B2-09 - Rogue AI NZN4587AE (Patreon)

In the greater scheme of things, Maya wondered how her fight compared to what was happening on Earth. She knew all across the globe, people were fighting for their lives. It wasn’t too much different from what she was doing, just… for them it was only five or so days after everything had changed. 

Maya should have been used to this. She had been stuck in the rainbow sky hellscape for nearly two months. That was, subjectively, a literal lifetime. Time enough for her to get used to the fact that she was going to have to constantly battle against this unforgiving, unwelcoming plane of existence. 

“Just give me a fucking day of nothing happening,” Maya grunted and dragged along the mana lock. Even with her increased Physical stats, she was struggling with the object. It was a deceptively small three foot square box of red and white coloring. 

On the ‘top’ of the box was a small control panel that consisted of a numerical keypad and an on/off button. It was technology at it’s simplest. The keypad was a combination of range/timer/power output, and the on/off switch was… well an on/off switch. 

The machine itself was a high grade, Tier 1 bit of system tech that Nanaseto had uncovered while doing the inventory on the items Shen had obtained over the years; as with everything Shen had in his cargo hold, it was a weapon. 

Dimensional locks were a thing, Maya had discovered that the hard way. Shen had locked down her access to her dimensional inventory when he had captured her. It had been a bit disconcerting to realize that someone could effectively cancel out her System given Skills like that. She hadn’t thought much about the Skills SIL got when it came to fighting one another, but after bouncing questions off of Tender and Nan she had learned there were a lot of System Tech Anti-SIL Skills. The dimensional lock was one of them, another kind of ‘lock’ was the mana lock. 

It was the most common weapon that the Shen zombies had utilized, due entirely to its awesome effectiveness.  

A prohibitive aspect of the weapon was that it was damned heavy; it required a vehicle or a very strong person to carry it into battle. Along with its weight, the simple red and white box was easily identifiable and finicky when used. But as weapons went it was in the category of ‘game changer’.  

The mana lock was an area of effect weapon. Similar to the mana pulse Maya had created which disrupted mana; a mana lock blocked access to all mana in an area in either SIL or machine. Anything running on mana suddenly went from functioning to non-functioning, as long as the mana lock field kept running. 

It was great against artificial creatures. AIs, Rogue AIs, and even Crafted Intelligences, aka, Golems. They might not channel mana, but they needed mana to run all their systems. It was their life-force. 

Although he would be effected, Tender had readily agreed to use the weapon. As the vast majority of threats facing them were non SIL and AI, stopping whatever was attacking them was paramount. Maya often wondered about Tender and his tendency to not care about himself. She had to do something about that one day. 

Duracloth saved the day; the cheap and abundant material that Shen’s ship could produce by the mile lived up to its name as Maya threw the three foot cube into a sled made of it. She then hurriedly dragged the load toward the fight. 

The old saying of ‘all plans go out the window when contact with the enemy is made’ was well and good, but Maya was disgusted with the fact that she wasn’t going into battle with Bonita and Tender at her back, but instead she was one handedly dragging a hundred kilos of an AI death box on a tarp. As improvised plans went; it wasn’t her most glorious moment.

It didn’t help matters that one of Tender’s scout rats decided to hitch a ride. Although the rats were the size of small dogs, they were also deceptively heavy. What was another fifteen kilos? 

“Where in the red blazes are you?” Zono’s frantic cries filled her radio. 

“Yeah, I need a fucking hand over here,” Maya cursed. Remaining one handed was definitely biting her in the ass. After she won this damn fight, she’d be marching right into Nan’s new medical suite and begging the medical AI to regrow her hand. Screw the forty hours needed. 

Maya dodged a flaming chunk of metal. She grimaced as she saw that it was a part of Zono. She grabbed the tarp again and rushed once more toward the fight. 

The mana lock created a hundred meter diameter ‘bubble’ of manaless environment when activated, but that would cause the small mana battery within it to be drained in moments. Maya didn’t understand the workings of the mana lock, seeing as it also used mana to operate and was system tech, but at the same time it created a field that prevented mana from being used within. More system tech magic of a sorts. 

There was a loud thump and Maya watched as a group of mechas turned their attention from fighting Zono toward her. They were about two hundred meters out, far more than double the effective range of the lock. The Necklace of Protection had already discharged its single use and it would take two hours for it to recharge, but it wouldn’t be any good against multiple kinetic strikes.  

Mana locks were powerful weapons, but like all powerful weapons, they needed a lot of time to recharge, reset, and be recalibrated before they could be used again. It was a good piece of luck that the Shen zombies had such a good maintenance routine on all their weapons, otherwise Maya figured she wouldn’t know how to fix most of them. 

Maya cursed as her hand hovered over the activation switch. She could activate the mana lock, but for the bigger battle at large, it would solve nothing. Zono would still get his assed kicked and eventually the ship would be destroyed by Big Snake and the mana cores looted. Only if she had more power to….

“Dumbass,’ Maya hissed and reached into her Inventory. 

The crafted mana battery that had been dislodged from Yositari’s stasis pod appeared in her hand. The battery held more power than the emergency mana batteries she had been salvaging and from what Veskari had told her, it still had a full charge. 

The universality of system tech and its billion year use by most SIL had created a technology that was highly compatible. Crafted items might be ‘hand made’ but they were also designed to work with system tech, since the ‘garbage’ technology was prevalent in the Integrated Multiverse.  

Maya popped the top of the box and pulled out the small heavy mana battery. Although the crafted mana battery was only half the size, it neatly slotted into the spot and she felt small shudder from the box, as if it reacted to the sudden influx of more power than it had felt before. 

“Drink deep, boxy,” Maya muttered. She slapped the access panel closed and then punched the activation code, range, and intensity of the field before slamming down her hand upon the switch. 

Her hands were shaking and her nerves were rattled by the end of the sequence. The ground rumbled as the mechas got closer and closer, why they didn’t fire on her was a mystery. Perhaps they wanted the mana lock for their own, maybe they wanted to have a nice conversation over tea. They were nearly forty feet from her when the box activated. 

Maya didn’t know what to expect. The weapon was still a new item in her arsenal and although she had wanted to test it before now, time was a thing she didn’t have much of. The mana pulse blast hadn’t effected her at all, it had been a momentary blue pulse that only affected the Shen zombies, but the mana lock was different. 

Mana powered everything, mana was the very reason Integration was a thing. The System did everything it could to allow biological SIL and technological items to consume mana and use it as a power source. The mana lock, Maya realized, was a device that went completely and utterly against the wishes of the System.  

Mana was everywhere and it was in everything. Creating a device to block all of that, it was… unnatural. It was an abomination, an abberation, it was horror created. 

Maya felt like her skin was on fire, as if a million fire ants were gnawing on her. She dropped to her knees and managed to pull open her faceplate before vomiting up her meal of emergency rations. She gagged and shook as she felt as if reality was being completely defied. 

“How is this not worst than a dimensional bomb?” Maya cried. ‘This is way worst!” 

Energy didn’t crackle or surge, there was no blue light or any sign that the entire System in this small area was being pushed back. Instead the gloomy light seemed even more gloomier. Maya blinked and shook her head, she saw afterimages and everything seemed off. 

She might feel like crap, but she saw the mechas that had been rushing her had toppled over in mid sprint. Maya gaped at the sight and then remembered the whole damn reason she had activated the weapon. 

The sounds of battle had stopped. The terrible clashing between Zono and Big Snake hadn’t come to an end, but the combatants had been ‘knocked out’. 

Maya got to her feet and rushed toward the two former battling titans. 

In her otherwise busy days of trying to survive, learning how to fix and use system tech, and also carrying the weight of responsibility for having a magical device that could take her anywhere in the Multiverse; Maya had been trying to study rogue AI tech. 

Whereas system tech had nearly a billion years and untold quadrillions of species making minute changes to the technology, rogue AI tech was less engineered and more a thing of need. When simplified, rogue AIs were similar to creatures, they had simple motives; eat, defend, and build. That created a plethora of different designs and looks for every rogue AI. They were personalized, like some old school punk rocker’s vest or a post-apocalyptic gasoline guzzling monster truck. 

But even with all the customization and bling, the rogue AIs had to follow a simple plan. There was an AI core, there was a mana core/battery, and those were always placed near one another. Why have a brain in the head when it was easier to have it near its power source. 

Maya pounded dirt, panting with exertion as she crested a small hill created by the fighting and finally caught sight of the two combatants. 

Three hundred meters at full intensity, that would not have been possible with the former mana lock battery. With the new battery, it wasn’t only possible, but she had ten whole minutes to work with.  

Big Snake lived up to its name. It was massive thing, nearly a hundred feet long and at its widest about ten feet. The hide of the rogue AI was segmented armored plating, looking entirely like scales.  

Maya cursed as she realized her trusty cutter wouldn’t be useable in this situation. She pulled out the mid grade sword and rushed to the inert beast. 

Rogue AIs were practical creatures. They would keep their most sensitive parts in their most defensible areas, in Big Snake’s case, that was in the widest section of its body. 

Maya hurried, but the armor plating was tough and she once again cursed her missing hand. After a few moments of struggling, she managed to slip the blade in between the scales and with effort pulled it away. Beneath it was more metal, but not so resistant to the sharpness of the sword. 

She could feel the weight of the remaining time settle onto her shoulders. Nerves roared their unwanted attention and Maya forced the feeling down. She needed all her attention on rogue AI surgery. 

The metallic ‘skin’ of Big Snake cut away easily and she was presented with the bowels of the creature. It was looping coils of a rogue AI’s version of component racks. Every rogue AI was slightly different, but they were made of components just like system tech, but the design that went into them was more organic. In this case it was looping intestinal looking coils that were covered in the black goo she found in every rogue AI. 

One of Maya’s earliest memories was Pops taking her to a farm to see where their meat came from. It wasn’t a malicious thing, but something Pops claimed ‘she had to see’.  

The sight of the rogue AI’s internals brought up the random memory and it only reinforced Maya’s thoughts that rogue AIs were more animal like than machine. She shook her head and tore the opening wider. 

If she had some manaless explosives, maybe some pre-Integration C4 or even dynamite, the job would have been over with in moments, but everything she carried required mana to power them. Therefore melee weapons were the only choice. 

She slashed and cut her way into the snake. Components, freed from their intestine looking racks rained down on her like blood. She was bathed in the crimson crystal shards and within a minute found herself head first half buried into the inert body of the Snake like some human sized tick. 

She could feel the thrum of power from the core. Although mana had been stopped in the area, that didn’t mean the core of the creature had been shut down. It was still operating, but the mana just couldn’t do anything productive. She could see the light behind some coils, the universal sign of an unshielded mana core. The brain of the beast should be somewhere near.

Time was a relative thing. Some days Maya could swear an hour was a lifetime but other times an hour was a blink of an eye. The ten minutes she had flashed by her as she was burrowing into the snake. 

One moment she was readying to cut every cord that hooked up to the mana core and thereby deprive the snake of its power, then next the moment Big Snake came back to life. It probably was confused, hurt, and then truly pissed off when it saw that Maya was digging into its belly. 

Maya felt the snake move and instinctively tucked her legs into the body. A second later she saw a flash of light sizzle the area around the wound. Hot plasma burned and Maya shuddered at the near miss. 

She had lost her sword and she could feel the coils around her constricting. Did the rogue AI have that much control of its internals? Maya summoned the cutter into her hand and extended the blade to its maximum length. 

Big Snake crashed and smashed itself on the ground, twisting and coiling and doing everything in its power to dislodge Maya. But she was in deep and she kept cutting at everything that came into her sight. Black goo gushed at her and she felt the rain of components upon her armor. The inside of the snake was getting hotter and hotter by the second and sweat was filling up her sealed suit. 

“Where the hell is it!” Maya screamed, as she cut more coils. She was half blinded by the light coming off the exposed mana core and the world kept switching directions and she being one handed was not helping anything. 

Vertigo and nausea were assaulting her, when she finally managed slice away a large metallic sheet and behind it she saw the rogue AI core. AI cores came in all shapes and sizes, especially rogue AI cores. Maya’s closest guess was that the core looked more like a server rack than the golden sphere that housed Veskari or the small block of metal that was Tender’s processor. 

Big Snake’s core was a two foot long, one foot wide block of blinking lights and yellow metal. Why it had blinking lights, Maya didn’t know. But she grabbed the core with her good hand and pulled herself toward it. 

As her hand gripped the core, she felt something suddenly wrap around her right leg. 

“Shit!” Maya cried as she felt a tremendous force suddenly pull her. She wrapped both arms around the core in a bear hug and began screaming as she felt her knee pop. The force didn’t relent and Maya kept screaming in pain as whatever had her was going to rip her leg off. 

The connections to the AI core gave out before her leg did. She felt the core in her arms suddenly wrench free and then she was being pulled out of the body of Big Snake. Something hit her as she exited the snake, a solid thwack across the back and she felt her grip on the core release. She gasped in pain and dizziness and then was hauled into the air. She saw that she was being held by a series of thin whiplike tentacles. 

Big Snake might have looked like a snake, but the ‘head’ of the creature wasn’t anything snake like. It was a massive tube surrounded by the same vacuum tube looking things Maya had seen on a lot of rogue AIs. The tubes flickered and glowed and Maya realized she was staring down the barrel of the plasma weapon. 

“Fuck,” she said and tried to summon a weapon in her suddenly trembling hands. 

Explosions rocked the body of Big Snake as Zono’s cry filled the comm connection. Maya winced and turned to see the battered mining barge lumbering toward them. Holes and melted metal sheeting covered the once semi-prestine mining barge. It had a pronounced limp and one leg was a melted stump. 

Rockets erupted from the back of the barge, striking Big Snake. The rogue AI seemed more annoyed and snapped its head back to Maya. She had nearly killed it and it was going to kill her first. 

Maya summoned a pistol to her hand and began firing at the face of the creature. She emptied the charge cylinder and besides marring the finish on Big Snake’s plasma barrel, Maya achieved nothing. 

“Fuck!” she screamed again and threw the empty pistol at the snake. 

The plasma barrel suddenly snapped toward the ground, Maya followed its gaze and grinned. There was an explosion of heat and light, then Maya felt the tentacles holding her loosen. 

She was suddenly weightless as she fell and a moment later she screamed once more as her busted leg hit the gray dirt. She collapsed into a groaning pile of pain. 

Rogue AI NZN4587AE - Level 42 - Defeated

+2200 EXP

+ 1 Snake Charm

Lootable

Maya groaned as she sat up in the dirt. She looked up to see a figure carrying a big ass gun. 

“I thought you hated system tech?” Maya asked. 

“I was in a rush. I grabbed the nearest weapon,” Bell said, looking down at her. 

Maya grinned. “Great timing, Bell. Lend me a hand, would ya?”