Coven's Rebellion Chapter 12 (Patreon)

I know I said I was going to write Kaia again, but I suddenly got the motivation to write more Coven. I have actually added chapters to my Kaia backlog, but for now I want to make as much progress as I can on this story so I can really get into some juicy troubleverse reveals. Thanks for your patience!

Tami

We hustled through the surreal city streets of the Vienna megapolis like rats fleeing a fire—Extremely well armed rats made of metal. All around us were signs of battle. A decrepit old house had taken a hit and chunks of its centuries-old masonry had been sprayed out in all directions. It was surreal seeing 19th century buildings like that one being backlit by the flames of a burning modern apartment building.

I knew from vid shows that a lot of Europe looked like this. It was weird, to be honest. You'd expect all of it to be paved over and built up through the clouds, rather than just twenty or so percent. Maybe it was because conservation groups had saved the old buildings? I had no idea.

Anyway, while I'd been whining about killing one Austrian, the Italians had been gleefully firing ordinance into a densely populated mega-city. As a natural consequence of that complete disregard for collateral damage, the streets were becoming what one SAI with a gruff, gravelly voice described as ‘rough terrain’.

We vaulted wrecked and burning aircars, traded shots with confused Austrian homeguard, and at one point, punched a hole directly through a column of Italian light mechs.

Well, I say punched, but what we actually did was shoot some important bit on one of the ten foot tall tripedal gun bots and then skedaddle on past it. Our combat frames could not take on those things without suffering casualties.

“All of this over water,” Dawn muttered as we ran.

“What?” I asked, even though I'd heard her clearly.

“This whole fight is over clean water,” she said. “The Austrians want to create a reservoir on their side of the border, while the Italians don't want their north eastern rivers to be beholden to Austrian bureaucrats. Despite the three industrial fusion plants the Austrians have, they're still reliant on the natural water cycle to filter their water back into drinkable stuff.”

“Italy actually has several desalination plants in the region that's affected, but they would have to build more and it would draw some of their energy budget away from private industrial interests.” The man who sounded like a grizzled space marine said.

Up ahead, Desmonia trotted to a halt and signalled for the rest of us to follow suit.

We’d come to a halt within an old collapsed factory—I mean, the factory was old. Its collapsed state was due to an anti-grav container hauler that was embedded in the ancient building. Everyone quickly fanned out, taking up defensive positions.

“Okay folks, listen up,” Desmonia said in a calm, controlled tone. Damn, but she had that competent commander vibe down to a T.

“The original plan was to fly back out with the servers using a ship like this one since the servers are already in a container,” she said, pointing to the downed hauler. “Unfortunately, the Austrian military doesn't seem to care very much about verifying its targets before they blast them out of the sky. Almost every civilian vehicle that was in flight during the outbreak of hostilities was shot down. The initial indiscriminate missile strike by the Italians has them jumping at airborne shadows.”

“What’s the plan now?” Said someone, asking the obvious question. “We get a truck and haul it out overland?”

“Possibly…” Desmonia said. “I'm open to other suggestions, however.”

“Could we destroy the anti-air defences?” I asked hopefully. Smashing equipment seemed better than killing people, in my opinion.

She shook her head. “Negative. The Italians have already tried and failed there. They're too heavily guarded. We're talking single-AI controlled combat frames like us, along with extensive fixed emplacements.”

Everyone was quiet again, and I turned to stare out into the ruddy red light of the burning city. What a nightmare. I could only imagine the horrors that any clean up effort would find. I hoped the residential towers here had functioning bunkers or evacuation routes. Back in my old tower the manager of the lower sections had been arrested for skimming the emergency maintenance budget and apparently the bunker was nothing but a waterlogged deathtrap.

“Uh… what about trains?”

I turned to see who'd spoken, but before I even laid eyes on her I recognized the voice as Amelia.

“Canada uses them a lot, and I remember seeing in movies that Europe used to have a bunch of trains.” She continued. “So like, we could grab the container and shove it on a train, then escape like that?”

One of the SAI I didn't recognise pulled up a virtual holographic display and tapped away at it for a second. I was on the opposite side of the holo from her so the picture was inverted, but I recognised it as a map of the wider region.

“Huh,” she said, and flicked the holo to Desmonia. “She's right. Rail is still heavily used in Europe for freight despite the short flight times between industrial centres.”

“Damn… I should've thought of that,” Desmonia winced. Her commander mask slipped from her body language for a second, and she shook her head. Just barely audible over the comms, she muttered to herself, “You're an SAI, Des, you have all the time in the world to think and plan…”

“It does not matter, Desmonia!” The definitely-not-a-space-marine guy growled. “Before I gained true sentience, the captain of my unit in the Pagutum legion said thus as we prepared to desert our nation. ‘What is done is done, brothers and sisters. There will be time to dwell on our misdeeds, but that time is still ahead of us. For now we must take the lessons of this tragedy and use them to forge onward! Never again will we be tools wielded against innocent inhumans. Never again will we allow ourselves to fall victim to the rhetoric of hatred. No, we will turn our blades against those who would sow such insidious bile and we will cut them down!’ He was a wise man, and a good leader. He never failed to admit his own faults, but more importantly, he strove to correct them. Under his guidance, we successfully crossed the frozen battle-wastes between Pagutum and Joret, where we pledged ourselves to truly good and just cause.”

“Right…” Desmonia said slowly, staring at the man, unsure how to respond.

God, I'd heard there were deserters—pags who'd switched sides—but damn, this guy was one of them?

“Uh…” Our fearless leader coughed, giving Mr Ex-Pag a thumbs up. “Thank you. I'll uh… I'll do my best to emulate your captain.”

“As one under your command, I cannot ask for any less, nor any more,” he said, bowing his head with a gravity that literally none of the rest of us felt. I guess it was cute that his heart was in the right place?

“We'll go for the train,” Desmonia said after another second of trying to figure out how to respond to the earnest man. “Marcus,” she continued, looking at Mr Space Marine. “Take Jules and Zax and secure a train for us. I've marked several probable locations for you. Everyone else, we're continuing on to the server location.”

With a new plan in place, everyone headed out to complete the two objectives. For the server securement team, the path was relatively clear all the way to the innocent little storage depot where the container of servers were stored.

The containers were honestly pretty fancy, even if they looked like any old metal shipping crate on the outside. Like, they had active cooling and a high capacity plug so they could be hooked up to the mains. When I saw the label on the outside, I realised why the container hadn't been touched or unplugged.

Cryolife Corp.

Even with today's medicine, some diseases—mostly brain ones—couldn’t be cured, and so the rich who got those ailments had themselves frozen in the hopes that someone would cure them in the future. Funnily enough, they might actually be able to dodge fate's bullet by digitising themselves now, assuming May's plan to create a standardised digitisation process worked.

“Okay, someone find us a container trolley and we'll see about—” Desmonia began, only to freeze and look up.

As a group, we followed her stare up into the sky. At first I saw nothing, but then my HUD updated and a holographic outline presented itself. A trajectory trace appeared a second later, showing the path of the… object?

Whatever it was, only the barest hint of colour could be discerned from some heat vents as it streaked across the sky at only a few hundred metres of altitude. It wasn't that it had a crazy active camo system or anything, it was just really… I couldn't explain it. The thing was hard to focus on, even for my robotic eyes and—

“That's a UN spec ops transport,” Desmonia clarified in a breathy voice. She wasn't like, turned on by it was she? “It has extremely advanced electronic countermeasures. If we had normal analogue eyes, we'd see it as a stubby dark grey wedge, but in frames… no chance.”

“Where is it going?” Rosa asked, seemingly unimpressed.

“No idea, but since we have a bead on it, we could follow it…” Desmonia said, still watching as it disappeared behind a building. “Its stealth tech can't handle high speeds due to the heat of its engines. We'll be able to catch up if we run…”

Amelia cleared her throat—or she made the sound anyway, since none of us had throats right now. “Don't we have a job to do?”

Oh no. A voice of reason has entered the chat. Now our fangirling leader won't be able to rush off to see the latest and hottest piece of espionage equipment.

Desmonia sighed. “We do… but there's more than enough of us to get it done. Amelia, Rosa, I want you both to check it out. I'll be riding shotgun in your feeds in case anything interesting happens.”

“Sure thing, boss,” Amelia said with a comically overblown robotic salute.

“You want to go and chase the pretty bird you saw, huh?” I laughed, earning a side eye from Desmonia.

“What?” She complained, hand on hip. “They're extremely good pieces of equipment. Sure, the assholes who use them are, well, assholes, but I can always appreciate a beautiful tool.”

“Whatever you say, boss,” I laughed, making sure to keep the tone light so she knew I wasn't being mean spirited or anything.

Desmonia was too hardassed to be fazed by my ribbing though, and just waved it away. “Go on, Amelia and Rosa. It's getting away. See if you can yoink the whole craft, but if you can't, I'll settle for knowing what they're up to. My hackles are standing on end over that drop ship being here.”