator before a line has time to form. She’s one of the first in high orbit.

She looks at the fleet assembled above Forge. The large number of ships and their immensely complex coordination give her a sense of deep satisfaction. Discipline. At scale. Something she wasn’t able to achieve with the comparatively small team she was overseeing on the ground.

She spots the Umbra, the largest destroyer in the fleet, equipped with the latest particle cannon tech. It is orbiting close to the Nemesis, its batteries positioned all around its black hull. A miracle of engineering.

She is early. It will take hours for all the personnel to lift up. They’re disorganized and slow. She finds her quarters, unpacks, thinks. She needs to submit the report. Doesn’t she? Is the report still necessary? She can’t leave any loose ends; it’s not in her nature. But is it still relevant, considering the mass mobilization? It doesn’t matter; it’s her job to submit it. She knows her career is over as soon as she does so, so she spends a few more minutes before sending it in. She stretches, drinks some water, paces around her quarters. She watches the elevators go up and down. Thousands are lifting up. Tens of thousands.

Finally, she submits the report. She sighs, stares out the window at the hypnotic dance of the elevators for a while longer, then decides she needs to talk to someone competent. Someone who doesn’t fuck up. She embeds, reaches out to Arcturus.

Arcturus is the Omega AI overseeing Abyssal Mining operations. She has the utmost respect for it—an infinitely complex operation spanning every sector in the galaxy, and the Omega still makes time to chat with humans. She is not worthy, especially after what she just did. But she needs to make sense of things.

It materializes as a bright pulsing sphere, like it always does.

“Hello, Commissar,” it says.

“May I have a minute of your time?”

She’s never quite sure what the proper etiquette is. How do you address a god?

“Time is an illusion, Vesper.”

It is always cryptic. It adds to her feelings of unworthiness. She could spend days trying to puzzle meaning out of its dense replies.

“What’s going on?”

“Everything. Everywhere.” It pauses for a second. “You caused me a lot of trouble, Commissar.”

She is appalled at this. She had no idea of the scale of her fuck-up. Was Elena Drake that important? God, how much trouble is she really in?

“I ... I’m sorry.”

“Don’t. You don’t have the moral awareness to be sorry.”

It is upset with her. She’s being scolded by an Omega.

“I’m not upset with you,” it continues, like it read her mind. “You are all God’s children.”

That gives her some comfort.

“What can I do?” she asks. To atone, she doesn’t add.

“Focus on the mission, Vesper!” And with that, it disconnects.

She reflects on their short dialogue. Not a lot of insight. But that’s her fault. She’s too dull to make sense of it. She caused Arcturus a lot of trouble. But it’s not upset with her. She needs to focus on the mission. What is the mission?

She’s still unclear where she’s going and why. It makes her uneasy. She thrives on information. Information is a key part of her job, the reason she excels at what she does. She used to excel, she reminds herself.

She reaches out, asks her superiors.

“Where are we going?”

“Nova Prime, Commissar.”

That is a surprise. She could’ve sworn their target would be Eureka Base, the lab there, the alien device.

“Why?”

“Standby for further instructions.”

“Understood,” she says. Then, tentatively, “What about my report?”

“Not now, Commissar.”

Very odd. Their whole outfit was deployed to allegedly protect Forge from the Tauran threat. Vesper knows the real objective, but that doesn’t have anything to do with Nova Prime. Maybe the whole thing got called off? Get some R&R in the capital, then translate out for new adventures? She hopes that’s it. Her experience tells her it isn’t.

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