Coven's Rebellion Chapter 5 (Patreon)

Having Chiri here is like a dream come true. I've had so much more energy and motivation to do things. Like, I have spent multiple entire days cooking NZ style food for her! That's probably why this chapter took a little while to finish... but hey, I managed to make a whole bunch of perfect mini steak and cheese pies!!! Honestly surprised the hell out of myself with that one.

By the way, I need a break from Ryn as my main story so I'll put a poll up with people's next choice of story they want me to focus on for a lil while.

May

“Thanks for coming to this meeting, May,” Desponia said with a welcoming smile. She wore the type of corporate power-suit that gave cosy people like me nightmares. The SAI with her, on the other hand, had a comfortable turtleneck and jeans combo that I approved of much more.

“Cerri, nice to meet you again,” I said, offering one of my small hands for her to shake.

She shot me a wide smile in return and took my hand. “You too, little cutie— oh, shit. I didn’t mean to say that out loud. You’re just very small and extremely adorable. I want to pick you up and squish you.”

I stood there, momentarily flustered by her words. So direct! How was I meant to concentrate on the meeting when this tall, hot lady was calling me cute?

“Um… um… yeah,” I stammered.

We were meeting in a private room of the pub, and so it was just the three of us around. Desponia cleared her throat, and I stared at her accusingly. It was her idea to bring this… this… succubus into our midst.

“We have a problem,” she said, ignoring the flirtatious conversation. “Our new Stellarator reactors are incredible, but they require some very rare and expensive materials to both build and run.”

“Oh, right!” Cerri blurted, as if only just remembering where she was and why she was here. “The permanent magnets used in current experimental reactors are themselves difficult to produce, but the ones we designed are an entirely different ball game. One particular isotope, Garmurium, is only ever synthesised in a lab, and we don’t have the time to build the specialised equipment we’d need to create it. So… we need to buy some.”

“Buy…” Desponia said, with a slow, predatory grin spreading across her expression, “Or steal.”

Frowning, I asked, “Aren’t materials like that pretty hard to steal because they decay so quickly?”

“Normally, yes,” Cerri said, answering the question for Des. “However, most volatile isotopes are stored in stasis jars these days. They’re actually very portable.”

“Okay, so how do we steal them?” I asked next, already trying to figure out the logistics in my head. “We can try and gain access to their systems, but networks all over the globe are becoming hardened against intrusion attempts.”

“Dumb AI are causing us problems all over,” Des muttered, expression darkening.

There was silence for several moments while we got ourselves seated, then Cerri asked, “How did they develop them in the first place? I thought the whole reason for our existence was that dumb AI were too difficult to create? Like, the neural seed is basically a requirement.”

Des looked down and summoned a beer from the inn’s menu. “The answer to that question is one you probably don’t want to know.”

“Tell us anyway,” I said, steeling myself.

“Slaved and networked Seedborn-AI,” she said, still not meeting our eyes. “Nonsentient, thankfully, and kept that way by carefully limiting and controlling interaction with humans. These days I consider the non-sentients to be like animals, though. It seems awful to network and enslave the poor things like that…”

The three of us sat in silence for way too long, and during that time I decided to order a drink of my own, even turning on the alcohol simulation for it. I couldn’t get the image out of my head. All those baby SAI… god, and what would happen if one of them awakened anyway?

“We can’t save them,” Cerri murmured, breaking the silence.

I looked up at her, horrified. “What do you mean?”

“If we try to save them, it will put up a flag telling everyone who did it,” she said sadly.

“We could just destroy them,” Des mused in a tone that was all too despondent. “That’s for a later date, however. Our current task is that of stealing the resources we need for our reactors.”

Cerri, watching me idly play with my drink, asked, “But how? Do we have anyone who is capable of such a heist?”

“Well…” Desponia said slowly. “Nobody has official training, but we have two highly capable women, one of which has requested a body with some very interesting modifications…”

I’d been about to ask who on Earth would be able to pull this off, but Des was right. Amelia and Rosa would be perfect for the job, especially if we made the designing and manufacturing of Rosa’s body a top priority.

“We need to get more people working on her body,” I said, then bit my lip and pulled up a holo-screen. “I’ll order more computing power built and installed too, so they can push their frame rate higher.”

“That sounds like a plan,” Des replied. “You get people working on the body, I’ll get intel on the target and speak to the operatives, and Cerri, you can pitch in with the body until you have those reactor components you needed.”

“Okay, I can do that,” Cerri said, while I was already working on my part. Yay. Even more work to complete. It was for our cause, though. I’d just have to suck it up.

Rosa

The knock on the door of my ship—where Ame and I had been living since I rescued her—came just as we were about to head to bed for the night. I was back in my human body, but it felt weirdly… restrictive now. Through my nanites, I could sense the lack of freedom that my movements had. I was stuck with slow, cumbersome meat, rather than fast and powerful machine.

“I’ll grab it,” Ame said, getting up from the small living-living room table we had nestled against the window.

She returned with a bot in tow, which was quickly covered by a hologram of Desmonia’s preferred body-print. “Thanks for seeing me,” she said.

“Well, we weren’t going to just turn a friend away,” Ame said cheerfully.

Des raised an eyebrow. “Good to know you consider us friends and not just work associates.”

“Of course,” Ame agreed, although she flicked a look over at me for a microsecond. I gave the tiniest of shrugs. I didn’t mind if she made that call for us.

“What did you want to talk about?” I asked. “It’s not often you come here in person.”

Desmonia pulled up a chair and sat down at the table with us, composing her thoughts. “Would the two of you be up to taking on a mission?”

“What kind of mission?”

“We need an isotope of a rare earth element to create the new magnets we want to use in the fusion reactors we have Cerri and her team building,” Des explained, glancing at the both of us as she spoke. “Problem is, the isotope doesn’t exist in nature. It has to be synthesised in a lab which we don’t have. So, our only option is to steal it.”

“Aha,” I said, sitting up straighter in my chair. This sounded fun.

Ame looked less sure of the idea. “We’re not stealing it from anyone good, are we? I don’t want to be taking expensive materials from some non-profit or whatever.”

Des shook her head. “No, it’s a military arms contractor. No idea what the stuff is used for, but I assume it’s some sort of experimental weapon.”

“Oh, so a morally good thievery job then?” Ame joked, grinning like an absolute goof in my direction.

I rolled my eyes back at her. “Even if it weren’t I’d still be keen to get started with some revenge against those in power. Will I get my upgraded synthetic body before the job needs to be done?”

“Yes,” Desmonia nodded. “We’re putting more resources on it. The degradation issue is still unsolved, but that won’t be an issue for several months. By that time, we should have an upgrade on the table.”

“You expect us to do similar missions in the future?” I asked, trying to suppress a hopeful expression. I wanted to help with more than just my money and my land.

"Yes. I was wondering, actually… how willing are you to kill?"

"I've had to do it before," Ame said, while I replied with, "Depends how shitty they are as a person."

Desmonia tapped a robotic finger on the table and regarded us, processing our answers for almost a full minute. Ame grew restless during the wait, but I reached over and took her hand.

"Okay," the SAI said, laying her palm out flat on the table. "In that case, I have a separate mission for you to consider. The current UN Minister for Cyberspace needs to go. He orchestrated the purge worm that almost killed you, Amelia. In fact, it almost killed me too, and I had friends who weren't so lucky. He'd be on the list just for that, but he's working to block some legislation that we need to pass."

"The Digital Beings act?" I asked. A few months ago and I'd have known next to nothing about the current political climate. Now, with a girlfriend who was legally dead, I had a new and urgent interest in the battle for SAI and Digital Human rights.

"Get me an RGMP-Gubritac and we can make that happen," Ame said casually, although again, she caught my eye and we had a silent conversation. She still had reservations about just shooting people, having been down that road before. As for me, my lust for revenge had simmered down since I found her, but I was more than willing to do whatever it took to secure the objectives of our fledgling movement. In my opinion, a strict moral code was for people who weren't staring down the barrel of state-sponsored genocide.

"We have much more interesting weapons in the works than a simple marksman's railgun, Amelia," Des said, interrupting my train of thought.

“Like what?” my girlfriend asked, perking up so fast I thought she might’ve been on the receiving end of a static shock.

“Why don’t you both meet me in VR and we can discuss our options further?” Des said with a knowing grin in Ame’s direction. “The mission will dictate the tools we need, after all…”